A dazzling array of banchan served at Oakland's Joodooboo for its special collaboration with NYC chef Telly Justice on May 19, 2026. (Soleil Ho/COYOTE Media Collective)
It’s hot out, y’all! As summer creeps up on us (for real this time), the call of the Bay Area’s outdoor patios is even harder to resist. I’m No Face from Spirited Away, beckoning the homies to bring me a procession of iced coffees, spritzes, chè, and cute little craft beers. The best patios have lots of plants to look at, which is why The Hidden Cafe in Berkeley, with all of Strawberry Creek Park at its disposal, has the best one.
May was a funky month for me, as I spent a week in Montréal gabbing with gay people about food, but thankfully I still managed to spend way too much money checking out the Bay Area’s snack game. These are the best dishes I had this month.
Kakiage tempura, done up like a rösti, at Iyasare in Berkeley. (Soleil Ho/COYOTE Media Collective)
Kakiage tempura at Iyasare
Sometimes you just want to say “fuck it” and go to a shoppy place to get a whiff of the powerful goddess energy of all the fancy moms. To me, that’s always gonna be Berkeley’s Fourth Street. The retailers are high-end; the dogs, purebred; the restaurants, casual-upscale. Iyasare’s my favorite on the street, perhaps only because the Cal-Japanese spot makes fried food feel like an occasion.
Kakiage tempura ($25), usually presented in Japanese pubs as a bountifully scraggly orb of shredded veg, is served here as a thick, rösti-adjacent pancake that earns its all-important crisp exterior from a session in a cast iron pan. Tiny piles of ground nori, matcha salt, and togarashi invite your inner, glitter-loving child to mess up the table.
Iyasare. 1830 Fourth St., Berkeley. Open daily for lunch and dinner.
Brussels sprout tacos at Smax
In his 2022 article about Smax, a pop-up by two friends from Vallejo and San Francisco, COYOTE co-founder Alan Chazaro calls the duo’s food “artfully expressive creations in which identity, dreams, culture, friendship and flavor mingle in each bite.”
Even that description couldn’t prepare me for the textural extravaganza that was the brussels sprout tacos ($14 for two) that Smax served at Vallejo bar Village this month. Sliced sprouts, cooked just until the centers yield to a bite, formed a tangled, twisted mass of filling with pickled onions, a creamy yellow salsa, toasted almond slivers, a crumbly white cheese, grilled cheese frico, and chili crisp oil. In more hesitant hands, it could have been a car crash of a dish. But here, the maximalism worked, and each bite revealed some new part of it to appreciate.
I think we’re in a cookie moment in American food, though it’s not like cookies ever went away. It’s more like the cookie is becoming a platform food for artistic exploration and expression, much like its forebears: pizza, cupcake, and burger. On one end, there’s that whole Crumbl situation; on the other, cookies like the one I had at Village: a charismatic, Chinese bakery-tinged confection of brown butter, coconut, and candied kumquat peel. Every Monday, when Village hosts food pop-ups, painter and cookie maestro Leah Tumerman comes up with a cookie to match. The nodes of concentrated citrus — acidic and sweet, but slightly bitter — paired very well with the brussels sprout tacos and the house’s tonic-based Lambi Spritz ($11).
Village. 1503 Tennessee St., Vallejo. Open nightly, Wednesday through Monday.
The smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz's Deli in Montréal, Québéc. (Soleil Ho/COYOTE Media Collective)
Smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz’s Deli
The stars aligned on the night my friend and I went to Schwartz’s, the Jewish deli that has fed fine smoked meats to drunk Montréalers for nearly a century. The Canadiens were playing in the first round of the NHL playoffs. Thus, no line. A wise server told us what to order, and while we waited for our giant sandwich (CAD$16.25), poutine à la Schwartz’s (CAD$15.95), and black cherry soda, we scoped out all the celebrity fans namedropped on the menus. (There were two versions — one clearly for old-school Québécois and one for Anglophone tourists — but Celine Dion, a part owner of the deli, was on the top of both lists.)
My verdict: People are not bullshitting about this smoked brisket. After a 10-day cure and a session in a 98-year-old smoker, the fat dissolves into a glorious liquid that coats your mouth in Montréal steak seasoning. You start to wonder, Is the meat curing me, too?
Schwartz’s Deli. 3895 Saint-Laurent Blvd., Montréal, Canada. Open Sunday through Thursday, 10am–11pm; Friday and Saturday, 10am–12am.
Various small dishes of banchan cover a table at Oakland's Joodooboo. (Soleil Ho/COYOTE Media Collective)
Fried Dooboo Set and BanChan a la Telly at Joodooboo
On the night of May 19, chef Telly Justice of New York City’s HAGS dropped by Oakland’s Joodooboo to put together a special, one-night-only, pay-what-you-can menu. Justice brought her punk rock, “fuck barriers” culinary style to the banchan merchant, which was absolutely packed that night.
The main dish of the evening, the Fried Dooboo Set A La Telly, featured the restaurant’s tender, housemade tofu topped with a fried squash blossom and a set of small plates: roasted leeks, with cacao nib chili crisp for texture; rice cooked with millet; salad dressed with bright, HAGS-style ferments; water kimchi; and a tiny bowl of ripe cherries and a mulberry. But I couldn’t dine without trying everything Justice was bringing. So we ordered all of her special banchan as well. And whew, her cucumber salad, brought to their ultimate spa food form with a dose of aged chamomile vinegar, was phenomenal. So was her mushroom banchan, paired with smoky, seared broccolini and just a hit of vinegar. Please come back anytime, Telly!
Joodooboo. 4201 Market St., Oakland. Open Tuesday through Saturday, noon–3pm and 4:30–8pm.
Halal chickens are cooked over a wood fire on the sidewalk outside of Oasis Food Market in Oakland's Pill Hill neighborhood.(Soleil Ho/COYOTE Media Collective)
Rotisserie Chicken at Oasis Food Market
On the sidewalk outside of Oasis, a market in a small cluster of Muslim-oriented businesses near a mosque in Oakland’s Pill Hill, the scent of chicken fat and smoke wafts through the air. A mechanical rotisserie spins spatchcocked halal chickens ($12), slowly infusing them with wood smoke. Once in a while, the gal working the register inside of the market comes out to throw fresh logs on the graying pile.
The chicken is an amazing snack worth stopping for if you’re in the neighborhood. Its smokiness is mouthwatering, in the primal, we-were-once-cave-people way; and the meat is way more flavorful than those juiced-up chickens at Costco. With the addition of pita, toum, and pickles from the shop, you’ve got a whole meal on your hands.
Oasis Food Market. 3045 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Open daily, 10am–8pm.
Soleil Ho is a cultural critic, cookbook writer, and food journalist who has a nasty habit of founding media projects instead of going to therapy: from the feminist literary magazine Quaint to food podcast Racist Sandwich to our dear COYOTE.
