Yap Zone: The Best Things Our Food Critic Ate in August

For the past few months, I’ve been writing up my favorite dishes I’ve encountered each month — mostly in the Bay Area, mostly in the East Bay. This month, though, was special: I spent about half of it on other continents. So this edition of my monthly missive will be a bit chunkier! The first few (accessible to all subscribers on our site) will feature some of the Bay Area highlights that I managed to squeeze in; while the rest will cover, well, other places!

Lil’ Devil Noodles by Lil Devil Noodle Co.

At the top of the month, I managed to catch Lil Devil Noodle Co., a handmade Chinese and Taiwanese noodle pop-up that has been making the rounds in the Bay Area. Started by three friends with “zero experience,” this pop-up celebrates the supple, the pliant, the springy of the noodle world. Noodles are rolled out to order, followed by the quick pat-pat-pat of dough slapping against a cutting board as it stretches to a slurp-ready form. The eponymous menu item ($16), a take on Shaanxi Province’s yo po mian, has thin wheat noodles tossed with hot scallion oil and served with pickled greens, their own chili crisp, and a refreshing topper of chopped cilantro and scallion. The meatless, soupless dish is a perfect way to savor the cooks’ noodlemancy.

Lil Devil Noodle Co. Check Instagram for dates and locations.

Jimmy Relleno taco at Tacos Oscar in San Francisco

It feels wrong to go to Tacos Oscar outside of its original Oakland location, somehow? Its new digs in the cozy Woods tasting room in the Haight feel like a world away from the outdoor-only space in Temescal, but I’m not mad about it. The special running the night I visited was a brilliant chile relleno-style taco ($7) featuring the Bay Area’s favorite Jimmy Nardello peppers, stuffed with bright and fruity Aleppo pepper-seasoned jack cheese. There were welcome and very moreish elements added: a puree of buttery mayocoba beans and dill-jalapeño crema, sprinkles of cotija, and pickled onion to finish.

Tacos Oscar. 530 Haight St., San Francisco. Open 5–9pm Sunday and Monday; 5–10pm Thursday through Saturday.

The breakfast burrito at the Deli Lama in San Francisco

Jetlagged, brain cell-less, and ravenous after 30 hours of overseas travel, I found myself in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood at 6:30am on a Wednesday. What to do? I stumbled into the Deli Lama, which caters to the early crowd: construction workers, postal workers, cops. The breakfast burrito ($13.50) was my quarry. It’s a beast, with three eggs, cheese, a vein of salsa, meat (chorizo is my pick), and crisp tater tots inside. The cheese melts into the crannies of fried potato bits as the burrito sits; and you realize that the union of dairy and hot potato is one of humanity’s greatest inventions.

The Deli Lama. 150 Toland St., San Francisco. Open 5:30am–2pm Monday through Friday.