In South San Francisco, Noodles and Karaoke Are the Perfect Late-Night Combo

The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week’s guest artist is local dentist — and Oasis superfan — Raynato Castro.

E Plus Karaoke and Cafe isn’t exactly the world’s most inviting restaurant. Located on a sparse, warehouse-y block of South San Francisco, the dimly lit building is easy to miss if you aren’t actively looking for the “WE ARE OPEN” banner hanging high up on the wall.

Was it open? And was it even a restaurant, really? When we pulled up at 9 o’clock on a Friday night, the front door was locked shut, and a slightly passive-aggressive signboard half-scolded us: “Sorry no dine-in, TO-GO only.” After a minute of uncertainty, a burly security guard with extensive face tattoos finally emerged and asked us, affably, if we’d made a reservation.

We had. In fact, we’d been planning this night for months.

The reason we’d come to this slightly sketchy-looking shoebox of a karaoke joint was because, like so many of our Asian brethren, we live for karaoke — and also because we’d heard rumors that, in addition to having sweet private rooms (a.k.a. the only style of karaoke I abide) and superior song selection, E Plus also serves surprisingly good Cantonese food. Specifically, the sign in the window promises 港式西餐 — a genre of East-West fusion cuisine characteristic of Hong Kong–style coffee shops.

To be clear, though, the emphasis is on the karaoke. You aren’t even allowed to eat inside if you haven’t reserved one of those private karaoke rooms ahead of time. But apart from the karaoke, the place is probably best known for being one of just a handful of late-night takeout options in the immediate vicinity of the San Francisco International Airport. Both the kitchen and the karaoke are open until 1:30 a.m. every night.

All of which is to say, it didn’t necessarily seem like there was any incentive for the E Plus kitchen to crank out much better than C plus food.

One pro tip: Everyone knows the key to a successful karaoke night is assembling the right crew. That’s especially true at E Plus, because the smallest size room will run you $58 an hour (with a two-hour minimum) even before you factor in food and drink — Lord knows, a pricey date night in this economy. But if you can cobble together at least a group of four, E Plus offers a $38 per person combo deal that’s a legitimate bargain: Each person picks a dish and a non-alcoholic drink, and two hours of karaoke time are included.

Anyway, our group of four put in our order and then promptly forgot about it in the excitement of scoping out the room we’d been assigned, with its big, shiny couches, moody neon backlighting, and top-notch sound system. Before we knew it, we were fully in our feelings: broing out to an especially lonesome rendition of Savage Garden’s “Truly Madly Deeply” and straining our voices to hit the high notes of the late, great Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend.”

Quietly, a staff member brought in the food we’d ordered, crouching down so she wouldn’t block our view of the lyrics. And would you believe that every dish was a hit?

Dry-style beef chow fun is a litmus test for any self-respecting Canto food spot, and E Plus’s version is as solid a rendition as I’ve had recently: soft, pliable noodles and well-charred beef, all glistening with a wonderfully savory soy sauce sheen. We took one bite and knew we were in good hands.

Another house special is the spicy salt-and-pepper fried chicken cartilage, and it’s a knockout — a generous, piping-hot portion of crispy popcorn chicken, essentially, with a little bit of extra texture for good measure. This is the ideal accompaniment to cold beer or sake (both available for purchase) — and exactly the kind of finger food that’s convenient when you want to pop something in your mouth during, say, the 27-second instrumental intro to “Boys of Summer.”

The roast duck pancake, meanwhile, turns out to be a kind of hybrid between jianbing (a kind of northern Chinese street food crepe) and a Peking duck wrap. The eggy crepe is flecked with black sesame seeds, brushed with hoisin sauce, and then piled with slices of roast duck and rolled up like a burrito. I loved the bit of crispy duck skin you get in every bite, but you’ll want to devour this quickly, as soon as it comes out, before the crepe goes limp and cold.

The most classic Hong Kong cafe–style dish that we ordered was the baked pork chop spaghetti — a pile of sweet, ketchup-spiked red sauce spaghetti topped with two big, juicy pork chops and an outlandish amount of stretchy melted cheese. Friends, this is late-night comfort food at its carby finest (though, admittedly, not the easiest or neatest dish to share).

To drink, E Plus offers a very respectable rendition of Hong Kong milk tea, served either cold or hot. But more adventurous diners may want to try the most surprising and delightful — and most overtly Hong Kong — menu item: hot Coke with lemon. It is what it sounds like: regular ol’ Coca-Cola, heated up to the temperature of hot tea so that it loses its fizz and amps up its sweetness, then mixed with a few thin rounds of lemon. Served this way, the drink tastes faintly medicinal — and indeed, in Hong Kong it’s a popular home remedy for a cough or sore throat.

I like to think it made our singing voices especially potent.

Granted, there were some of us who sang with the sweet, dulcet tones of a Filipino angel … and others who, well, compensated for our tone deafness by singing with our whole chest 100% of the time — and not hanging onto even one shred of our dignity. I’ll leave you to imagine who took Whitney’s part and who stepped in as Mariah in the big power-ballad duet moment of the night, “When You Believe.” Who crooned the most mournful old-man version of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.” And who hit the high notes in “Let It Go” so sweetly and perfectly, we all thought we’d turned into Disney princesses.

After all, the first and only rule of (private room) karaoke is that you keep those memories for yourself. Bury the video evidence. Never speak of it again. At least until the next time you get an irrepressible hankering for Don Henley and deep-fried chicken cartilage, and round up the whole gang once again.

E Plus Karaoke and Cafe is open 3 p.m.–1:30 a.m. daily at 490 S. Airport Blvd. Ste. A in South San Francisco. Call ahead to reserve a karaoke room if you plan to dine in.