Thien Pham: To me it seems like a farmer’s market almost, but at night. Right? And I guess really what a night market is, is a farmer’s market at night.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra : Night markets have popped up all around the Bay Area in the last two years. And organizers and local officials are hoping that they can bring more life into some of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the pandemic.
Luke Tsai: Especially in the Bay Area, and especially when you’re talking about some of the Asian American communities. Nothing is going to bring people out like the promise of delicious free food.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: So today we’re taking you to the Story Road Night Market, right in the heart of San Jose’s Little Saigon neighborhood, to see what these night markets are all about.
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Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And we are here in San Jose on Story Road. And I’m here with..
Luke Tsai: Luke Tsai food editor for KQED.
Thien Pham: And Thien Pham, a graphic novelist and an educator based in Oakland.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And we are here at this Story Road Night Market, which is a mostly Vietnamese night market at this strip mall. Thien, can you tell us a little bit more about where we are right now?
Thien Pham: Yeah. So this strip of San Jose has always been kind of like Little Saigon. But they opened this big place called the Grand Century. And it was supposed to be like the Vietnamese mall, you know, like it had all the Vietnamese food, all the restaurants were here. And then, like a couple of years later, this giant lot next to Grand Century opened up. It was called Vietnam Town, the hub of like, Vietnamese culture in San Jose.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: We’re kind of here to explore, Luke as you wrote about, a growing sort of night market scene in the Bay Area, right?
Luke Tsai : Yeah, totally, I think. You know, I grew up going to night markets when I would travel to Taiwan with my family. You know, as a kid eating stinky tofu, eating like giant chicken cutlets the size of my head. And so that was something I grew up with and something that after I moved to the Bay Area, I never really found. But just in the past few years and really like in the past year or two, we’ve seen this kind of explosion in night markets.
With the pandemic, there were so many neighborhoods that just sort of shut down. A lot of these areas were struggling. And so what a lot of sort of community organizers, community groups, local governments, kind of when they put their heads together, a lot of them looked to the night market as kind of a potentially successful model. And I think especially in the Bay Area and especially when you’re talking about some of the Asian-American communities, nothing is going to bring people out like the promise of delicious street food. And I think that’s that’s mostly why we’re here tonight to check that out.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Yeah. And people are out. People are out.
Luke Tsai: We’re going to get, we’re going to try the chicken hand pie and the charcoal grilled ribs.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Can I get the steamed tofu?
Ryan Sebastian: Speaking as someone who was born and raised in East San Jose. Like, there is always a feeling that when I would travel to other places and I would say, “Why can’t we have that?”
My name is Ryan Sebastian and I run Moveable Feast. We started doing food truck events here based out of San Jose. Our whole goal for the whole summer was, or the whole series, was to get 20,000 people. And we saw by backed by cell phone data that the first weekend we had 22,000 people.
You know, Story Road for many reasons, particularly in the Vietnamese community and the like Mexican-American community is so, so key. To have this in San Jose, to have it in a place that maybe isn’t always like shown in the most positive light, is incredibly important.
Thien Pham: Family style. We’re family style.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Okay. And what do we got here, Thien?
Thien Pham: We got some lobster like fried in a rice coating. Green rice, which is like a gelatinous rice. And then we have here, ee have a hand pie that has a chicken curry in it.
Luke Tsai: These are the pork ribs that have some sort of, like, herb fish sauce, calamansi, sort of a little dressing, kind of garnish on top.
Thien Pham: All right. Let’s go.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: These ribs are so good.
Luke Tsai: So it’s got that little bit of tanginess on top, but the ribs are super, super tender and juicy.
Thien Pham: Oh my god. So good. In my phone, I just have so much of just Luke, like, eating. He’s such a, like, profane eater. It’s, like, disgusting to watch him eat. But I’m also, like, I really also love it.
Luke Tsai: So what’s, what’s what’s this? This is like a tofu sandwich.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Yeah, it’s like a tofu sandwiches with some pork inside. And then it looks like…
Luke Tsai: Is that like pork floss?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Yeah. Yeah.
Luke Tsai: Vietnamese people eat pork floss?
Thien Pham: That’s our thing! We came up with pork floss, bro!
Luke Tsai: Come on! I’m always like, this is a Chinese thing, and Thien is always like, “No, the Vietnamese invented that.”
Thien Pham: The Vietnamese invented that for sure! Chinese took that from us.
Mori Nguyen: My name is Mori. Last name is Nguyen. I feel like there’s a healthy amount of vendors, so and a lot of like, I don’t know what they’re called but like cool little shops that people have or like small businesses. So I like it so far.
I ordered grilled squid satay. It’s really good. It’s a little on the saltier side, but I like it because I think it’s, I want to say it’s a Vietnamese style, and I really like Vietnamese style squid.
Luke Tsai: And I mean, I think the other thing I really like when you walk past is you have all these sort of like retail vendors that are mixed in also. And I think there are other markets that have that component or like, you know, one day festivals where it’ll be like, okay, we’re going to have food, but we’re also going to have people selling like crafts, or we’re also going to have people selling like clothing or jewelry. You know, where it doesn’t feel like it’s some like, fancy artisan who has like parachuted in from outside of the community to, like, promote their art.
You know, it feels more like, these are just like people from the community. Maybe they have a shop in this mall, selling like jewelry or selling like little trinkets or gifts. And so they set up a stall outside. And so it just has that very– it just feels very natural, feels very good just to walk around and see everybody checking out all the little stalls while they’re eating their their food. Yeah.
Shanaya: I’m Shanaya. I’m the creator of Naya’s Desk. So I sell original art through stickers. And I also hand make all of these at home, sticker sheets. I’ve been a San Jose native all my life, so this is my second time here at the Story Road Night Market. This one is really great because I love the Asian diversity here, and the community here is really good. Really good food and a lot of other cool artists here.
Thien Pham: Snails! I found the snails! Should I go get it? Or do you guys want to come?
Luke Tsai: The sea snails, the grilled sea snails.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Oh! That’s what you wanted.
Luke Tsai: That’s what we wanted. Yeah. Should we go get the snails?
Thien Pham: You want to go try? Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing. So right now, we’re going across the parking lot to the next mall, which is called Vietnam Town. There’s only one stall, but they got a lot of attention.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: This is actually insane. Okay. So there is literally a deejay spinning EDM in the background. And in the forefront, with this, just like, YouTube lighting, are these Vietnamese aunties pouring sugarcane juice, selling snails. An uncle is grilling. I am, I’m stunned. I think it’s the lights. It’s the lights and the music, for sure.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Okay, so Thien just ordered. He has a snail in his hand.
Thien Pham: And then you grab it with a toothpick. Because the snail has, like, a you know, like the shell is, like, circular. So you got to, like, kind of spin it while you open it, and you grab it. And you’ve got to dip it in this sauce. The sauce is it. And then, oh my God, they have this thing called rau răm, which I think the English title is Vietnamese Coriander.
Oh my god. It’s so good you guys. Oh my god. So this really brings me home to my mom because, you know, we didn’t have a lot of money when we came to America. So my mom would go to the market. My mom would just have this huge pot of it and me and my mom would just sit there and just do this and eat there. And it would just be like our bonding. We never really talked, you know, it’s one of those things that is just like, oh man, this is like, my mom, you know, this is like, like my mom. Yeah. Oh my god.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m curious what you all, just your impressions of the night market so far, especially Luke, compared to some of the other ones that you’ve been to around the Bay Area.
Luke Tsai: I mean, one of the things I really appreciate about here is just when you’re walking through and you smell the smell of that charcoal, right? And you just know it’s going to be good. And I was reading, I think Soleil Ho for The Chronicle wrote this opinion piece basically saying how it was really awesome that San Francisco has a whole bunch of night markets now, but that at a lot of them the food they said was like kind of mid. And it wasn’t because the food vendors aren’t good, but because the regulations and the fees are such that most vendors can’t afford to pay all the fees to be able to, like grill on the street to actually cook hot food. I mean, that’s one of the hallmarks of a night market is like you have, you have the fire going, you smell that charcoal. So I really appreciate that about here.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Like we’re literally standing–
Luke Tsai: Watching them make it. They’ve got like a little bamboo fan that they’re like fanning it every so often. Like, that’s like old school cooking, right? Old school street food cooking. And I do think, like, with anything else, that it requires some like know how. You know, and it requires some, like, actual outreach and connection to the community.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I am curious for both of you and I guess starting with you first, Luke, is this the kind of thing you both would want to see more of?
Luke Tsai: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I think it just feels so comfortable just strolling through here. The smells, the sights. It’s such a warm kind of community feeling for for folks in San Jose. If you had this every week, you know, or at least you had it like once or twice a month, I feel like people would come out, you know, especially especially in San Jose and a lot of other neighborhoods, too. I think people would come out.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: You seem very at home here, Thien.
Thien Pham: I love it. This type of thing we didn’t have when we were growing up. And so now when I walk around and sometimes when I speak about it, it’s like really moving to me. Because it’s like so many years of growing up and just kind of like hiding your culture or just like experiencing it with your family. And for me, I can go to my American friends or my friends of all cultures, “Hey, let’s go to this this Vietnamese street fair.” And they will be fine with it. And every single one of this food here can be enjoyed by everybody. Like every time me and Luke go anywhere, like in the Bay Area nowadays and we see this huge, diverse crowd, we’re like always moved by it. It’s always so, feels so nice. It feels so nice to like to like have this, you know, like, and I think that’s part of the reason why we live here. Why we pay the prices that we pay to live here, you know.
Luke Tsai:100%. Yeah.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Okay. So I don’t know about you all, but I’m full. I’m very full.
Luke Tsai: We have, you can’t see, but we have like two giant bags of leftovers.
Thien Pham: Ericka’s just holding the nước mía. I hope, I hope someone at home likes sugar cane juice.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Just double fisting this sugar cane juice. This was so much fun, you guys. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Luke Tsai: Thanks so much for having us here. Cheers!
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Special thanks to KQED food editor Luke Tsai and Thien Pham for being our guides of the Story Road Night Market. The Story Road Night Market is done for the year, but there are still a handful of night markets to still check out around the Bay Area. We’re going to leave you a link to Luke’s list of Bay Area night markets in our show notes.
