Octavio Peña

Freelance writer with KQED, Eater, Serious Eats, Food & Wine, and more

Resy | Right This Way •

Why Bombera Remains a Singular Oakland Restaurant

When Dominica Rice-Cisneros opened Bombera in 2021, she knew that she wanted to continue the tradition of “Mole Mondays” that she had established at Cosecha, her previous restaurant. Today, Bombera offers multiple moles each day served in various preparations alongside meats and vegetables.
“Enjoying and eating moles is something I’ve done my whole life,” says Rice-Cisneros. Moles are often categorized by color or place of origin in Mexico, but within those classifications exists a wide variety...
Serious Eats •

Salsa Macha Transforms These Mexican Brothy Beans Into a Memorable Meal

Growing up in a Mexican household, I ate beans at least a few times per week. It was typically  frijoles de la olla (beans from the pot) , refried beans, or morisqueta. Beans were essential but never the star of the show; they were a side dish paired with arroz and a stew. For a long time, I didn't think of beans as anything more. 

My opinion changed after a visit to Bombera, a Mexican restaurant in Oakland with a  Michelin Bib Gourmand designation. The most memorable dish on the menu is charr...
NYT Cooking •

Salsa Macha Pork Noodles Recipe • 30 min

These noodles are inspired by mazemen, a brothless ramen that is sometimes tossed with a saucy pork mixture. In this case, the sauce is salsa macha (a nutty Mexican chile oil) seasoned with cumin and oregano. Chiles de árbol incorporate heat while guajillos add a sweet fruitiness. The dish is freshened up with cilantro, scallions and a heavy dose of lime juice. You can also top the noodles with a raw egg yolk or a soft-boiled egg. The dish comes together in less than half an hour, making it the...
NYT Cooking •

Chile Lime Roast Chicken Recipe • 5★ • 1 hr

Chile Lime Roast ChickenBy Octavio PeñaGhazalle Badiozamani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.Media 1 of 1Ready In1 hrRating5(45)CommentsRead commentsCumin, coriander, paprika and oregano lend this roast chicken a warm, herby flavor profile. It’s cooked on a bed of baby potatoes and carrots that soak up the chicken’s drippings. While the chicken and vegetables roast, whip up a butter-based sauce infused with garlic, serranos, lime and cilantro, which provides a punch of bri...
KQED •

A New Turkish Food Truck Serves Some of the Best Adana Kebab in the Bay Area

I have a rule where anytime I spot a busy food truck, I’ll make a brief detour to check it out, even if it means pulling across three lanes on the highway — much to the dismay of my passengers.
That’s how I first discovered Chefmus, a modest-looking Turkish food trailer wedged between a gas station and tire shop in Mountain View. From the main street, you can’t see the dining tables or the crowd of customers swarming the trailer. But when I peeked inside the window, I saw a full-on pyrotechnics...
Serious Eats •

Stop Throwing Out This One Condiment—It Adds Heat, Acid, and Salt in Seconds

When I was growing up, my family kept a rectangular pickle container in the fridge filled with home-pickled jalapeños and carrots. It had a built-in mechanism for lifting the ingredients out of the vinegar, like a mini elevator. Out of curiosity, I once snuck a sip of the pickling liquid. As a kid, I hated it—it was more sour than I expected, and the heat triggered a coughing fit. (Now I can enjoy a good pickle martini or margarita.)

These days, I’m more likely to reach for a can or jar of sto...
SFGATE •

Michelin-level chef's killer $10 breakfast sandwiches are hitting the Bay Area

Pretty Good Advice is a reenvisioning of what fast food can be — seasonal, fresh and locally grown. The fast-casual restaurant is fueled by Matt McNamara’s farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. McNamara is best known for co-founding Sons & Daughters in San Francisco, which received a Michelin star in 2012. He originally started his 83-acre farm in 2013 to grow ingredients for Sons & Daughters but left the restaurant in 2017 to live on the farm with his family.

Pretty Good Advice is a reenvisioning...
Eater SF •

The 25 Best South Bay Area Restaurants

The South Bay’s diverse food scene shouldn’t be overlooked. The region is home to cuisines across the globe, including the Bay Area’s only Somali restaurant, the only Dominican food truck, and Vietnamese establishments dedicated solely to specific street food snacks. From Eastside San Jose’s rich selection of taco trucks to the upscale dining options in Los Gatos, Santa Clara County has something for everyone.

The South Bay’s diverse food scene shouldn’t be overlooked. The region is home to cui...
Serious Eats •

For Richer, More Flavorful Salsa, I Never Skip This 2-Minute Step

Frying salsa is one of the first kitchen spectacles I remember. As a child, I'd watch from a safe distance as my mom poured a blender full of salsa into shimmering hot oil. A plume of steam would rise. The skillet would erupt in a furious sizzle. Everything about it seemed to defy common kitchen logic—adding liquid to smoking-hot fat is usually a mistake—but in Mexican cooking, it's a foundational technique.

In just a few minutes, that loose, raw salsa would thicken, darken slightly, and take...
Serious Eats •

These Crispy, Bean-Stuffed Tortillas With Chicken Are My Go-To for Saucy, Weeknight Comfort

Panuchos are a masa-based specialty from Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula: crisped tortillas stuffed with refried beans and topped with rich, tangy toppings. At their core, they're deceptively simple—just masa, beans, and fat—but assembling them is a multi-step process.

If you're familiar with the broader family of masa shapes, you might wonder how panuchos differ from gorditas. While both involve thickened tortillas, gorditas are typically fried until deeply crunchy throughout. Panuchos, by contras...
KQED •

This San José Food Truck Is One of the Only Dominican Food Spots in the Bay | KQED

A half-mile stretch on the outskirts of south downtown San José has become a hotbed for food trucks from across Latin America. In the past two years, new trucks have launched specializing in corn cachapas from Venezuela, tender nacatamales from Nicaragua, and, as of last May, the slow-cooked stews and savory mashed plantains of the Dominican Republic.
Wrapped in the characteristic blue, red and white of the Dominican flag, the El Fogon d’Geny truck shares a small, picnic table–lined lot with a f...
Serious Eats •

This Slow-Cooked Beef Recipe Delivers Crisp Tacos and Deeply Savory Consomé

Tacos de lengua (beef tongue) may not be as popular as other options on the taco truck menu—it's hard to compete with smoky carne asada and zingy al pastor—but they're among my favorites. Lengua is prized for both its mild, beefy flavor and its meltingly tender texture when properly cooked. My favorite versions are served with a side of hot consomé—something to sip between bites or dip tortillas into—which is exactly what this recipe delivers.

This is a two-part dish by design. The tongue is s...
NYT Cooking •

Caldo de Pollo Recipe

Caldo de pollo is a chicken soup with variations across Latin America. This is a classic Mexican version, featuring a combination of potatoes, carrots and zucchini cooked until creamy and tender. Rice, corn and chayote are other popular additions. Here, the soup is made with bone-in chicken thighs, cooked slowly so the meat stays juicy and slips off the bone. Rather than simmer the skin and let it get soggy, it’s chopped into pieces and crisped to serve as a kind of crouton (see Tip). The render...
Serious Eats •

This Steak-and-Fries Dinner Turns Carne Asada Fries Into a Weeknight Meal

I recently spent a few days in San Diego, where I maintained a nearly all-taco diet. As I hopped from taqueria to taqueria, I was tempted by carne asada fries, which were on nearly every menu. The dish is believed to have originated in San Diego in the 1990s, when taquerias began loading french fries with the taco fillings they already had on hand—grilled carne asada, cheese, guacamole, crema, and salsa.

I finally gave in on the last day of my trip, ordering asada fries from Tacos El Gordo, a...
Serious Eats •

The Bold 20-Minute Mexican Shrimp Dinner My Family Makes Every Week

Growing up, there weren’t many mainstays in my family’s dinner rotation. The dish camarones a la diabla—deviled shrimp—however, was my parents’ favorite, so it showed up at our table at least once a week. The dish is everything its name promises: plump shrimp seared until just browned, then coated in a fiery, glossy red sauce that begs to be scooped up with warm tortillas or spooned over a pile of rice. As a toddler, I couldn’t handle the heat, so my mom would omit the chiles for a mild version....
KQED •

This San José Pop-Up Bakery Sells 18 Different Varieties of Egg Tarts | KQED

You might imagine that most egg tarts are relatively indistinguishable, with their pastry cups and plain, sunglow-colored custard filling. You wouldn’t necessarily expect the treats to get remixed into dozens of different flavors.
That hasn’t stopped A&M Pâtisserie. The San José–based bakery pop-up sells a whopping eighteen different egg tart flavors, many of them inspired by various Asian cuisines. At a makers’ market at the Santa Clara Convention Center in November, a perpetual line of at lea...
Serious Eats •

The 15-Minute Mexican Fried Rice I Make on Repeat

This Mexican take on fried rice was inspired, surprisingly, by a dish at an Italian steakhouse. For my anniversary dinner at Be.Steak.A in Campbell, CA, I skimmed past the pastas and bistecca to order what looked like a rogue menu item: fried rice tossed with fennel-spiked sausage, pickled Calabrian chiles, and Pecorino Romano. It arrived loaded with warm spice, tangy heat, and just enough cheese to add a slightly funky flavor and glue the grains together. I loved it. Not just the flavors, but t...
Serious Eats •

The Bright, Herb-Packed Mexican Rice I Make for Almost Every Dinner

When most people think of Mexican rice, their minds go straight to arroz rojo, the beloved red tomato-tinged version that appears alongside dishes like enchiladas and pollo asado. Arroz verde, green rice—its verdant, slightly more mysterious cousin—often flies under the radar. Traditionally, its color and flavor come from green chiles like poblanos or jalapeños, green herbs, and/or leafy greens like spinach, but it's a wonderfully flexible dish that happily accepts whatever flavorful greenery is...
SFGATE •

'One of a kind': Rare Mexican cuisine touches down in the Bay Area

I first stumbled upon the Pre-Hispanic Mexican Cuisine food truck at San Jose’s Rose Garden Farmers Market. At least a dozen people were in line, and I joined the queue out of curiosity. I was expecting a traditional taco truck menu; instead, I was stunned by unfamiliar offerings. I ordered a small feast of al pastor negro, huitlacoche (corn fungus) quesadillas, and octopus and chorizo tacos. I was hooked and visited regularly to sample the rest of the menu.

I first stumbled upon the Pre-Hispan...
KQED •

A New San José Food Stall Specializes in Vietnamese Rice Cake Omelettes | KQED

Located at the intersection of Tully and King roads, the Lion Plaza shopping center is in many ways San José’s original Little Saigon — a hub for homesick Vietnamese Americans since the mid-’80s, though it’s since been eclipsed by trendier malls like Grand Century and Vietnam Town. But in the mornings, the supermarket’s food court still fills up with hungry diners getting their phở or bó nè fix. And since August, there’s been an exciting new addition: Bột Chiên, a stall specializing in its names...
San Francisco Chronicle •

This new Bay Area restaurant is selling thousands of spring rolls every weekend

Nem Nuong Nha Trang, which quietly opened in April in San Jose’s Little Saigon, appears to be the only restaurant in the Bay Area to specialize in nem nuong cuon, fresh rolls loaded with juicy pork sausage grilled over charcoal. Within the last month, demand has exploded; the restaurant sells 1,400 spring rolls per day on the weekends, and wait times can exceed an hour.

Nem Nuong Nha Trang, which quietly opened in April in San Jose’s Little Saigon, appears to be the only restaurant in the Bay A...
SFGATE •

An exceptional Taiwanese sandwich is hiding in this Bay Area strip mall

Tucked away in a labyrinth of offices in North San Jose, Tai Kee Wonton serves meticulously crafted pork-filled Taiwanese wontons. The no-frills establishment is adorned with black-and-white photos of previous generations of Tai Kee Wonton owners. The chef, Anthony Huang, is a master of the craft who has been making wontons for more than 45 years. The restaurant regularly fills up with families huddling over bowls of steaming wonton soup and gnawing on spare ribs and pork feet.

Tucked away in a...
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