Octavio Peña

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

Serious Eats •

This 10-Minute Mexican-Inspired Smash Burger Is Even Better Than Taco Night

A few years ago, smash burgers had a serious moment—the kind of viral rise that put them on every trendy bar menu and backyard griddle. But the idea of smashing beef onto a hot surface to amplify its flavors and give it a pleasantly crispy texture isn't new. In Oklahoma, diners have been smashing burgers since the 1920s, pressing thinly sliced onions into patties as they cook. Go back even further, and you'll find a similar technique in Mexico: pacholas, seasoned ground beef patties traditionall...
Serious Eats •

Shrimp Scampi Meets Salsa Verde in This Weeknight-Friendly Pasta

I've always been intrigued by the idea of a Mexican pasta dish. Not in the Tex-Mex sense—where spaghetti gets tossed with taco seasoning and ground beef—but something that thoughtfully integrates the Mexican flavors I grew up eating into the framework of a classic Italian-American pasta dish. Years ago, I stumbled across a recipe in a 1980s Mexican-American cookbook that combined spaghetti with crema and queso fresco, almost like an Alfredo reboot. That dish was comforting and creamy, but I coul...
KQED •

San Jose’s New Late-Night Hot Spot Serves Smoky, Charcoal-Grilled Arepas | KQED

On a recent Saturday night, I was food-truck-hopping in East San Jose when the aroma of charcoal lured me to a small food stand on Alum Rock — a Colombian arepa joint called Salpikitos, it turned out. I felt like I had stumbled into a family’s backyard barbecue. There was an assembly line of cooks. One tended to a simmering pot of speckled quail eggs; another fanned the flames while searing a batch of arepas on the grill. It was nearly midnight and every table was packed with customers chowing d...
Eater SF •

The 25 Best Peninsula Restaurants

Nestled under San Francisco lies the Bay Area Peninsula, a nearly 30-mile stretch of land between the city and the South Bay Area. The dining options in the region span everything from fine-dining restaurants to takeout spots where diners can grab a quick bite on the go. The lively downtown hubs of cities, including San Mateo and Palo Alto, make for a rather dynamic dining scene, where visitors can find a seemingly limitless variety of restaurants. Some are tried-and-true eateries that have stoo...
Serious Eats •

This Mill From Masienda Is the Most Approachable Way to Make Fresh Masa at Home

Tortillas are typically seen as a convenience food—they’re a shelf-stable ingredient kept in the pantry to throw together an emergency quesadilla. So, why go through the effort of dedicating an entire day to making a stack of tortillas? Well, homemade tortillas made with fresh masa have a more pronounced corn flavor and a soft, pillowy texture. You can also use homemade masa to make huaraches, sopes, tostadas, tamales, cazuelitas, gorditas, pupusas, and more.

While a food processor is more tha...
Serious Eats •

How to Make Mole Negro: Mexico’s Smokiest, Boldest Sauce

If Mexico had a national dish, mole would be the top contender. Across its many regions and countless family kitchens, the iconic thick, rich, complex sauce appears in endless forms, all with unique blends of flavors. There’s a bright and tangy mole rojo made with tomatoes; an herby mole verde made with tomatillos and pumpkin seeds; and a lesser-known mole blanco, which is light and nutty, just to name a few. Each version is personal. 

When I interview owners of Mexican restaurants in the San...
Eater SF •

How Carmel’s Only Korean Restaurant Kicked Its Dining Scene Up a Notch

At Jeju Kitchen, the dining room hums with the sounds of sizzling stone bowls of bibimbap and the slurping of dark black, savory jajangmyeon noodles. It’s a casual, stylish restaurant in the heart of buzzy Carmel Plaza that infuses Korean flavors into bar bites and upscale dishes. Ashley Wolff opened Jeju Kitchen in December 2023, and being the only Korean restaurant in Carmel, she’s become an ambassador of sorts for this cuisine in the city. The people of Carmel were quick to jump on board, and...
Eater SF •

The Bay Area Pop-Up Taking Smoky Yakitori to New Heights

Yakitori — or rather kushiyaki — is having a moment, and a buzzy izakaya pop-up is spreading the gospel of flame-kissed skewers and grilled onigiri to breweries and wineries across the Bay Area. Aku’s BBQ is a yakitori and izakaya pop-up bringing flame-kissed skewers and grilled onigiri to breweries and wineries from Berkeley to San Jose, putting in work since 2020. Equipped with a butane torch and a handheld fan, Alec “Aku” Ku chars scallops, beef, and chicken skewers over a charcoal grill. Ku...
KQED •

This Malaysian Bento Box Restaurant Is One Family’s Legacy in San Jose

I was driving by a strip mall in South San Jose when a window portrait of a cartoon chicken in a Hawaiian shirt and Comme des Garçons shoes caught my eye. What I assumed would be a fried chicken spot turned out to be a Malaysian restaurant, a rarity in the South Bay. Inside Chicken Licious’ homey dining room, you’ll find a vibrant menu featuring curry puffs, nasi lemak and asam laksa. While you wait for your order, you can sip on a cup of chicken broth and prepare for your feast by loading up on...
Food & Wine •

Tlayudas Are the Oaxacan Street Food That's Easy to Make at Home

A tlayuda is a Oaxacan dish made by toasting a large corn tortilla over an open flame or comal until crunchy and brittle. It can be served open-faced or folded in half. Some refer to the dish as Mexican pizza, but it arguably has more similarities to a sandwich. Common fillings include asiento, beans, cheese, cabbage, avocado, tomato, chorizo, and carne asada.

Asiento, the residual fat and crispy bits of meat left from frying carnitas or chicharrón, is an important ingredient in Oaxacan cuisin...
KQED •

A Tiny Takeout Window Sells Some of the Tastiest Pies in San Jose

A small red building in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood is a laboratory for unbridled culinary experimentation. At Sweetdragon Baking Company, nut brittles are filled with potato chips, pies are loaded with Japanese curry, and sweet-and-savory bacon cookies are spiked with Jack Daniels.
A mural in front of the building provides a sneak peek into the bakery’s whimsical approach to recipe development: A dragon in a white chef’s toque whisks a bowl of batter while several animal friends bustle...
Serious Eats •

How to Make Crispy Chicken Chimichangas That Don't Fall Apart

Nearly everything tastes better deep-fried—avocados, Oreos, Twinkies—but I believe few are as brilliant as the deep-fried burrito, aka the chimichanga. These stuffed and fried flour tortillas are so popular in the Southwest that several restaurants in Arizona try to take credit for the dish's invention. My love for chimichangas goes all the way back to my childhood. My first encounter with chimichangas was through reading Deadpool comics as a kid: the titular Marvel character loves chimichangas...
SFGATE •

Popular Bay Area bakery with epic sandwiches opens to lines out the door

On a recent Saturday morning, a new bakery in downtown San Jose was alive with the sounds of Japanese city pop and sizzling sausage patties. Milk Belly, an Asian-inspired bakery from Maria Belzunce and Jason Venters that debuted in January with lines out the door, specializes in unique sourdough, like mochi porridge and ube-coconut, as well as more traditional offerings, like Japanese milk bread, or shokupan, which is used to make peanut butter-coated Hong Kong-style French toast.

On a recent S...
Eater SF •

Eat Wonderfully Crispy, Netted Egg Rolls at This East San Jose Restaurant

Egg rolls are a staple appetizer at Vietnamese restaurants across the Bay, but at SJ Eggrolls, they’re the star of the show. The small shop in East San Jose specializes in chả giò rế, or netted egg rolls, which bumps up the crispiness of a traditional egg roll by encasing the filling in a brittle web wrapper. While netted egg rolls are available elsewhere in San Jose, they’re typically made with premade wrappers that lack the distinct crunch of freshly made wrappers. At SJ Eggrolls, however, the...
KQED •

This San Jose Seafood Truck Serves One of the Spiciest Dishes in the Bay Area

Mariscos El Aguachiles 8 is a seafood trailer wrapped in a giant, chile-red octopus tucked away in a small, bustling Mexican neighborhood a few minutes from Downtown San Jose. Its main attraction? Aguachile served in 12 heat levels — ranging from tickle-in-the-back-of-your-throat to capsaicin-induced hysteria — that might be the single spiciest dish in the entire Bay Area.
Even if you’re not a heat seeker, the business has become a community hub for all seafood lovers. During my visit on a cold...
Serious Eats •

My Family’s Nourishing Mexican Meatball Soup is Perfect for a Cold Day

In my favorite children’s book, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the fabled town of Chewandswallow deals with tomato tornados and hailing meatballs. After reading the book, I remember wishing an unfathomable amount of sopa de albondigas, Mexican meatball soup, would pour down from the sky. In Mexican albondigas, meatballs speckled with rice, alliums, and herbs are served in a light, tomato-based broth along with a variety of fresh vegetables. It’s a dish I grew up eating, and one I still enjoy...
Serious Eats •

Score Major Points on Game Day With These Fiery Chicken Wings

I’m a chicken wing enthusiast. I’ll get them every time I see them on a menu. I’m talking gochujang wings at Korean barbecue; fish sauce–coated wings while eating pho; and buffalo wings at pizza joints. But in all my years of gnawing on drumettes, I’ve never come across a Mexican take on wings. So I decided to apply my years of studying chicken wings at the dining table and my love of Mexican cuisine to create this spicy, aromatic, crunchy Mexican-inspired chicken wing recipe.

These wings are...
KQED •

An Indonesian Coffee Pop-up Brings Pandan Lattes to San Jose | KQED

Indonesian coffee shops are sprouting up in the Bay Area, introducing local caffeine hounds to aromatic, uniquely tropical drinks. The newest addition to the scene is Hijau, a coffee pop-up in San Jose known for crafting lattes with flavors like pineapple, coconut, lemongrass and ginger.
South Bay residents Lisa Maria and Ryan Prawiradjaja started Hijau in February of 2024. Maria was born and raised in Bekasi, the largest city in West Java, Indonesia, and immigrated to the United States15 years...
Serious Eats •

Can You Tell Your Chipotles From Your Adobos? A Guide to Mexican Chiles

The wall of dried chiles at the Mexican grocery store is always mesmering to me—a mural with colors ranging from bright red to black that exudes the aroma of fruit, chocolate, raisins, and nuts—but it can also be daunting. With at least a dozen varieties on the shelf, it can be difficult to know which type of chile is best for which dishes. Even for those familiar with dried chiles, like me, things get a bit complicated when the same name is used to identify different chiles (pasillas, for examp...
KQED •

A South Bay Pop-Up Is Reinventing the Doughnut

The contents of a pink doughnut box are usually pretty predictable — chocolate- or sprinkle-covered rings that offer a bit of sweetness and chewiness to get you through your morning. But at Eizel’s Bakery, a pop-up in the South Bay, some of the doughnuts are glazed with crackly caramelized sugar while others are filled with saucy crustaceans. Another Korean-inspired, doughnut-adjacent treat erupts with garlicky custard when you bite in.
Of course, Eizel’s isn’t the first bakery to try to reinven...
Eater SF •

Head to This Late-Night San Jose Taco Cart for Steamy Cabeza

At their finest, tacos de cabeza (cow head) are soft, intensely beefy shredded meat encased in a pillowy steamed tortilla. One of the best places to get head in San Jose is in a gas station parking lot. Tacos Al Vapor Blanquita, a little food cart off of San Jose’s Story & King, is more than meets the eye. You don’t need to rack your brain to decide what to order here — the only item on the menu is tacos al vapor de cabeza. While cabeza is a common offering at taquerias, most places offer a mixt...
Serious Eats •

This Tiny Thermometer Can Track Two Temperatures at Once, Making It Great for Multitaskers

When I first moved into my apartment, my oven was churning out pale chicken skin, limp broccolini, and underbaked cookies. It wasn’t until I invested in a probe thermometer that I realized my oven’s display was off and that preheating took twice as long as it claimed. I also often cook for family and friends in their homes, so whenever I pack my cooking bag for a dinner party, I tuck my ThermoWorks Square DOT into my apron’s pocket. This tiny thermometer has made an outsized impact on my life....
Serious Eats •

My Family's Comforting Pozole Rojo Relies on This 1 Game-Changing Ingredient

Pozole in its many iterations has been a beloved part of celebrations and family gatherings in Mexico for centuries. I grew up eating pozole rojo, a hearty pork version of the soup infused with a blend of fruity chiles and warm spices. The soup—which is studded with tender morsels of pork and hominy and finished with a rainbow of toppings like tostadas, lime wedges, thin slices of cabbage, onion, avocado, and more—was a mainstay at family birthdays and other celebrations. My aunts would (and sti...
Eater SF •

This Impressive San Jose Vietnamese Restaurant Is a One-Man Show

In a sleepy corner of San Jose’s Eastside foothills, AK Kitchen dishes out Vietnamese street food, South Asian ice cream flavors made in-house, and furikake Chex Mix. The menu also features popular dishes from Japanese, Korean, and Indian cuisine. The most impressive part? The restaurant is run by a team of one.
Lam Ngo moved from Vietnam to San Jose with hopes of attending culinary school but was discouraged due to the cost. Instead, he attended De Anza College where he studied accounting and e...
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