The best way to survive the cold season is to warm up with a bowl of soup. The Bay is lucky to have a large variety of soups reflective of cuisines around the world. Check out the list of our favorite soups encompassing everything from ramen to pozole to pho. We even included some soups we think are slept on like Indonesian bakso and Korean seolleong tang.
Our Favorite Ramen (Japanese Soup)
Mensho Tokyo (San Francisco)
Mensho Tokyo serves up unique ramen varieties. Their matcha ramen is a rich, creamy chicken soup topped with pork chashu, kale, and chives. We love their Blaze ramen that stacks heat in multiple ways — Szechuan pepper, chili sauce, and fried chile. If you’re looking for umami, get the G.K.O which features garlic in three ways — black garlic oil, fried garlic, and fresh garlic.
Taishoken (San Mateo)
Taishoken serves an incredibly savory ramen made with a broth produced with pork and chicken. Our favorite is Niku Spicy Ramen which they make with chili oil, pork chashu, spicy pork miso, egg, nori, green onions, and mushrooms. Their vegetarian yuzu shio ramen is also solid — it’s a clear kelp and shitake broth topped with fried tofu, mistuba, onions, and nori.
Our Favorite Pho (Vietnamese Soup)
Pho Huong Viet (San Francisco)
Pho Huong Viet serves up Hanoi style pho in beef and chicken varieties. Our favorite is their Hanoi beef stew served with flat rice noodles and spiced with cinnamon, star anise, and cardamom. We love that the stew includes red wine, carrots, and potatoes which aren’t typical additions to pho, but rather a French-Vietnamese fusion.
Pho Ga Nha (San Jose)
Pho Ga Nha makes chicken pho, which isn’t as popular as beef pho, but we think it deserves a spot to shine. Their light broth is infused with chicken and spices then served with rice noodles. The shredded chicken pho is the easiest to eat, but the combination — filled with thigh breast, wing, and giblets — provides a superior flavor and texture.
Our Favorite Pozole (Mexican Soup)
El Buen Comer (San Francisco)
El Buen Comer’s green chicken pozole comes with lettuce, radish, oregano, chile de arbol, and chips. While red pozole is more popular, we prefer green as it has a pleasant tartness thanks to the tomatillo base.
Bombera (Oakland)
Bombera is one of the Bay’s hottest restaurants, and we think their pozole verde is one of the best items on the menu. They serve a pozole verde made with green chiles, herbs, chopped avocado, and a deeply savory broth. It’s served with freshly made heirloom tortillas.
Cenaduria Elvira (Oakland)
Cenaduria Elvira is a Mexican restaurant specializing in tostadas raspadas. They’re made by spreading fresh masa into a thin layer using a metate before frying. The chef and owner actually travels to Mexico to pick up the tostadas herself. This is all to say that their pozole, made with freshly alkalined hominy, pairs perfectly with the crisp, airy tostadas.
Our Favorite Korean Soups
Kunjip (Santa Clara)
Kunjip is a Korean restaurant with fantastic noodles and broths. You really can’t go wrong with anything here, but our favorite is the seolleong tang, a heavenly white broth made with ox leg bone. The soup is served with noodles, beef brisket, and green onions. It’s simplicity allows the beefy flavor to shine.
BN Chicken (Santa Clara)
BN Chicken is a soup-only Korean restaurant featuring chicken noodle soup, cold buckwheat noodle soups, and seafood noodle soups. Our favorite is their samgyet, a ginseng soup, served with an entire chicken. The light tasting broth features garlic, rice, scallion, jujube, and spices.
Honorable Mention
D’Grobak (Off the Grid Events)
D’Grobak is an Indonesian food truck owned by Yohanes Ng and Christina Lim. The signature bakso comes with five bakso (including one made with quail egg), tofu, fried chicken and shrimp wontons, beef tendon, grilled steak, bone marrow broth, vegetables, and mixed noodles. The bakso iga bakar includes sweet and spicy grilled braised beef ribs, five pieces of bakso, bone marrow beef broth, vegetables, and mixed noodles. There’s also a vegetarian option made with Impossible meatballs, plant-based stuffed tofu, vegan BBQ steam, fried spinach wontons, and mixed vegetables. Visit D’Grobak at an Off the Grid event near you!
