Nashville-style hot chicken continues its Bay Area takeover

Earlier this month, the popular pop-up World Famous Hotboys announced that it would be bringing its notoriously fiery Nashville-style fried chicken — known for its preposterously liberal application of cayenne pepper — to a permanent location, at 1601 San Pablo Avenue in Uptown Oakland, by the end of the month. For chiliheads, that happy launch day is today: Hotboys is slinging its chicken, available at five progressively less tolerable heat levels in both sandwich and non-sandwich form, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Tu David Phu extends and expands his popular pho ga pop-up

Earlier this month, as a kind of cold-weather experiment, Top Chef alum Tu David Phu started serving chicken pho once a week at BanhMi-Ni, his Uptown Oakland banh mi pop-up. Apparently the endeavor was successful enough that the chef has decided to double down on those efforts, extending the pho pop-up through January and expanding it: He’ll now serve the chicken pho four days a week, Thursday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Hot Italian has served its final pies in Emeryville and Sacramento

Hot Italian, a casual thin-crust pizza mini-chain with locations in downtown Sacramento and at the Emeryville Public Market, had its final day of service this past Sunday, the Sacramento Business Journal reports. Known, initially, for its moderate price point and highly customizable menu, the restaurant ran into financial woes, allegedly caused by a short-lived expansion into Davis, the Biz Journal reports.

The Chronicle proclaims a Mexican restaurant in Fruitvale to be one of the country’s best “old restaurants”

A recent SF Chronicle headline posed a provocative question: “Is Tijuana Restaurant in Oakland the Best Old Restaurant in America?” — provocative, in part, because the restaurant in question isn’t often mentioned even in discussions of Mexican food in Oakland or the Bay Area, much less the entire country. For writer Omar Mamoon, that’s really the whole point, though — that old, reliably excellent restaurants often get overlooked in favor of whatever is shiny and new. That and a mariscada plate — “steamed mussels, clams and a quarter crab are plated along with pieces of octopus, shrimp, squid and scallops that have been simmered until tender then seared until crisp” — that the author calls Tijuana Restaurant’s piece de resistance.