Once a year, the West Coast’s biggest Taiwanese American cultural celebration takes over Union Square for a day of lion dance performances, acrobatics, live music, local art and, of course, a whole lot of delicious food. We’re talking beef noodle soup with hand-pulled noodles. Silky, sweet tofu pudding. Night market–style candied fruit skewers.
With all the discourse around downtown San Francisco’s restaurant and retail apocalypse, maybe this is precisely what Union Square needs to bring some life to the neighborhood.
At least, that’s what Alan Ma, a co-director of this year’s Taiwanese American Cultural Festival, is hoping. Organized by the Bay Area chapter of the nonprofit Taiwanese American Professionals (TAP), the festival kicks off its 31st annual edition — minus a couple years’ hiatus during the height of the pandemic — on Saturday, May 11.
Unlike some previous incarnations of the festival, this year’s version won’t have a specific theme. Instead, Ma explains, the focus will just be on “revitalizing traffic or noise in San Francisco, given a lot of news of people leaving.”
“I just want to bring back what is still here, what is still alive in San Francisco,” he says.
A choreographed Chinese yo-yo performance at last year’s festival. (Peter Chu, courtesy of Taiwanese American Cultural Festival)
Part of how Ma and his fellow organizers hope to generate that sense of excitement is by offering the widest variety of Taiwanese foods and beverages in the festival’s history. In recent years, the only hot food options came from the tent operated by Liang’s Village, a longtime South Bay mainstay. But as tasty as Liang’s is — and the restaurant will once again be on hand this year to sling hand-pulled beef noodle soup, lu rou fan and other classic Taiwanese dishes — there’s no way for a single vendor to capture all of the depth, breadth and overall vibrancy of the cuisine.
So this year Ma is pulling in a number of other big names from the local Taiwanese food scene, including the soy milk shop US Soypresso, shaved snow specialist Powder and Duan Chun Zhen (another beef noodle soup specialist, though it’ll be serving pork belly noodle soup and a selection of lu wei, or braised items, at the festival).
Duan Chun Zhen will have a booth at this year’s festival. Pictured here is the Cupertino restaurant’s fried rice with pork chop. (Luke Tsai)
Even more striking, though, is the number of smaller Taiwanese pop-ups and homegrown food businesses — which are the backbone of the Bay Area’s recent Taiwanese food renaissance — that will be joining the festival this year.
A few of the notable participants: Oramasama Dumpling will be selling the Taiwanese-style steamed rice cakes known as kueh. Cinnamon roll pop-up sensation Astranda Bakery will offer sweet potato rolls and laminated milk bread. Jessica Little Fu will peddle the aforementioned tofu pudding. And Maxine’s Kitchen, the Hayward-based cult favorite bento caterer, will be slinging some of the most nostalgic food items: the so-called “rice burritos” known as fan tuan, and “little sausage wrapped inside a big sausage,” a staple of every Taiwanese night market.
One of the Taiwanese-style bentos from Maxine’s Kitchen (Courtesy of Maxine’s Kitchen / Facebook)
According to Ma, most — but not all — of the vendors are Taiwanese Americans themselves. And in some cases, like the craft chocolate company Formosa Chocolates, the Taiwanese American makers might not specialize in overtly Taiwanese foods. Taken all together, though, the festival should capture a fairly broad snapshot of the Bay Area’s current Taiwanese food scene.
The hope, Ma says, is that by having so many more food vendors, it’ll help mitigate some of the long lines that visitors may have experienced at last year’s festival. Even more important, though, is the way it will help promote a broader appreciation for Taiwanese food culture in the heart of downtown San Francisco.
“There are definitely more and more of these lesser-known and more hole-in-the-wall places that we want to showcase and give them a spotlight to the greater community of San Francisco,” Ma says.
A booth selling Taiwanese-style dried fruit snacks at last year’s festival. (Julia Yu, courtesy of Taiwanese American Cultural Festival)
The Taiwanese American Cultural Festival will take place on Saturday, May 11, from 10 a.m.–4 p.m. at Union Square in San Francisco. Admission is free.
