The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.
If you’ve ever wondered where all the young Asian Americans in Cupertino hang out late at night, all you need to do is visit the Cupertino Village shopping plaza.
At around 9:15 on a recent Friday night, the entire plaza was positively swarming with Asian teens and twentysomethings. On one side of the parking lot, a swanky hip-hop dance studio and a Mandarin-friendly board game club hosting a Dungeons & Dragons night each attracted their own particular flavor of Asian youth culture. On the other side was one of the longest lines that I’ve ever seen queued up outside a boba shop. (The new Charlie’s Tea was running a buy-one-get-one special for its grand opening, it turns out.)…