The Biz Beat

The Biz Beat

2023 in review: The top 10 Biz Beat stories

One of the great pleasures of compiling stories for The Biz Beat is meeting remarkable restaurant owners and soaking up their enthusiasm. Having the chance to stand in a corner of a kitchen and watch them prepare their dishes is a joy and an education. Their stories are diverse, from those who learned recipes by...

The Biz Beat: The food at San Jose’s Funny Farm is no joke

The sandwich board outside The Funny Farm Restaurant advertises a rum cake so good it needs a designated driver. A sign on the front counter next to a bucket of rubber chickens reads, “Warning: Snarky Staff.” A stuffed unicorn hangs upside down from the ceiling, surrounded by dangling multi-colored Slinkies. “We’re a very homey place,”...

The Biz Beat: Authentic Cuban food hidden in San Jose’s SoFA Market

It would be hard to question Habana Cuba Restaurant’s authenticity: it was founded by Ciro Calvo, the personal chef to the island’s former president, Fulgencio Batista, who fled the country when the dictator was deposed in 1959. Located inside First Street’s SoFA Market food hall, Habana Cuba faithfully recreates Calvo’s recipes, serving dishes with street...

The Biz Beat: Milohas in San Jose makes divine empanadas

As you enter Milohas Pastries in San Jose, the enchanting aroma of fresh-baked empanadas fills your senses long before you can take in the display cases packed with a bounty of the golden brown pastries. They range from sweet and savory Colombian standards to imaginative takes on calzone ingredients. “People would come in, thinking we...

The Biz Beat: Try the grasshoppers at Mezcal in San Jose

Mezcal Restaurant in San Jose specializes in authentic Oaxacan cuisine, from the mole negro and mole coloradito—two of the seven famed Oaxacan chocolate sauces—to the chapulines, or grasshoppers sauteed in garlic, lime and salt. Umm… grasshoppers? “Why not?” owner Adolfo Gomez told San José Spotlight. “It’s a traditional item for us. People say we’re trying...

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