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.

As we pulled into a cramped plaza in San Bruno, the bilingual sign above a modest-looking Chinese restaurant promised an ultra-rare, perhaps never-before-heard-of combination: “岐山肉夹馍 & Texas BBQ.” In other words, Xi’an-style rou jia mo (aka “Chinese hamburgers”) served alongside heaping stacks of Texas ’cue. What?!

As it turns out, the “Texas” part of the formula at Z-One Kitchen, as the restaurant is called, really stretches the limits of creative marketing. But that didn’t stop us from having an intensely meaty, rollicki

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