Nearly every week, some Bay Area restaurant ends not with a bang but a whimper — or, in the case of the well-loved East Oakland Burmese spot Grocery Cafe, a single all-caps Facebook status posted in early January: "Dear all we are closed indefinitely. Thank you for your support."
When modest, mom-and-pop, immigrant-run restaurants like Grocery Cafe close down, they often never get a second chance — even if their tea leaf salad is the best, and most pungent, version in town. So it was a nice surprise when chef-owner William Lue contacted the Express last week with the news that he has already secured a new location for his restaurant. He has signed a lease to reopen the restaurant in Jack London Square, at the 2,500-square-foot former Hahn's Hibachi spot (63 Jack London Sq., Oakland), which had been vacant for the past year and a half.
If all goes well, Lue hopes the resurrected Grocery Cafe (he hasn't decided yet whether he'll change the name) will open for business in the early spring.
Lue wound up closing the original Grocery Cafe just a few weeks after the Express reported that the restaurant had been shut down by the Alameda County health department, and that prospects for reopening were dampened by the likelihood that the building would require upgrades in order to comply with fire code. Indeed, Lue said that renovating the old space would easily have cost upwards of $100,000, so he cut his losses and moved on.
As luck would have it, one of the executives at the CIM development group, which owns many of the buildings in Jack London Square, had been a regular customer at Grocery Cafe, and reached out to Lue with a deal he couldn't refuse: Lue said he wound up signing a nine-month "pop-up" lease for the Hahn's space that includes two months free rent and an option to sign a five-year extension on the lease at the end of the trial period.
In almost every respect, the space itself should be an upgrade from the old Grocery Cafe, Lue said. It'll seat about a hundred diners inside, plus another 24 on the patio outside. And while Lue had toyed with the idea of installing a barbecue grill at his old location, the Hahn's kitchen comes with charcoal grills already installed, so the restaurant will be able to offer Burmese grilled-meat skewers on a regular basis.
He plans to serve loose-leaf teas from Fabula Tea and coffee from the Emeryville-based Ubuntu Coffee Cooperative and, eventually, to obtain a beer and wine license. Eventually, he hopes to launch Sunday brunch service that will coincide with the nearby Jack London Square farmers' market. And while the fancier digs will necessitate some adjustments, Lue promised that he "won't raise the food prices too high. Maybe a buck or so."
Lue said the larger kitchen also means he'll be able to regularly offer some of the more unusual — and, to the Western palate, stinkier — items that he'd started experimenting with before he had to close down: fresh durian, alligator stew ("like pork spareribs") with pickled mango chutney, and a kind of bean called dogfruit, which he pickles and serves with belachan (shrimp paste) for dipping.
There's little doubt that the new Grocery Cafe will be the only place in Jack London Square, and maybe all of Oakland, serving all of that.
The old Dirty Bird Lounge was a neon-lit oasis in a vast expanse of barren lots on Hayward's Mission Boulevard. Now, the dive bar is moving into nicer digs in downtown Hayward, shedding some of its dive-bar trappings, and, for the first time, adding real food — i.e., more than chips and peanuts — to the menu.
The food comes courtesy of Argentinian chef Javier Sandes, whose empanadas are a fixture at several watering holes in Oakland. At Dirty Bird, Sandes' company, Javi's Cooking, will have full run of the kitchen, essentially operating as a permanent pop-up.
The revamped Dirty Bird will open for business on Wednesday, February 8.
Dirty Bird owner Aric Yeverino explained that the bar's old location is being torn down to make way for condos. But he said that even though the new, 5,000-square-foot bar at 926 B Street won't be quite as "divey" as the old Dirty Bird, he wants to make sure the place remains accessible to Hayward's diverse, blue-collar population: "You don't want to be charging an arm and a leg for cocktails." So, for instance, the price of well drinks will go up just a tick, from $5 to $6.
Meanwhile, Oaklanders might recall Sandes' last major gig at Mad Oak, the downtown Oakland bar where the chef ran an extended pop-up for ten months, selling Argentinian street-food-style sandwiches and empanadas until last spring. In keeping with the Argentinian style, the empanadas are baked (not fried), have a soft, chewy crust, and come with a little tub of Sandes' excellent, zippy chimichurri sauce. At Dirty Bird, Sandes will serve eight to ten different varieties, including the classic version with seasoned ground beef and pieces of green olive and hard-boiled egg. Sandes said he plans to run dinner specials on Tuesday nights — say, a ribeye steak dinner for something in the ballpark of $15–$18.
Eventually, Yeverino and Sandes plan to turn the bar's front lounge area into a small Latin cafe that will serve pastries and sandwiches during the day.
Readers who are familiar with Sandes' cooking may recall that he used to run a mobile food business that served Argentinian barbecue. In fact, one of his long-term dreams is to open a restaurant specializing in the Argentinian tradition of al asador-style outdoor grilling — whole animals splayed out on crucifix-like racks and cooked over an open flame.
Alas, the Dirty Bird doesn't have the outdoor space for that kind of extreme grilling. But if you're hosting a big wedding or birthday celebration and want to hire a caterer to cook a few whole deer over a fire? Sandes wants you to know that he's your guy.
Mall Noodles Redux
When Nite Yun started her Nyum Bai pop-up series last year, her goal was to shine a light on aspects of Cambodia that not many people in the Bay Area know about — the country's legendary psychedelic rock scene, for instance, and, especially, its vibrant street-food culture.
Now, Yun will have her biggest platform yet: For at least the next six months, Nyum Bai will have its own stall in the revamped Emeryville Public Market food court. Reached by phone, Yun told the Express she had been keeping the news under wraps, but the food stand opened for business, semi-stealthily, on Fri., Feb. 3.
Nyum Bai's main focus is on three noodle soups, including kuy teav Phnom Penh, a pork and seafood rice-noodle soup that has been Yun's signature dish. The other two are kuy teav koh-ko (a beef stew served with egg noodles) and a vegetarian rice-noodle soup. Yun will also serve at least one rice plate, which she's calling Pork Nyum Bai — pan-fried pork with black pepper and a crispy egg served over coconut rice with a side of pork broth.
Yun said she's still working on some dessert offerings, as well as a list of rotating specials that won't be street food per se, but more along the lines of what she calls "Cambodian country food" — say, fish with green mango salad or a variety of stews.
"It's the food I grew up eating," Yun said.
As Inside Scoop first reported, the arrangement is for Yun to operate what the Public Market is calling its "turnkey pop-up stand" for six months, at which point she'll have the option to extend her stay for another six months or sign a long-term lease on a different stand in the food court. The idea is for the restaurant at the "turnkey" stand to rotate periodically, offering up-and-coming food businesses a relatively affordable foot in the door. (If you're entering through the Public Market's main entrance, the stall is located in the still-mostly-empty corridor to left, Yun said.)
Yun, who started her business with the help of San Francisco's La Cocina kitchen incubator, has said her ultimate dream is to open an intimate 40-seat diner where she can blast Cambodian pop music. This isn't quite that, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.
Once Nyum Bai finishes its soft-opening trial run, the restaurant will be open daily 11 a.m.–8 p.m.
It's that time of the year again: Oakland Restaurant Week, that annual bonanza for prix-fixe bargain lovers, will run from Thursday, January 19 to Sunday, January 29.
To drum up interest in the seventh edition of the promotion, the Visit Oakland tourism bureau, which organizes the week, is emphasizing a "Lucky Number Seven" theme, with related raffles and prize drawings. Otherwise, you know the deal: Participating restaurants will offer some combination of $20, $30, $40, and $50 lunch or dinner prix-fixe specials during the promotional period.
Berkeley will host its own restaurant week during the same eleven-day window of time, with 27 restaurants signed up to participate, offering a $20 lunch prix-fixe menu and/or a $25 or $30 dinner prix-fixe. You can browse those menus at BerkeleyRestaurantWeek.com.
Oakland, on the other hand, has around 100 participating restaurants this year — a large enough number that there are bound to be some duds. And it almost goes without saying, but my guiding principle is to recommend restaurants that I think readers would actually enjoy eating at, not just the ones offering the biggest discounts. After all, life is too short, and Oakland has too many amazing taco trucks, to waste time eating at a bad restaurant just to save $5 or $10.
So, as a service to you, my readers, I read through all of the Oakland Restaurant Week menus that have been posted online so far and culled a few of my favorites. All of them clock in at the $20 or $30 price point.
1. Many of my favorite deals are when a single $20 or $30 prix-fixe meal is meant to feed two people. Case in point: the $30 lunch or dinner prix-fixe at Curry Up Now (1745 San Pablo Ave.), the popular local chain/food truck that recently opened its first Oakland brick-and-mortar. That $30 will buy you an order of samosas, two of the restaurant's signature Indian-fusion burritos or bowls, and gulab jamun for dessert — a $34 value before you even factor in the two mango lassis or Kingfisher beers that come with the meal. (Update: Because the Uptown Oakland location's opening was delayed, Curry Up Now is no longer participating in Oakland Restaurant Week.)
2. Over in the Jack London District, Dragon Gate (300 Broadway) is offering prix-fixe family-style feasts at all four of the available price points for both lunch and dinner. Unless you're dining with a big group, though, I see no reason to order anything beyond the $20 prix-fixe, which starts with a soup of the day and finishes with three iconic Taiwanese dishes: grilled Taiwanese sausages (served, as is traditional, with raw garlic), Taiwanese-style popcorn chicken, and the best (and spiciest) Taiwanese beef noodle soup in town. All that should feed two diners comfortably, even if they have truly monstrous appetites.
3. The chief complaint that folks tend to have about Restaurant Week menus in general is that, in order to meet the prescribed price point, they offer very few choices and include none of the restaurant's best dishes. So you have to appreciate The Half Orange's (3340 E. 12th St. #11) approach this year, which is to offer a whopping seven different $20 preset lunch or dinner menus, each organized around a theme that makes some kind of culinary sense — e.g., "Nachos & Chili," or "Fried Chicken Two Ways," or "Cheese Upon Cheese." For an extra $3.80, you can upgrade the iced tea or lemonade that comes with the meal to a draft beer.
4. Picán (2295 Broadway) remains one of Uptown Oakland's more expensive restaurants, which is why I homed in on its $20 three-course lunch prix-fixe, which offers diners a choice between "Bayou" and "Lowcountry" menus. Look: You get your money's worth based on the regular prices for the entrées alone — $20 for the braised short rib sandwich and $24 for the Gulf Coast "Pastalaya" (like a jambalaya with fideo pasta instead of rice).
5. Juhu Beach Club (5179 Telegraph Ave.) is running the same $20 dinner prix-fixe it ran last year, and it's just as good a deal now as it was before, especially if you choose the non-vegetarian entrée: the (delicious) Curryleaf Coriander Shrimp would normally cost you $23 all by itself.
6. Miss Ollie's (901 Washington St.) rounds out the list with a luxurious $30 prix-fixe that includes a welcome cocktail to start, a Caribbean rice porridge infused with sea egg (aka uni), braised oxtails, and cardamom-and-raisin bread pudding. It's hard to calculate exactly how good a deal that is, given that most of the dishes are seasonal offerings that only occasionally appear on the restaurant's regular menu. Maybe it's enough to say that, deal or no deal, this is the food I'd want to eat.
These chilly winter nights beg for bowls of hot noodle soup, but there's a certain sameness to the East Bay ramen scene — everyone doing their own take on the same handful of mostly pork-centric Japanese soup styles.
I was intrigued, then, to hear that AS B-Dama (907 Washington St., Oakland) is serving chicken paitan ramen, a style rarely seen in the East Bay, as a weeknight special.
Paitan translates as "white soup," and refers to the cloudy, milk-white broth that results from boiling the bejeezus out of a large quantity of bones at a high enough temperature so that all of the fats and collagens in the marrow and cartilage break down and emulsify into the broth. Tonkotsu ramen, which is made with pork bones, is the most well-known example of this style — indeed, tonkotsu is arguably the most popular style of ramen in the United States.
What you'll see less often is a chicken-based paitan ramen; in fact, the "White Bird" ramen at Shiba Ramen in Emeryville is the only other version I can recall eating in the East Bay.
The version AS B-Dama serves is a collaboration between chef Asuka Uchida and line cook Allan Wan, who worked at Oakland's Ramen Shop for three years before his current gig. Reached by phone, Wan explained that to make a chicken paitan, you take the same approach that you take with tonkotsu, simply substituting chicken bones and feet for the pork bones.
The result? A deeply flavorful soup that was rich and velvety in much the same manner as a tonkotsu ramen broth, but a little lighter on the palate, and less salty too. Still, on a warm day, the broth would almost be too heavy and intense to finish. On a recent rainy Thursday evening, it was exactly what I needed. (Wan said they'll likely switch to a different style of ramen once the spring and summer come around.)
The other components were also on point — the noodles perfectly springy, the yolk of the marinated soft-boiled egg cooked to just the right creamy consistency. Soft seaweed, bean sprouts, green onions, and a handful of raw greens provided the finishing touch.
Oh, and pork lovers need not fear. Even though the soup is entirely chicken-based, the paitan ramen comes with a thick slice of proper chashu (braised pork belly) — as soft and tender as any I've had, with a surprising prickle of citrusy yuzu kosho heat.
Apart from the unorthodox addition of yuzu kosho chili paste right before the chashu is added to the bowl, Wan explained that the pork owes its depth of flavor to one of Uchiko's guiding principles — to never, under almost any circumstance, cook with soy sauce. So, in a departure from the conventional wisdom, she braises the pork belly in sake and mirin (sweet rice wine), only adding the soy sauce to the braising liquid at the very end, and then allowing the cooked pork to marinate in the mixture.
The best part is that at just $12, this is one of the best bowls of ramen you'll find in the Bay Area — for a solidly middle-of-the-road price. AS B-Dama's chicken paitan ramen is available in limited quantities — about 25 bowls a night — Monday–Thursday during dinner hours (5–10 p.m.). Often, though, it will sell out by 7 or 8 p.m., Wan said. Make your plans accordingly.
Correction: The original version of this report misspelled chef Asuka Uchida's last name.
Depending on your cultural background, staples for the winter holidays might include mulled cider, ugly sweaters, or Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant. And in many parts of Mexico, and elsewhere in Latin America, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a huge steamer full of tamales.
Given Oakland's wealth of kick-ass Mexican food, it should come as no surprise that the city has numerous reputable tamalerias. Not every enterprising tamal cart has the capacity to crank out an entire holiday party's worth of husk-wrapped goodness at the drop of a dime, but several of the city's Mexican restaurants do. Here are three options to consider if you're trying to feed a crowd:
Tamaleria Azteca (5751 Market St., 510-200-3190)
Formerly known as Tamales Unicos de Cuernavaca, this no-frills takeout window has long been my go-to spot for everyday tamales. The tamaleria has gone through several management changes — Sergio Gomez, the owner as of the Express' most recent review, has departed; instead, someone who identified himself as Juan now appears to run the business. But through each incarnation, the tamales have remained excellent: light and fluffy, surprisingly spicy even without salsa, and probably 50 percent larger than your average street tamal to boot. The best part is the masa, which is extra-savory thanks to the addition of lard in all but the vegetarian versions.
Tamaleria Azteca sells pork, chicken, cheese, vegetable, and sweet corn tamales priced at $3 each, $5 for two, and $25 for a dozen. Call ahead at least two days in advance for large orders. Note that Tuesday, December 20 was the last day to put in your order if you want to pick up your tamales on Christmas Day.
Tamales La Oaxaqueña (2608 Market St., 510-501-3969)
If you would like to have mole in your tamales, you won't find a finer option than this tiny West Oakland tamaleria, which specializes in Oaxacan-style tamales. These are wrapped in banana leaves instead of corn husks and often feature mole as part of the filling. For Christmas, Tamales La Oaxaqueña will offer three varieties of the banana-leaf-wrapped style (chicken or pork, both with mole rojo, plus a vegan option) and three of the more common corn-husk-wrapped variety (chicken with green salsa, pork with mole rojo, and a vegetarian cheese-and-poblano option). The only downside is that there's no bulk discount, and, at $4.50 a pop for the banana-leaf-wrapped tamales ($3.50 for the corn-husk variety), the bill can add up. That said, co-owner Carolina Santos said she's willing to work out a deal for huge orders. Give at least five days' notice for large orders, which means you should have called Tamales La Oaxaqueña, well, yesterday. The restaurant will be open for business as usual on December 24; on Christmas Day proper, it will probably only be open for customers picking up advance orders.
Cosecha (907 Washington St., 510-452-5900)
If you prefer Mexican food with a Californian sensibility, look no further than this Swan's Market standby, where chef Dominica Rice-Cisneros serves her handmade tamales as an occasional seasonal special. For the holidays this year, Cosecha is taking orders for banana-leaf-wrapped chicken mole tamales ($26 for a dozen), as well as regular braised-pork ($26) and green chile and cheese tamales ($24). Fill out an order form at least one day in advance. You can also add a salad platter, rice and beans, and other side dishes. Pickup days are every Thursday and Friday in December, which means the last day to pick up tamales before Christmas is Friday, December 23.
Take the Cake
The year is coming to one helluva rocky end, so you can be excused if you've been too preoccupied to finalize the dessert plans for your upcoming holiday party. Never fear, fellow procrastinator: Here are three East Bay spots that should have you covered, even at this eleventh hour.
I included the stellar mochi muffins from Sam's Patisserie (2080 Fourth St., Berkeley) in my "Best Bites of 2016" roundup (see p. 34), which are available in a nicely wrapped package of a dozen for $32. In addition, pastry chef Sam Butarbutar is offering a couple of more traditional European holiday treats: Viennese sable cookies ($20 for a dozen) and a classic panettone (Italian fruit cake) flavored with candied citrus and orange blossom water ($30, or two for $50). Order by phone (909-991-6268) or email (SamsPatisserie@gmail.com) by December 23 for pickup on the 24th or 25th at Butarbutar's wholesale bakery in Berkeley (located inside the Catahoula Coffee Co.) — or have your cakes delivered, locally, for a small charge.
In the realm of classic French desserts, Alameda's Crispian Bakery (1700 Park St.) is selling a chocolate Buche de Noël ($45), aka yule log, shaped traditionally like a log you might put in your fireplace and decorated with mushroom-shaped meringue. Crispian's version features layers of chocolate cream and raspberry jam on the inside. Crispian also has a version of croquembouche ($45) — choux pastry cream-puffs arranged to form a wreath, as a festive alternative to the more typical Christmas tree-shaped tower.
Finally, I have a soft spot for the German Christmas cake known as Stollen — particularly the not-too-sweet version at Gaumenkitzel (2121 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley), which offers two-pound ($25), one-pound ($15), and individual-portion mini ($6) versions of the cake. You can get the standard Dresden-style Stollen, which features almond, candied citrus, rum, and raisins, or hazelnut or poppy-seed versions as an alternative. According to chef Anja Voth, the best thing about the Stollen is that they'll keep for months in the fridge.
"The Stollen is like a good wine," Voth said. "The longer it sits, the better it gets."