It’s styled like a food truck, but this brick-and-mortar restaurant was once a pop-up eatery. Their Japanese-styled fried chicken was so damn good that locals demanded they stick around. The interior of the restaurant feels like a punk rock take on a Japanese izakaya (gastropub). Today’s specials are scribbled on post-it notes hanging at the front counter. The permanent menu...
Thai restaurants are ubiquitous in the Bay Area, but it’s not often that you’ll get to taste the traditional recipes of Thailand’s neighbor, Burma (Myanmar). Just like at the original location in San Francisco, Oakland’s branch of Burma Superstar has all the crowd-pleasing favorites on the menu, including rainbow and tea-leaf salads freshly mixed at your table, as well as pumpkin...
Not everyone will believe you when you say you’ve been to Oakland’s Chinatown. They’ll think that you meant Chinatown in San Francisco. Yet Oakland has its own pan-Asian neighborhood next to downtown. Look for the bilingual street signs stretching east of Broadway toward Madison St., and south of 12th St. toward the I-880 Freeway. Chinese immigrants first arrived in Oakland during California’s...
While chef James Syhabout stays busy breaking culinary boundaries in his Michelin-starred restaurant Commis on Piedmont Avenue, his down-home Thai restaurant in Uptown sticks closer to his roots. It’s a raucous, social space where friends and families with young kids all show up for dinner nightly. Inside the casual dining room, long bench tables are covered in oilcloth and decorative wallpaper shows traditional...
On a lonely block of 8th St., hidden away from the rest of Oakland’s Chinatown, this family-owned Cambodian restaurant fills all of it tables night after night. Even if you’ve traveled in Southeast Asia or eaten at Cambodian restaurants in California before, you won’t have ever heard of at least a few dishes on the long menu. Favorite menu items include the...
Outside it looks just another Chinatown restaurant. Inside it’s a friendly cacophony of chattering families, waiters shouting orders, and the phone continuously ringing off the hook with more people demanding take-out orders. The only time that the staff seems to rest is during their lunch break, when the restaurant is shut from 3 p.m. until 4 p.m. Step inside and...
Unlike in San Francisco, where dim sum restaurants are often places for families and friends to sit and feast for an hour or two, Oakland’s Chinatown favors take-out bakeries. Swing by Sun Sing’s storefront on any Saturday or Sunday morning, and you’ll see a quickly moving line that extends out the door of this family-owned Chinese bakery. Inside, it’s a budget-priced feast of...