"My goal in life is to own my local so I always have a restaurant to go to," Rick Mitchell told Oaklandside's Nosh as he got Bar Skula ready on Grand Avenue this summer. He and Maria Alderete ran Luka's for 15 years, and Nosh noted that the restaurant is often credited with starting Uptown's revival. They live within walking distance of their new spot.
That quote sums up downtown Oakland this year. Look at the openings from June through early October across Uptown, Old Oakland and the Grand Avenue edge of Lake Merritt, and most of them are returns. Operators who have worked downtown before are back, and they're moving into rooms people already know. The new restaurant map looks a lot like an old one with a few names switched.
The crews that came back
Bar Skula opened July 1 at 542 Grand Ave., in the storefront across from the Lake Merritt pergola that was home to Sidebar until early 2024. Alderete and Mitchell call it a "Luka's remix," and the old team came with them. Chef Wilson Mendez runs the kitchen, Jacob Alioto, Luka's founding chef, is on board, and Jared Hirsch consulted on the bar. The room has history too. Mitchell told Nosh it had been his dream location since it was Trio Bistro and Grill, before Sidebar and before Luka's. The menu leans on seafood, and according to a September Nosh roundup, Skula now serves lunch Thursday through Saturday.
Gold Palm, the bar in the historic Oakland Floral Depot Building at 1900 Telegraph Ave., closed in early June. It reopened October 2 for a month-long pop-up, Holders House at Gold Palm, run by chef Sarah Kirnon. Kirnon ran Miss Ollie's in Old Oakland for a decade, so this is a chef Old Oakland already knows cooking a Caribbean-inspired menu in a room Uptown already knows. Gold Palm handles the cocktails. The pop-up serves dinner Wednesday through Saturday, plus some other nights when the Fox Theater has a show.
Two blocks of Telegraph show the same pattern in smaller form. Little Gem soft-opened October 4 at 372 24th St. as a takeout window for salads, bowls and smoothies, in the space Drink Thicc used to occupy. Sweet Fingers Jamaican Restaurant also moved its long-running operation from Foothill Boulevard to 1707 Telegraph Ave., where it soft-opened this summer.
Old Oakland's handoffs
In Old Oakland, the returns mostly look like handoffs. The rooms stay put while the keys change hands.
Delage, at 536 Ninth St., has been an omakase counter since 2016. Founder Chikara Ono is spending more time in Japan, so he passed the restaurant to his friend Kyle Itani, the chef behind Yonsei Handrolls, Itani Ramen, Itani Sushi and Hopscotch. Itani brought in Jeremias Jimenez, who worked with him at Itani Sushi, to lead the sushi program, and Delage reopened September 16. The room is still small, with three dining tables and 10 seats at the sushi bar. Dinner is a $140 eight-course omakase or à la carte, and there's also a lunch menu with à la carte and set options, plus takeout. The lunch menu stands out. It's a way into a counter that used to be mostly a dinner reservation.
On Washington Street the handoffs stay closer to home. The Xingones team turned its own original Old Oakland location at 736 Washington St. into El Barrio, a sports bar serving wings, tacos and burritos. It opened June 30, timed for the final weeks of the World Cup. A block up, Sushi A has taken over the old Caffe 817 space at 817 Washington St., next door to Ratto's, with nigiri, specialty rolls and bowls including chirashi. Inside Swan's Market at 907 Washington St., Zeng's Family Kitchen moved into the former Huang Cheng Potsticker kiosk.
That makes three Washington Street addresses in a row where the reopening is the news, and a few blocks over is a sushi counter handed from one well-known chef to another.
The same bar under a new name on Grand
The Athletic Club makes the sharpest case for the thesis. Ezra Berman and Miles Palliser opened it in 2018 at Grand Avenue and Webster Street. It made it through the Raiders, Warriors and A's leaving town, lasted long enough to see the Roots, the Ballers and the Valkyries arrive, and then closed right after the Super Bowl.
A group of Oakland residents bought it and incorporated as OIAST, LLC, which stands for "Oakland is a Sports Town." Oaklandish CEO and creative director Angela Tsay and COO Aaron Higgins handle operations, Chris Pastena, formerly of Calavera and Chop Bar, leads the food, and Adi Taylor of Drexl and Sandbar runs the bar program. Oaklandside reported that the group pledged to keep the screens, the supporter groups and the sports-bar energy. The Oakland Athletic Club reopened June 1 at 59 Grand Ave.
The original closure came only months before the World Cup, and the reopening came just in time for it. El Barrio made the same bet on Washington Street a month later. Two sports bars returned to downtown rooms in one summer, both run by teams with deep Oakland roots.
How the calendar lines up with the rooms
These second acts matter more because downtown's fall calendar sends people right past them. Here's what's scheduled from late October through November, with the returning spot nearest each event's crowd.
| Date | Event | Second act on the same night out |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday, Oct. 25, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. | OMCA's 32nd annual Día de los Muertos Community Celebration | Bar Skula lunch runs Thu–Sat, so Skula is an evening stop on this Sunday |
| Fri., Oct. 30 and Sat., Oct. 31 | Shpongle at the Fox Theater | Holders House at Gold Palm, which opens on some Fox show nights |
| Fri., Oct. 30 and Sun., Nov. 1 | Oakland Ballet's Luna Mexicana at the Paramount Theatre | Little Gem or Sweet Fingers on Telegraph |
| Sat., Oct. 31 | Frankenstein screening at the Paramount | The final night of Gold Palm's announced October run |
| Fri., Nov. 6 | Oakland First Fridays on Telegraph Avenue | Little Gem, Sweet Fingers |
| Every Friday, 8 a.m.–2 p.m. | Old Oakland Farmers' Market, Ninth Street and Broadway | Delage lunch at 536 Ninth St. |
| Sat., Nov. 14 | J-Red's comedy show at the Paramount | Delage's omakase or Sushi A |
| Nov. 19–21 | Pretty Lights at the Fox | The Oakland Athletic Club on Grand |
| Sat., Nov. 21 | Martin Lawrence at the Paramount | El Barrio on Washington Street |
The Friday farmers' market is the steadiest of these. It runs year-round on the same stretch of Ninth Street as Delage, which makes a Friday market run followed by a set lunch the easiest way to try the restaurant under its new chef.
The one return with an end date
Gold Palm is the only second act on this list with a deadline, and that deadline is Halloween. The pop-up was announced for October only. Co-owner Daniel Gahr told Nosh that the team hopes this is "just the beginning of a fresh new chapter for Gold Palm" and that it will be "back open for nightly service in some capacity beyond October." As of early October, nothing has been announced for November.
Several of these spots are still new, so check before you go. Little Gem is in a soft opening, the hours for Bar Skula and Delage come from September reporting, and Sushi A is only a few weeks into its run on Washington Street. Holders House at Gold Palm has dinner Wednesday through Saturday until October 31.
At Joey Hoisescu we pay attention to which rooms keep pulling operators back, because a block where restaurants keep reopening says a lot about the block. If you're weighing what a downtown Oakland address is worth, we'll start with what's happening on its street.
