This oyster po’ boy from Brown Sugar Kitchen, in West Oakland, is going to give Bakesale Betty’s fried chicken sandwich a run for her money. You watch.
There’s Flora Restaruant, B Restaurant, and some new restaurant that just opened up near Jack London Square (folks from San Francisco) that I can’t seem to find, that I want to try. Flora is in my favorite building (blue Art deco across from the Fox Theatre) in Oakland, that I’d love to own one day. We tried Sura restaurant, a relatively new Korean restaurant on “kimchee row” on Telegraph, and it was pretty good. Good soondobu.
The (household) consensus is that the best restaurant in the East Bay is Rivoli.
Went for a stroll to The Wine Mine, which is just a block away. Wine Mine is an alternative to Paul Marcus wines in Rockridge, cozier and cooler than BevMo, and is another one of those “yeah, this is Oakland…people just don’t know” type of places (good, substantive, real deal).
They have $1 wine tastings and really good and nicely priced wine from all over.
Across the street is Casper’s hot dogs (really good old school hot dogs and milk shakes). Next door to Wine Mine is Cafe Mariposa, this gluten-free bakery. They sell their food to a lot of places including Whole Foods.
Fortunately, I have a full range of run routes with the house as a starting point. I can run into Berkeley towards the College or the hills, I can run towards Emeryville (and then into Berkeley or Oakland), I can run into the foo foo Oakland neighborhoods like Rockridge, I can run through the ‘hood, I can run towards Lake Merritt, or I can run to downtown Oakland.
Running downtown into Oakland requires me going down Telegraph or Broadway.
What I’ve noticed, or thinking:
- There are a lot of condos and I mean a lot of condos popping up in downtown Oakland.
- The art deco buildings in Oakland are gorgeous and some just need to be polished. I hope some of the new buildings get some character too instead of looking San Jose-ish.
- A lot of people seem to be coming back to urban centers from the boonies. The commute I think has just been killing people.
- There needs to be a few more grocery stores in downtown Oakland. I’m guessing the new Ferry Plaza like market in Jack London Square will be it. But hopefully something pops up near the Sears building.
- Downtown Oakland was hit pretty hard with the ‘89 earthquake. I think we’re just turning the corner.
- Temescal is really nice. People will start taking notice as more businesses pop up. Temescal is like an early phase Rockridge/Elmwood/Piedmont Ave.
- Every store in Emeryville should also be in downtown Oakland. And Downtown Oakland needs a few anchor tenants — Sears is not it. We need to go the urban boutique route to make some inroads. The Sean Johns and the Ecko need to set up shop downtown.
- Not downtown but new. Trader Joe’s just opened up in Rockridge near Zachary’s Pizza. Very cool.
Clearly, I love Oakland. Probably because, like me, we’ve got a chip on our shoulder to prove that we’re actually not bad. We got a lot more going on than people think.
I do these runs that are between 3 - 6 miles (6 on a good day) in the mornings. I call them “good morning” runs because I like to say good morning to whomever I run past. Sometimes I just say good morning to buildings or landmarks too, there’s a lot of cool buildings in Oakland and Berkeley.
I also like running to see my neighbors and to see what’s going on around the neighborhoods (like that 2 bedroom house that’s for sale for $789,000! yikes!). It doesn’t seem like much crime happens in the mornings. I’m not sure why that is, and maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what it seems like.
I’d like to think I can be Mayor of Oakland one day and run the streets surveying the City on my morning runs. People will come up and say, “good morning, Mayor” and I’ll say “good morning” back. Maybe when I’m 70 :-)
I do these good morning runs twice a week and then I try to do a longer run on the weekends. That’s pretty much my run program. Running can be good for the soul too.
