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Photo: Lori Eanes |
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Five years ago, if you wanted to go out to a nice dinner near Park Street in Alameda, your choices were pretty much limited to the Gold Coast Grill, Asena Restaurant, Kamakura or La Piñata.
Today, though, the Park Street area is undergoing a restaurant renaissance, with new restaurants opening on an almost weekly basis this past summer. Restaurateurs and diners say Alameda is a dining destination and is building its own Gourmet Ghetto that—someday—may rival Berkeley’s well-known haven of dining establishments.
“Alameda is becoming a new destination,” says Giovanni Khazri, general manager of Havana, which opened on Park Street in December 2007. “I even have people coming from Sacramento.”
Wander around Park Street on a typically slow Wednesday night, and restaurants, cafes and bars are packed. The crowd is composed of people who range in age from 25 to 65, but everyone is chatting, drinking and dining. On Fridays or Saturdays, forget about walking into Pappo or Barceluna and getting a table—you’ll wait at least 20 minutes and you might even be turned away.
And, on weekends, the crowds are bigger, and you’ll find a younger, hipper crowd on Park Street. Everyone’s staying out later, too, and it’s not unusual to see groups migrating from place to place past 11 p.m.
“Alameda is staying up past its bedtime,” chuckles John Thiel, owner of Pappo on Central Avenue, a half block off Park.
Thiel has a lot to laugh about. When he opened Pappo in October 2005, he brought a new kind of dining to the Island. He wanted to serve fresh California/Mediterranean cuisine in a small neighborhood restaurant that he hoped would attract diners from all over the Bay Area. The restaurant seats 50, and with its exposed brick walls, has an intimate and urban feel.
His unique, seasonal menus have attracted a loyal following, and some say Pappo’s opening was what spurred the restaurant renaissance in Alameda. “I think that the success of Pappo brought the Alameda food scene to the media’s attention,” Thiel says. “We’re the only Zagat-rated restaurant in Alameda. One of my goals is to put Alameda on the map. I feel like we’ve done that a little bit.”
Thiel, who had wanted to open his own restaurant since he was 11, says he grew up in Alameda, eating all over town and taking mental notes on what he would incorporate—or avoid—in his own restaurant.
A turning point, he says, was around 2002 when Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Trader Joe’s all decided to open in Alameda. He figured, rightly, that those corporations had done the demographic research to show that upscale coffee houses and boutique groceries would do well in Alameda. A hip, urban restaurant is also appealing to that demographic, and Thiel seized the opportunity.
Dinner and a Movie
There is no doubt that Alameda’s newly refurbished historic theater has also had an impact on the booming restaurant scene in town. The theater, with seven screens and an elaborate Art Deco lobby that has been restored to its 1930s greatness, opened in May 2008 and has drawn crowds to the Park Street area.
The theater is directly across the street from Pappo. Two new restaurants have opened on either side of the lobby—BurgerMeister, an upscale burger emporium that is an offshoot of a San Francisco restaurant, and the Alameda Wine Co. wine bar, which serves a limited menu of appetizers and dessert. Both opened in the summer of 2008.
Around the corner, on Santa Clara Avenue, the owners of Barceluna—which once occupied the space that BurgerMeister now inhabits next door to the new theater—has transformed the former Luciano’s restaurant. It also opened in the summer.
Barceluna’s co-owner Melanie Hartman has managed to make the huge space feel intimate and attractive by closing a long hallway that used to serve as the entrance and reconfiguring the entrance so that customers come in directly from the street, past European patio seating with wide-open French doors.
Also, an attractive bar with seating has been built indoors, near the French doors, so that customers can feel like they are part of the outdoor nightlife when they are having cocktails. The menu includes tapas, steaks and Spanish-influenced dishes.
Head north a block on Park Street and there’s Ching Hua, an attractive airy restaurant with one of the town’s most beautiful contemporary bars, located in Alameda’s former Ford dealership, a brick building with huge arched windows now known as the Alameda Marketplace. The restaurant, which opened in 2006, serves Beijing and Sichuan cuisine and has attracted a large clientele. Speisekammer, a German restaurant that has popularized Oktoberfest in Alameda, opened on Lincoln, a half-block off Park, in June 2002, and continues to be as in demand as ever.
Further south on Park, there’s Tomatina, which serves a menu of fresh Italian choices with both adults and kids in mind. Down the alley is C’era Una Volta, a more upscale and intimate Italian restaurant with an extensive wine list, and across the street is The Hobnob, a family-friendly restaurant and bar with constant board game action and a very successful Sunday brunch. All have opened since 2004.
New to the area is Angela’s Bistro, slated to open in November 2008. The new restaurant will inhabit an expansive 4,765-square-foot space in the new Alameda Theatre complex and is highly anticipated because it is the brainchild of Saboor Zafari, proprietor and chef of Angela’s Restaurant, a well-regarded eatery on Alameda’s west side since 2002, and local vintner Kent Rosenblum. A major investor in the new establishment, Rosenblum will develop and oversee the wine program.
Zafari closed Angela’s Restaurant, in Marina Village Shopping Center near Webster Street, in September 2008 to work on his new endeavor.
“What’s exciting about the new restaurant is that I’m going to be almost exclusively in the kitchen,” says Zafari, who plans to create a Mediterranean/California menu for his new café. “I’ll still be out talking to customers, but I’ll be able to spend more time creating new dishes.”
Known for his duck strudel, rack of lamb and risotto and pasta dishes, Zafari says he will expand offerings with the fresh, local and seasonal ingredients available from the Alameda and Oakland farmers markets.
Does John Thiel worry that Angela’s Bistro, located across the street from his restaurant, will cut into his business? After all, both restaurants have menus built on California and Mediterranean cuisines.
“I hope he’s so busy and full that he’s going to have to turn them away, and they’ll come down here,” says Thiel. He adds, more seriously, that he’s glad there are more restaurants in Alameda. He says it helps his business. “I’ve been waiting for these guys to open. Businesses need other businesses around them.”
Dining Out
And what do customers think of the new offerings in the Park Street area?
“It’s been great,” says Robb Mills. He and his partner, Drew Rusin, moved to Alameda two years ago from Montclair.
They eat out nearly every night. Over black bean soup and ribs at Havana, Mills and Rusin discussed some of their favorite dining spots. “Our favorite is Pappo and their fried olives,” says Mills. “But we love BurgerMeister, too. Do you know it has a full bar?”
Rusin says they also enjoy spending evenings at The Hobnob, where they dine on American tapas and small plates of appetizers. “They make a great drink there, and everyone’s having fun,” he says.
Perhaps the main drawback the new restaurant renaissance faces, according to restaurateurs and customers, is service, which is sometimes lacking.
“If you want to be like Walnut Creek—I mean, Alameda wants to compare itself to Walnut Creek, Emeryville and Santana Row in San Jose—you have to have the service,” says Havana’s Khazri. “The restaurant business isn’t just about opening with a new menu.”
Thiel of Pappo agrees. “My only concern is people are putting up shops and don’t care about quality of service,” he says. “Better restaurants are good for everyone.”
On the Back Burner
What does the future hold for Alameda’s restaurant scene? Havana will likely have live music on weekends, Khazri says. Pappo has a new patio out front and will be accepting online reservations soon.
But the restaurant boom may be slowing, at least for the near future, according to Robb Ratto, executive director of the Park Street Business Association.
“I’m not saying we can’t take any more restaurants,” says Ratto, “but I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of new restaurants coming down the pike.”
And Ratto, who has headed PSBA for a decade, says the recent restaurant renaissance is the end result of 10 years of planning. “To me,” he says, “Pappo and Angela’s are at the endpoint [of the renaissance].”
Most of the buildings that are outfitted with commercial kitchens have already been snapped up for restaurants, says Ratto. The cost of adding a restaurant kitchen is at least $500,000, he adds.
But one property, at the corner of Park and Central, across from Starbucks, has garnered a lot of attention from wannabe restaurateurs, notes Ratto. The former Uniglobe travel agency building, now empty on the first floor, was a bank at one time.
“We should put a restaurant there, everybody says,” he confirms. “It’s a great idea, except it’s a bank. There’s no kitchen, no venting there.”
The building has four vaults that would need to be removed, which is an expensive proposition, Ratto says. The Starbucks, also a former bank, had one vault that was removed before it could be retrofitted as a coffeehouse, he says.
Still, restaurant owners and customers say Alameda’s dining scene on Park Street has never been better.
The key to success?
“Alameda’s a small town,” says Khazri. “It’s the location. It’s Park Street. It’s just something different.”
Where to be Seen on Webster Street
Like a set of bookends, Park Street and Webster Street are the two main streets of shops, restaurants and boutiques that support the neighborhoods of Alameda. While the Park Street area is experiencing a restaurant renaissance, Webster Street is also seeing a boomlet of new dining and drinking spots.
With new neighborhoods sprouting up in the Bayport development, off the Ralph Appezzato Memorial Parkway, there are customers to fill the restaurants, according to the West Alameda Business Association.
In the past three years, there have been several new dining options on Webster:
• Otaez Mexican Restaurant opened in 2006 and specializes in authentic Mexican cuisine, ranging from chile rellenos to carnitas. In August and October 2008, Otaez paired with Rosenblum Cellars to offer Wine and Dine dinners at Otaez that feature local wines, together with appetizers, dinner, soup and salad or dessert.
• The New Zealander, a pubbish hangout operated by loquacious chef Clive Hitchens in the historic Croll building, celebrated its third anniversary in September 2008. It has a full bar, serves Sunday brunch, and the menu includes the specialty meat pies that are so well loved by Kiwis.
• Everett and Jones, Oakland’s well-known barbecue restaurant empire, has opened its third tasty location in Alameda, this one at 1518 Webster St. The others are at 1930 Main St. and inside Scobie’s Sports Bar & Grill at 2431 Central Ave.
• Acquacotta, a contemporary, unhurried Italian restaurant with a nice wine list, was opened in spring 2008 by chef John Couacaud. There, you can find tripe braised in white wine with herbs and tomatoes, grilled sea bass or lamb meatballs, and an atmosphere that manages to successfully meld casual and more formal sensibilities.
• The Fireside Lounge opened—and totally redefined—its old space in July 2007. Out went the dropped ceilings and dive-bar furnishings. In came new, lounge-style furnishings, a bass-driven sound system and a menu of fancy drinks. It may be the new place to see and be seen in Alameda.
