Oakland’s Restaurant Scene Is Swimming in Praise, But Struggling to Stay Afloat
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. Oakland was awarded Best Food City in the Country by Condé Nast Traveler for the inventive, interesting, diverse food options across the town. At the same time, some of the city's most celebrated restaurants have gone out of business, and just about all of the people who run dining establishments say that it has been a tough time.

tough road just to keep the doors open since the pandemic. So we're going to check in on Oakland's food scene with the people in the trenches. That's all coming up next, right after this news. Alexis Madrigal here. We've got a little pledge break going on right now, so you get a bonus on the pledge-free stream, podcast, or on our replay at night. I write these little meditations on the bay, and we call the series One Good Thing.

Yesterday was Mother's Day, of course, second only to Valentine's Day for keeping our local flower shops in the black. And that got me thinking about flower arranging, a particular kind of flower arranging with deep roots here in the Bay Area.

Ikebana is the art of Japanese floral arrangement, and it is a remarkable and distinct form of floral design that looks nothing like most of the stuff you might pick up at a flower shop or in a tidy little bouquet at Trader Joe's. There are many schools of Ikebana, but most people who just happen to see one of these arrangements might be struck by their three-dimensionality, the sculptural nature of this art form.

Ikebana can also incorporate more tools from little floral frogs you can stick flowers into to wires that are used to guide the arrangement. And to call it floral design might be a misnomer too because oftentimes Ikebana artists will use the leaves of a hosta or the fan of a palm or any other bit from the natural world.

Our region, the Bay Area, has a rich history of Ikebana because of our early Japanese residents who, despite incarceration during World War II, left a huge imprint across the arts and culture of the region.

And I also happen to have a personal connection to it. Haruka Obata was an early practitioner of Ikebana here after she and her husband, the Japanese modernist painter Chiora Obata, moved to the region in the early 20th century. Their granddaughter Kimi has devoted decades to preserving and spreading the history of the Obata's artistry, and we happen to live in the house she grew up in.

Amazingly, at the Japanese Community Center in Emeryville, J.C., to this day, you can take an ikebana class from Keiko Kubo, a sensei in the Sogetsu tradition who spent time with and learned directly from Haruko Obata, who lived from 1892 to 1989, embodying her own saying, quote, if you know flower arranging, you do not grow old for it is eternal.

We often appreciate the quote-unquote diversity of the Bay Area, but I'm often struck at how we've been a diverse place for so long that the core strands of our collective history are multicultural. Our connections to the rest of the world run decades deep. Ikebana and its Bay Area manifestation, that's your one good thing. Welcome to Forum, I'm Alexis Madrigal.

I always say about Oakland, the city concentrates the glories and the troubles of the Bay Area. And as it is in other realms of the economy and culture, so it is with restaurants. Some of the most exciting chefs in the country live and work in Oakland. Our restaurants are often at the forefront of interesting trends. And yet the foot traffic, the sheer number of people going out to eat doesn't match the ambition of the industry in this post-pandemic era.

Or maybe it wasn't the pandemic, but the disorder that swept through the streets in 2023 while other parts of the Bay were recovering. Is the true renaissance delayed or is some other civic dysfunction going to keep Oakland from fulfilling its promise as the best food city in the whole country? Joining us this morning at the top, we've got Elena Kadvani, who is food reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Welcome. So...

So one question is, you know, in the post-pandemic, generally in the Bay Area, how is the recovery actually going? Like, is Oakland of a piece with the rest of the Bay Area or you say it has a particularly difficult time? I think a lot of what's happening in Oakland is happening in other parts of the Bay Area. Yeah.

There were so many shifts that happened during COVID that are continuing today in terms of how people eat. People are turning more to takeout and delivery. They're eating out less frequently now, particularly because of inflation. So many restaurants closed during the pandemic or survived the worst of it only to close now. So we're still seeing a lot of the lingering effects. But certainly in Oakland, same issues of, you know, remote work,

Those kinds of things that aren't, like you said, are bringing, you know, there's less foot traffic downtown. People are staying home more. That's all contributing. And I feel like there was kind of a theory of the sorts of restaurants that were doing well and not doing well, right? Like it was kind of like the middle was going to get carved out, right? Like the sort of high end places would keep going because they're sort of in their own realm. And maybe, you know, the kind of mom and pop, like cheaper places, fast casual, some of that stuff would survive. But it was kind of like...

I don't know, the normal good restaurant that would be in trouble. Has that sort of played out that way, you think? Or is it more complicated? I think it's both. Obviously, there are closures sort of across the spectrum of restaurants, but that is the case. And I think that was a fear pre-COVID. And then it just got sort of exponentially more true during the pandemic that restaurants closed.

Yeah, the mid-range, maybe it's your favorite neighborhood restaurant that's also trying to be quite ambitious but also still affordable enough that people come out often. They really felt the squeeze in a way and maybe couldn't ride it out as long as a fine dining restaurant with a completely different business model or a fast casual restaurant with fewer labor costs that could survive the harder times. Yeah.

Is there a place in the Bay Area that you feel like has just come back more than other places or like that we could look to as sort of a model for how to make it work? That's a hard question. I do think, I don't know that it's a model, but I've done some reporting on cities.

in the suburbs and how they're really drawing lots of restaurants, particularly from San Francisco, and that there's some safety in being part of a development. They cut pretty good deals in a lot of cases. They may help the restaurants with permitting costs, which can be a total nightmare and really expensive. So I don't know. I'm not saying that that's the model, but I have seen that. I'm not wrong to be semi-bummed out by that. Yeah.

The suburbs need good restaurant too. I'm not trying to say. I'm just, you know, the urban core is close to my heart. What can I say? Let's bring in another guest. Let's bring in Paul Iglesias. He is the chef and owner of Parachi and one of the co-founders of the Oakland Restaurant Collective. Welcome, Paul.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. So your spot, super busy, seems to be doing very well. Bucking the trend. You've actually doubled down on Oakland, just opening up a new restaurant. What are you seeing around you, though? Do you feel like you're an exception to the rule? What do you feel like is working there that maybe isn't working in general for restaurants across the Bay and in Oakland?

I definitely wouldn't say that I'm an exception to the rule because I'm just like everybody else that's there. I definitely will say that, you know, we have seen closures around us. We've seen some scenarios in which people have decided that they need to kind of rethink what they're doing, work in different ways. We do see being in Uptown or what is now Brandon is the North Lake District. Right.

I think that if you think about the history of that area, you know, Ozumo and Pecan really set the tone. And they were there for 10 years. And those two restaurants were the anchor of that area. And they helped to drive a lot of traffic. And there was an incredible opportunity. And, you know, 2018, that area was something to behold, right? Everyone was like, okay, Oakland's here. This is it. Yeah.

And that has changed, but it's still an area that has a lot to offer. There are several restaurants. There's a lot of great opportunity to see things. And I think that, you know, with us and opening in 2023 at Parche, we really believed that this was going to be an anchor spot for us in Oakland. And it has been. I mean...

It has seemed to me, you know, when we talk about the post-pandemic era, sometimes it feels like it's just this block, you know, 2020 to present. But there were kind of a lot of movements within it, I think. And it has seemed to me in that specific part of Oakland, which most people would call downtown, people in Oakland call uptown or now Northlake, perhaps, that

It seemed like things were getting much better. And then we had this shooting in Oakland at Pierre Pierre. Incredibly unusual. I've never heard of anything like that. I mean, how, like, Paul, for you, like, what has it been like to sort of just be in Oakland and have this happen in the Tribune Tower building and everything?

You know, I'm going to say that this is, to me, that you have to treat certain things as an isolated incident, right? Yeah. I think that it's super important for us to understand that if you take a look, and I say this from a...

a guest or a food's perspective, right? Somebody says, "Okay, the steak is over-salted, the steak's undercooked, and this happens once in a shift." Clearly, there might have been a mistake, something that might have happened. Happens six times in a shift, something's going on. And so my point is that I think that in this situation, I think that we need to think of this as an isolated situation. We need to understand that, you know, safety should come first, first and foremost between-- But at the same time, we need to move forward and continue to give people a reason to come to Oakland. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's talk a little bit about...

Sort of the way that the pandemic changed people's habits, Elena. You mentioned it, that people are using more takeout options. Has that just remained steady? How can we know? I mean, we're hearing about it, I think, from restaurateurs. Tell me more about that. Yeah, I'm mostly hearing that from restaurateurs. And I think one of the owners that's going to join us later on this call, the owners of Daytrip in Oakland, were an example of how they...

Decided to change their entire business model in part because of that day trip was an incredibly popular, wildly successful, outwardly successful restaurant in Oakland. Got a lot of national acclaim. And then they closed at the end of last year, sadly. And then this weekend they just reopened.

as a, I don't think they would want to call it a fast casual concept at all, but much more counter service, rotisserie chicken salads. They're on, they're going to do take on delivery for the very first time. So I think,

the decisions that they've made to survive and continue to operate a restaurant in Oakland and the Bay Area more broadly reflect those changes and how diners like to eat out now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, too, because you want a restaurant like that to be supported by takeout rather than like a ghost kitchen to like wipe wipe out the other restaurants. Right. And we've seen, though, I mean, there are these ghost kitchen spots around Oakland as well.

We are talking about the health of Oakland's restaurant scene. So it's part of our series we've been doing on five years out from the pandemic. It's hard to believe it's been five years, but it has indeed. We're joined by Elena Kadvani, who is food reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. We've also got Paul Iglesias, who is chef and owner of Parche and one of the co-founders of the Oakland Restaurant Collective. Of course, we're going to be talking about the health of Oakland's restaurant scene.

We want to hear from you. We know there's a lot of people in the industry who listen to the show. What has your experience been like? Maybe you're at the front of the house. What has that been for you? 866-733-6786. Or maybe you're just someone whose dining habits have changed.

Is it inflation? Is it the sort of precarity of the times? Do you go out as much as you used to? Give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786. You can email forum at kqed.org. You can find us on all the social media things, Blue Sky, Instagram, et cetera. We're KQED Forum, or you can go to the Discord community. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break.

Support for Forum comes from San Francisco Opera. Experience the soaring highs and heartbreaking lows of bohemian life this summer in John Caird's beloved production of La Boheme. Puccini's most adored opera transports us into the heady bohemian world of 19th century Paris as we follow a circle of starving artists falling in and out of love, living for the moment. La Boheme runs June 3rd to 21st.

Learn more at sfopera.com. Greetings, Boomtown. The Xfinity Wi-Fi is booming! Xfinity combines the power of internet and mobile. So we've all got lightning-fast speeds at home and on the go. That's where our producers got the idea to mash our radio shows together.

Through June 23rd, new customers can get 400 megabit Xfinity Internet and get one unlimited mobile line included, all for $40 a month for one year. Visit Xfinity.com to learn more. With paperless billing and auto-pay with store bank account, restrictions apply. Xfinity Internet required. Texas fees extra. After one year, rate increases to $110 a month. After two years, regular rates apply. Actual speeds vary.

Welcome back to Forum. We're talking about Oakland's restaurant scene. You know, it's been deemed best food city in the country, but a lot of people I talk to in Oakland who run restaurants say it's pretty hard out there. We've got one of those people, Paul Iglesias, who's chef and owner of Parche. We've also got Elena Kadvani, who's a food reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle. We're taking your calls on Oakland's restaurant industry while you're working in restaurants or you're just going to them. You can give us a call, 866-733-67...

8-6-4-M at KQED.org. Let's bring on Stella Denig, who's co-owner of Daytrip Counter. Welcome.

Thanks so much. Excited to be here. Yeah, congratulations. The relaunch was on Friday, I believe, right? Yes, it was. Finally. How'd it go? How'd it go? It went really well. We were so, so excited to see the turnout. It was packed. We were overwhelmed, but we've been figuring our systems out since. So, you know, Friday had some long wait times, and since then we've really been dialing it in. Yeah. Openings are wild. Yeah.

I feel like for a lot of people, day trip has been kind of like the symbol of what has been happening with the Oakland restaurant scene. In that, day trip was both, as Elena said earlier, like incredibly outwardly successful. The food was super exciting.

Basically, your celery salad was like a meme. It was just like people loved what you were doing. And when you announced that you were closing, I think that was a moment for me, or at least our team here, where we were like, man, this is like a nationally recognized restaurant that seems to be very popular. And yet, what's going on? So tell us what happened. What do you think was happening there? Yeah, I know. And I love and hate hearing that.

Because it feels so true. It's, I think, throughout our entire existence, people have been like, wait, how are you, like, how is this hard? You know, because I feel like you've got all of this. You should be printing money. Yeah. Yeah, right. Exactly. And that's the thing that people always think about all restaurants and is rarely the case, it turns out. But yeah, I mean, I guess for our first business model, we...

Really bit off a lot. I think we, what we realized after three, four years in our space was we were kind of doing everything and doing the most of everything we had. As Elena mentioned, we had a really ambitious model. We made everything from scratch in-house from vinegars to gelato to misos to, we had a whole bread program and that's just a ton of prep.

And it works if we're in a city in a time where things are really popping and busy and people also have the disposable income to go out often. But the reality is that Oakland at this point, and, you know, I can't speak to pre-pandemic because we only opened in 2021, but.

Oakland has become a place that is just too expensive for people to go out that often. And so, you know, what we realized after a few years in the space was we have to pivot to survive. And we, um, we, this pivot came out of really trying to meet the moment. I think, um,

what we realized was people in Oakland were asking for less expensive dining options that they could go to more frequently because I think people do love food and they do care about it. And with our new model, we're really trying to shift to more of an everyday concept that people can both afford and enjoy from like a health and excitement standpoint that really leans into the same exciting flavor maximalist palette that we used to have. So, yeah.

How much of this do you think is, you know, your particular part of town? So for folks who aren't from Oakland, you know, day trip is in North Oakland as opposed to in uptown. How much do you think of like the comeback is that, you know, that area of Telegraph is also, you know, doing really well? Like it seems to have some cohesiveness among the businesses there and it's kind of like running along.

Yeah. I mean, it's hard for me to say that there's any part of, we're in a bunch of restaurant collectives. We're in community with a lot of restaurant owners. And I can't say that there's anyone I know who's not struggling on some level. And that's not just in Oakland. That's across, that's from San Francisco. Yeah. The whole Bay. Yeah. So, yeah. And I think, you know, Telegraph and Temescal where we are has seen so many storefronts go vacant and a lot of great

businesses in Temescal Alley and closer to 51st Street move away to other parts of town. Yeah. Paul, you're an owner of a restaurant. If I'm looking at a spreadsheet...

of a restaurant, why is it so hard? You know, like if you, you know, you're, you go out to eat and you're like, damn, like two people, it's going to be a hundred and whatever dollars. But on your side of it, obviously it looks more difficult. You know, I think for people, they feel like they're paying a lot, but also restaurants are really struggling. Like what's broken about that spreadsheet? I mean, Stella hit it on the nose. She, the first thing that she mentioned was, you know, prep.

If you're a scratch kitchen, you've got to pay for prep. And so when you think about labor dollars, obviously we're all inclusive in the way that we use our tip distribution.

That's not accounted for in our current system. Minimum wage is only based on what we pay people. Never mind the fact that our staff can make upwards of $35 to $45 an hour. It's not minimum wage in the restaurant industry, but yet that's how things are accounted for. And so that extra 10% that we thought that we used to see 10 years ago,

has evaporated, has eviscerated. It's gone. And now we're paying payroll taxes on top of that. I mean, that's one main thing. I mean, labor is what is taking away from the bottom line. It is the reason why we're not...

And again, please understand that it's not that the money's not going to our staff. It is. It's just that the government or California doesn't see it that way to account in that system. Alana, is labor a big part of the thing? There's also the input costs on the food side too, right? I mean, I guess everything maybe has gotten worse. Literally everything. Yeah, again, labor, number one cost that I hear from restaurant owners. But yeah, food.

if you're going to the grocery store and feeling like your avocados and your rice and everything, eggs, of course, are more expensive. It's exact same for restaurants. Takeout containers. I've heard a lot of fear that the cost of takeout containers are going to go off with up with tariffs on China because they're all made in China. It's just endless. Yeah. Minimum wage increases. And if you want to do anything kind of experimental with your business model in terms of

you know, a service charge or worker ownership or things that feel a little bit more... All-inclusive pricing, which came and went in the 2010s, I feel like. Yeah, and I think people are still trying. And there was a phase, I think, post-COVID a few years ago where there was a lot of experimentation happening with those kinds of models. And we've seen some sort of ebb and flow again of that. It's really hard. Yeah, yeah. Let's bring in a caller here. Let's bring in Thomas in Oakland. Welcome, Thomas. Hi, thanks for having me.

Yeah, go ahead. Tell us your story. I was a chef for 15 plus years in Oakland. I worked at every kind of restaurant. I worked at Comey. I worked at the Tribune Tavern. I think the real issue is not only just labor expenses, and it's like people go out and they expect something, but they're never willing to pay what it costs. Yeah.

Me and my wife went to a restaurant for our anniversary in San Francisco, Ernest, great restaurant. The bill was $760. You got to be willing to pay what it costs. Otherwise, stay home. That's how I feel. I don't work in the restaurant industry now. I think it's a little ridiculous to expect $40 an hour as a chef.

especially when the margins are what they are. So I do something different now. I think it's just basic economics. If you're having a hard time,

putting a life together in this industry do something else there's plenty of other opportunities out here for making money if it's i understand the whole love of it too but it's just like you gotta you gotta draw the line somewhere at the at the end of the day the economics don't work out not just for the owners but also for the the people who work in restaurants so many people get burnt out because they're like i'm just drowning in debt to do what to cook

Man, and you know, as someone who loves restaurants, like loves the idea of restaurants, loves going out to restaurants, loves eating in restaurants, it's tough to hear how difficult it's gotten. I mean, I know it was always this way in some ways, right? Like the restaurant industry has never been easy. Being a chef has never been easy. But it just feels like every dial has just made it a little bit harder for every single thing. When at the end of the day, Paul, like you want to do it because you love having a place. You love it.

people coming in and eating food together and all that. Yeah, no, I mean, for me personally... Thank you, Thomas. For me personally, opening Part J...

was the honor and the love to give that my mom gave me my culture, the Colombian background, gave me the opportunity to go to Colombia. I just got back yesterday. And, you know, she passed away from cancer. And so that restaurant's the closest I've ever felt to her in the last 12 years. So every single time a guest comes in, I thank them for being there. I just try to be as hospitable as we can. And that's really the only thing that I know how to do. And I think that it's been received well. And...

And we just continue to get better and be better for the community. Let's bring in another guest here. Let's bring in Chris Avalotis, who is the owner of Little Hill Lounge, which is a bar in El Cerrito, former co-owner of Palmetto and the Contiki in Oakland. Welcome, Chris. Hey, Chris, are you there?

Hi, hello. Oh, hey, there you go. Sorry about that. No problem, no problem. So, Chris, you got a lot of attention when the Contiki closed, made a kind of social media post that was pretty impassioned about how difficult it was to run a restaurant in the city. Tell us about what it was like to have this experience. Well, I mean, we...

were super hopeful. We were super invested in Oakland for seven years. We ran the Contiki, felt really good about Oakland, opened a restaurant across the street from the Fox Theater, which we thought was going to be a home run. Pandemic hit and obviously didn't make that opening happen because it was going to be the day that Gavin Newsom announced the date closing down, so perfect timing. It was a beautiful, beautiful story. And then

you know, just watched things unfold, you know, kind of pivoted a million times, you know, in addition to, you know, doing Food To Go. And then when we opened with limited capacity, we're deciding with a group of other restaurateurs to, you know, enforce mask mandates and vaccination cards showing at the door for entry when we had limited dining room capacity.

So on top of pivoting to takeout and outside dining, we were enforcing public health policy where the city was not making a rule about it. And so had all of those experiences. And then everything was gangbusters. And then all of a sudden, the bottom dropped out and people stopped coming. And we ran out of money at Palmetto first, which was...

It was tough because that was a big operation, 30-plus people working there every day. And then sort of watched the same thing happen to the Contiki. Just lost revenue, just hemorrhaging money. And was that, I mean, how did you make sense of that, right? Because, you know, I was saying earlier, I feel like the pandemic, sometimes we treat it as a block of time. But there's been a lot of variation inside of that. Did you have some theories about what was going on? I mean, honestly, I...

Don't think it was the pandemic. I think the pandemic set into motion sort of the changes that led to where we are, but we were experiencing some of our highest volumes post-pandemic before 2023. So something else occurred, and I think it was...

I don't know exactly what happened for us, and I know specifically our neighborhoods that we were at experienced a huge decrease in visits. And when we were closing, we asked our guests who were coming there in droves because it was sort of edifying for us. Like, okay, we just aren't good. This is a capitalist society. The weak don't survive. These places just aren't good, and so they're not going to make it.

So we'll just close. We'll announce that we're closing and let people come in and peter out. And then the response was overwhelming. We couldn't handle the volume that we were doing, which showed us, me and my team, that it wasn't us. It was something else that we couldn't identify. A lot of people blamed it on their fear of going out in downtown Oakland. And I'd like to talk about how...

that did truly affect our business. You know, people were afraid they were going to get their car windows broken and that was a huge thing. And then, you know, there's a lot of things that happen on the streets of Oakland that get reported and

And then there's never, you know, a lot less of the report about how there's all this other great stuff that happens. So there's a lot of focus because it's sensational. Yeah. And that really drove away a lot of our business. And that corridor on 14th Street where the Contiki was, I mean, it is, it's grim now. And it was so, it was coming up. There was,

sushi place there's a halal taqriya there's an afghan spot there was a sports bar there's two nightclubs three nightclubs and there's a lot going on and now it's just like you can't even drive down the street without getting a flat tire so you know yeah i mean last thing before we uh move on a couple other topics but what did you want from the city like did you have a like if you could have just made um a list of things the city could do like what would it be

I mean, there's one item on that list and it is something.

You felt like you were just abandoned to the fates. I mean, the focus was really on a lot of other stuff, and I get it. But you're talking about increasing sales tax in a city that lost three sports teams and lost all of that sales tax revenue. And the quick fix is that. Also, focusing on ridiculous things like the ABAP program that sends teams of cops into bars and

during service. You know, it's just the focus is wrong. There's no, it feels like not only is there no support for small business, but they're kind of the enemy. I remember getting a citation for having our windows obscured at the Tiki Bar.

My argument was that I don't want people to be able to see outside because not only is it kind of a place where you can escape and hide out from the world, but also the stuff that was going on outside kind of wasn't that great all the time. I don't know if more cops is the answer and police and all of that, but what I do know is that

The conversation always went like this. Well, if you want something to be done, you have to involve yourself in politics. Go down to city council meetings. And we, and I'm sure that... And you're like, I'm running a restaurant here. Like, yeah, hanging on by my... 70, 80 hours a week. Yeah, yeah. I don't have time to do somebody else's job on top of it while already having done that during the pandemic. When we're opened, you know, partial capacity and getting billed for the...

outdoor dining that we created to make a place that people wanted to enjoy. You know, it just feels like we operate on thin margins. Something fundamental changed and the tipping point has occurred where now those margins don't exist. You just cannot make money doing this enough to support

You know, sort of the basic tenets of capitalism where you just want to make as much money as possible. And, you know, that happened where the margins are slim already and the thing became broken. And now, I mean, it was based on a system kind of where you took advantage of the human capital of the people who work for you.

You know, chefs know it. Then you clock in for eight hours and you're working 12. That was a traditional thing. And we never allowed that to occur. You know, we were paying full benefits. We were paying, excuse me, everyone was in the tip pool, you know, and, and,

We tried as much as we could to foster an environment where everyone felt like they were taken care of. And it becomes like when labor is kind of sad that like the more good you do, the harder it gets. Right. I mean, I think we heard earlier, too, you know, like the bottom line. Right. Right. That's sad. Yeah. Yeah.

We're talking about the health of Oakland's restaurant scene, you know, city that has been recognized as the best food city in the entire country. We're just hearing, you know, stories, stories from the trenches here. We've got Chris Avalotis, who is owner of Little Hill Lounge, former co-owner of Palmetto and the Contiki in Oakland. We've got Stella Denig, co-owner of what's now called Daytrip Counter. If you ever went to Daytrip, this is the reopened Daytrip Counter, new concept. Uh,

We've got Paul Glaces, chef and owner at Parche, and one of the co-founders of the Oakland Restaurant Collective. And we've got Elena Kadvani, who's a food reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle. We're going to get to a bunch more of your calls. I see a lot of you coming in here. You know, if you're in the Oakland restaurant industry, how do you think things could get better? Is it possible? Is it structural? Also, if your dining habits have changed, you just want to talk about the food scene in Oakland, give us a call. 866-733-6780.

886-FORUM at KQED.org. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

Support for Forum comes from San Francisco Opera. Experience the soaring highs and heartbreaking lows of bohemian life this summer in John Caird's beloved production of La Boheme. Puccini's most adored opera transports us into the heady bohemian world of 19th century Paris as we follow a circle of starving artists falling in and out of love, living for the moment. La Boheme runs June 3rd to 21st. Learn more at sfopera.com.

Greetings, Boomtown. The Xfinity Wi-Fi is booming! Xfinity combines the power of internet and mobile. So we've all got lightning fast speeds at home and on the go. That's where our producers got the idea to mash our radio shows together.

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Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about Oakland's restaurant scene. We've got restaurateur Stella Denig of Daytrip Counter, Chris Avialotis, who still owns the Little Hill Lounge, former co-owner of Palmetto and the Contiki. We've got Paul Glasis, chef and owner at Parche, and we have Elena Kadvani, who's a food reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle. Let's bring in Gene in Oakland. Welcome.

Hey, hi everybody. I've dined at all those places that are, especially Christie. I was a regular at Contiki. But I've been a chef for over 40 years, but I no longer make money in my space, in this space. My wife and I split our time between here and New Orleans. I would say that New Orleans has actually a far more vibrant food scene than Oakland. It's not a dig on Oakland or the Bay Area. But the point is, I think it's a weird dichotomy because the Bay has access to the best ingredients, produce, fruit, and meats wise. But

But the food isn't comparatively. But I see the issues being the cost of living here, which means the best talent can't afford to live here. I would also sum it up as high rents, difficult to get an expensive liquor license. I think it's created a market system where we have more investor than chef-driven restaurants because it just takes so much money to open up a place and keep it running. You need to have a lot of capital for downturns, like what is Krista's

experienced at Palmetto with the changing dynamic of downtown Oakland. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we haven't talked about rents yet. Paul, do you want to talk about that? Because one of my hopes, I guess, with the way that downtown Oakland has lost a bunch of places is perhaps actually makes the rents come down or landlords like holding the line. I mean, you're opening a new place. You're thinking about opening more new places. Oh, yeah. Well, I'll say this. I mean, Signature Developments,

the second restaurant, with Jaji in the second restaurant, you know, they actively came to us and said, we want you.

How are we going to make this work? And yeah, I have to say that that deal has been one of the greatest deals of the 29 restaurants that I've been a part of and opened. And it's definitely allowed us to take a look at things and say, okay, we might be able to weather the storm. We might be able to do things. We might be able to focus on staying here from a longevity standpoint. It's a partnership. And I think that, you know, I hope that all of the

landlords out there can hear us and hear me when I say that, you know, we have, it has to be a partnership. If, if we, you know, we need to rise all tides, we need to work together to be as, as economically stable as possible. And so I would hope that with all of the vacancies that we have in the greater air Oakland area, there needs to be the landlords that get together and work with the people that, that they can work on a deal. Now, with that being said, I think there needs to be a vetted. I mean, we,

The models need to be right. The business model needs to be right. The track records need to be right. Because it's not easy to run a business. And please don't think that I have any of those answers. You know, I'm just here from the day to day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what do you think about the... Like, how much of it is landlords just, like, holding the line on commercial spaces with rents that are too high? Well, they have bills to pay, too. That's the first thing. I mean, they definitely have bills to pay. They have to do what they need to do. But I think that if...

If they have, they don't want vacancies though. That's the one thing. They don't want turnover. So I think there's opportunity for them to understand that their bottom line needs to come down as well in the short term. And I think that, yeah, I think that some of them are still thinking that things are worth the perception of a square foot that is not the case, especially not in downtown Oakland. Stella, what do you think in Temescal?

I mean, I certainly think that that's part of it. I think there's a lot of landlords who own a lot of properties also, ours included. And so, you know, there needs to be that investment in the bigger picture and understanding that. But I really think that there is like there are so many opportunities.

This is just an example of one of the microscopic things that make this such a complicated piece to understand. There's really bringing it back. There's so much that I think the city of Oakland could do for not just restaurants and the hospitality industry, but small business.

And I think it really starts with the city of Oakland inviting us in for a conversation, Barbara Lee looking to restaurants to have regular open forums with us to understand what our issues are. And, you know, Chris touched on some of the things, but like the

We also had an issue with our parklet getting graffitied and we got hit by the city of Oakland with an almost $2,000 fee because we just couldn't keep up with the graffiti. So we had to take it down because of that.

because we just couldn't keep up with it and we couldn't risk those extraordinary fees. And there's so much red tape and going through the health department, there are fees and licenses that are extraordinarily expensive. I'm talking about the sales tax again, that's another one. So, you know, there's, we really need to start with a conversation that brings us into the fold more regularly. Yeah.

I was going to ask you, I mean, are there things you've seen, you know, San Francisco or smaller municipalities where they have stepped in for the restaurant scene in some way that has been helpful or that has been negotiated between restaurants and cities or anything like that? That's a good question. I mean, in San Francisco, they've done the vacant to vibrant program, which is not just food businesses doing the sort of short, short to long term pop ups in vacant spaces in downtown San Francisco. That's brought people in.

Yeah, I'm trying to think. I did just have a thought about the rent question. I recently wrote a story about Prescott Market in West Oakland, which is a new food hall there. Root and form. Really cool. Brought in a lot of food businesses. And the developer of that space gave pretty generous rent agreements. I think they got six months' rent.

free rent. It's really about getting them off the ground to be successful and sort of the developer seeing it as a partnership and that as being one model, especially in a neighborhood where there's very few restaurants and the community there was really clamoring for more business. Yeah. Yeah. They just got to make it into the baller season, right? Yeah.

You know, Matt writes, from about 2008 until the beginning of COVID, you could pick an Oakland neighborhood, walk around, look for great food and adventures. The temporary shift to outdoor dining helped bring some of this back after 2020. But now street life in Oakland is nothing like it was. When I visit many of the new and popular restaurants, I see a bustling dining room from a quiet, empty sidewalk. Guests come in via Uber or Lyft and leave after the meal. The fun nights out, walk in the city, multiple stops, a shared experience of the city.

of community are gone, how can we rebuild that street life? Blake in Oakland, I think on a similar theme. Blake, welcome.

Hi. Hi, Stella. Hi, Chris. I own Friends and Family Bar. Oh, dang. All right. Welcome. Happy to be here. Yeah, I'd say, you know, everybody has touched on a million points that are all super valid. I would say as a restaurant that definitely has a cocktail and kind of bar focus, I

We are certainly looking for a certain type of clientele who are interested in just being out and being seen and getting to know each other. And that feels like the motivation for that has significantly declined over the last few years. People are much more comfortable being home, being online, getting delivery, watching Netflix, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

And that even though, you know, the perception is that we're doing great on a Friday or Saturday night, you know, Monday through Thursday, it can be crickets. And that that is devastating to a business that operates literally, you know, every day, week to week. So I don't know. I think that there we have a certain lust for community that is

is no longer as vibrant as it once was. And it's, that's just, I would say a tiny little nugget into the big smorgasbord of why this isn't working. Yeah. No, Blake, thanks so much for that. You know, Chris, I wanted to, you know, think about, you know, your bar in El Cerrito. Like, do you feel like it's subject to the same thing? I mean, I've only been in there on a, I guess it was a Saturday night and it was like,

bustling, filled to the gills, you know? Do you still also have slow nights? You know, like what's different maybe up there than in Oakland? - I'll tell you what, I mean, if you wanna talk about the difference between Oakland and El Cerrito, it's literally night and day. I mean, there's no street life walking around to speak of for sure, but again, I, you know, never had a break in. I've never had my car broken into. None of my casts have ever had their cars broken into. Yeah, we get slow nights for busy nights.

We are in a really lucky position, talking about landlords, that we are our own landlords. We own the building. That helps. Well, you'd think. Not a lot. But margins are lower with a bar. It's a whole different ballgame. Honestly, the difference between owning a restaurant and a bar is night and day. And in El Cerrito, there's not as many of the fees and permits that you get in Oakland. This ABAT thing that...

is really troubling. It doesn't exist in El Cerrito. And so, yeah, we have really slow nights. Last night was just extremely slow, but Saturday night was great. We had bingo. Selling that El Cerrito lifestyle, Chris. Oh, I'm telling you, it's nice. I mean, we got live music out there and people turn out, you know? And our tagline for the bar is that it's really not that far.

And, you know, what we mean is that we love Oakland and live in Oakland, but like going out to El Cerrito, it doesn't take that long and you can get a nice good show. But, you know, for those of you who know, they also have an amazing U-shaped bar. So cool. Such an interesting place. Yeah, there's always someone behind you. And I also want to ask you, I also wanted to note for those who haven't, when Chris said ABAT, that's this alcohol beverage action team. There's recently been some sort of media coverage about this and just sort of

the way that it... I don't know. What would you say? Have you read this stuff? Yeah, I wish I had written that story. The Standard did a good story about it, so I haven't done my own reporting on it, but it sounds like they...

Yeah, police going into bars and also like counter or corner stores. It's like a 90s, like tough on crime era law in which essentially, yeah, cops go like do behind the bar inspections. And I believe the businesses pay towards the program. You pay for the privilege of having them shine flashlights in your bottles in the middle of service. Right. Yes, exactly. Thank you. That's how I read it as well. Yeah.

We've got some great comments coming in. And we'll get to some more here. Winston over on the Discord writes, you know, I moved to Oakland during the pandemic and just want to say that I love the food scene so much and try to support it in every way possible. It makes me so sad when I hear about more of my favorite restaurants closing. Maybe there needs to be a way for Oaklanders to support their food scene other than just making reservations.

Could there be more regular media coverage of new restaurants? Could there be more events to promote the food scene? Could there be some sort of membership I could buy into that would support more diverse restaurants? Yeah, there's a bunch of ideas there.

Steve also is curious about whether or not Ozempic and the GLP-1 drugs are doing things. He says, you know, there have been recent articles like, is Ozempic killing restaurants? And in today's New York Times, group dining on Ozempic, it's complicated.

This is Forum. We are talking about Oakland restaurants and the Oakland restaurant scene with restauranteurs and writers. I am Lexus Madrigal. And let's bring in Cecilia in Oakland. Kind of on Winston's point, Cecilia, you write The Nosh, The East Bay Nosh, yeah? Yeah.

Hi. Yes, I do. Yeah, that's great. What are you seeing? I mean, I feel like Ys Baynash really covers openings and closings. How are you feeling about the scene right now?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm in charge of the openings and closings column right now. What I'm seeing generally from my point of view, I do see more openings than I do closing. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. And I do see a lot of optimism. I see a lot of optimistic defiance as well. You know, even the face of closures, a lot of restaurateurs will tell me we're going to make it back. We're going to bounce back. We're going to find a different solution. I know Stella talked to you about that and how day trip redid their model. Um,

And to Winston's point, you know, I covered the Savor Oakland event not long ago. There's now a new marketing initiative and a new collective that's open to try and help get more positive narrative around Oakland restaurants. So that's gaining some traction.

And I also wanted to talk a little bit about Tallboy as an example of a restaurant. Well, it is a bar. It's a martini bar, but there is food involved. And I think that what they have done has been on so many points that we've talked about here, talking about accessibility from a standpoint of a martini could be $10 and a hot dog $9. And so they're really keeping the cost for the consumer down and keeping that in mind.

They're also talking about the accessibility from a point of view of all the food is vegan here and there are non-alcoholic options on the menu. So I wonder if that is a little bit of part of the solution here where restaurants and bars have to keep away a strategy to keep the cost down for consumers while also offering a pretty high-end product.

And I also think what Tallboy did right was find an opportunity for a place where you can walk to the next bar or restaurant down the street. It's kind of bringing all of these elements together and I think that really points to their success because if you've been to Tallboy on any night of the week,

It's packed. You can't even hear anything. Yeah, it's wild. I agree. I'm so happy for those folks. I mean, all the restaurants that are doing well, I'm so happy for them. Because you do, you need some lights out there for people to be like, oh, it's still possible. It's possible to make this all work. Yeah, and I will say, this conversation has been pretty grim, and it's all very real. But so much still is opening in the face of that. And I don't think that that's going to go away. There are so many new restaurants coming.

that I've recently opened. I'm really excited to try Saran and Grand Lake, which is from the Morris in San Francisco. Oaken is a new restaurant from the guy behind Oaks Deli that I'm super excited about. I got to go to Daytrip Counter. It's not as if everything has sort of...

come to a grinding halt although it continues to be quite difficult for all the reasons we've discussed yeah for sure for sure and you know honestly just to touch on her point which was extremely excellent in Lena's as well you know

We haven't talked about the fact that we need programming. Programming is really one of the main things that the city needs. We need to give people a reason to come out. Tallboy does that. Yeah, that's right. With us, she mentioned Saver Oakland, which is we're doing an event on the 19th.

on the 19th at Drake's dealership. And it's for all the restaurant community to come out and to kind of see where we're activating our first major activation, which is a summer bash. And it's the month of June. All 38 restaurants that are part of the Oakland Restaurant Collective are going to be offering...

reason for you to come and we're really thinking outside the box here. It's not just like get 30% off of, you know, this featured item. It's really, this is the best that we do. All 38 restaurants have something they believe in. We want people to be able to come in and see this is why we're doing it. And so programming I think is the most important thing. And I think that with that, we're gonna be able to see an opportunity for people to continue to understand that it's time for us to come back and be a part of Oakland.

- Stella, so happy for you all. How are you thinking about that piece of things? Or have you tried to build a model that doesn't need to do that? Or how are you looking ahead at this next few months? What's the plan? - Yeah, no, that's a great question. Honestly, programming is something that we always struggled with at Daytrip version one because it did feel important because people are looking for that new thing and that spark to come out.

I think to your question, we are trying to build this new model so that we don't need to do that. And this is really more of a go-to. I mean, we're going to be open. We are now open lunch and dinner, 1130 to eight, seven days a week. So we're biting off a lot in that sense, but we're trying something new where we're

where people hopefully will just know that we're there. And I think the price point thing is really big. You're going to be able to walk away. Most of our salads and bowls are, rotisserie chicken aside, most of our salads and bowls are $12 to $13. And you can add on protein and get it for $16. And that's still less than a lot of sweet green salads. So we're hoping

hoping that that is meeting the moment of Oakland more right now and will allow people to think of us more often on a daily and weekly basis rather than, you know, every six to 12 months, which is what people look forward to Daytrip. All right. See you tonight, Stella. You've convinced me. We've been talking about the health of Oakland's restaurant scene, part of our series on how we're doing five years out from the start of the pandemic. Been joined by Stella Dennett, co-owner of Daytrip Counter. Thank you.

Thanks so much. Also been joined by Chris Avalotis, owner of Lil Hill Lounge. You can go. It's not that far. It's in El Cerrito. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Paul Iglesias, chef and owner of Parche, as well as Jaji. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Elena Kadvani, food reporter at the SF Chronicle. Thank you. Thank you. Alexis Madrigal here. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with guest host Leslie McClurg.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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