East Bay food

East Bay food

North Italia will plant its flag in downtown Walnut Creek, with a March 25 opening scheduled. The 8,500-square-foot dining room and alfresco bar will offer seating for 200. For starters, brunch every weekend and lunch every weekday, with hours from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at which point the dinner menu kicks in.

Unlike the former Station and the other restaurants that have graced this bizarre island over the years, the food at the Station is very good, if not great, and the prices are reasonable - everything is under $14. The vibes are lovely, too. The new owners expanded the garden, added a fresh coat of paint, good music, a fire pit and a lot of seating.

Women, queer, and immigrants owned and operated restaurant set out to define Taiwanese cuisine in America in our own terms. Inspired by the traditional Taiwanese roadside banquet, we believe in the importance of delivering craft, thoughtful food with the intention of connecting each other in the community.

Olympic gold medal skater Alysa Liu did Oakland proud this week, giving shout-outs to her city while triple-lutzing and twizzling her way to the podium and global fame. In return, one of Oakland's finest Fentons Creamery is giving back. The legendary, 132-year-old ice cream shop has offered the 20-year-old a sweet, ongoing payday. Ice cream for life? Seriously. We mean it, the Instagram post says.

Ten days and more than three-dozen restaurants, wineries and taprooms - are you enough of a gourmand to tackle it all for Taste Tri-Valley Restaurant Week? Gorging aside, this year's restaurant week should hold enough attraction for any level of food adventurer. Running Feb. 20-March 1, the event sees the region's restaurants and beverage establishments offering dining specials plus location check-ins, which offer the chance to win a yet-to-be-announced "grand-prize giveaway."

Like me, most people were here for one reason: a $3.50 fish sandwich. An Instagram video the Alameda Pulse posted earlier that week featuring the bakery's fish filet bun had, as of writing, about 590,000 views. The original video to spread the word about the sandwich, posted on Jan. 3, has over 180,000 views on Instagram. John Vitale and his wife, who had just made it to the doorway of the bakery but had yet to reach the front, told me they'd been waiting in line for 30 or 45 minutes.

Editor's note: Nosh covers food and restaurant news across the East Bay, and each week we publish one article covering all the restaurant openings and one article covering closings. Have a tip for Nosh? Submit it here. Subscribing to the Nosh newsletter is the best way to stay up to date on all of the openings and closings, breaking news, deeper developments, and events in the East Bay food scene.

East Bay hardcore outfit Manos De Fierro is part of a new wave of bands pushing the Bay Area scene back toward something raw, physical and community-driven. Pulling from hardcore, metal and beatdown influences, their sound is confrontational without feeling performative, rooted in real experience rather than image. The band has built a reputation through local shows that thrive on intensity and shared energy, where the line between band and crowd all but disappears.

There's been a line to get into 1504 Shattuck since 1975. Customers queue in the morning to sample cheese or purchase freshly baked baguettes, brioche knots and focaccia. Come lunch time, the doors open at 1512 Shattuck, where live music entertains those eagerly awaiting their share of Cheese Board's rotating seasonal pizza. On occasion, the music entices those finished with their meal to utilize the parklet as their dance floor.

One of the things that Tiyo Shibabaw is looking forward to the most about moving her Oakland-based Burmese restaurant, Teni East Kitchen, to a new location in March is space for a steamer. It's a bigger kitchen, she says. The kitchen we currently have is very small, I would love to offer steamed vegetables and seafood. In fact, whole steamed fish is likely to be one of the new additions to the menu at Teni East Kitchen.

You may know Albany as a little East Bay suburb in Berkeley's shadow, home to a defunct horse racing track and a former landfill. But take a stroll down the city of 20,000's bustling Solano Avenue and you'll find some of the Bay Area's best French pastries, elegant sushi handrolls, and a natural wine bar so hip you'll swear you're in San Francisco.

It's the sixth location for the local chain, with others in Campbell, Palo Alto, Oakland and elsewhere. Since opening its first brick-and-mortar in 2019, Square Pie Guys has been credited with introducing San Franciscans to Detroit-style, crispy-edged square pizza. Oddly enough, its owner is from New York. The pizzas feature a cheddar-cheese edge, which gives them the signature crunch that differentiates Detroit from other styles.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the bar will serve small plates, entrees and cocktails, and a draft menu submitted to the City of Berkeley includes snacks like fritto misto, housemade potato chips and duck liver mousse crostini, plus a spin on Chez Panisse's famous garden lettuce salad. A coy Instagram post announced that Bar Panisse is walk-in only; diners can expect service Thursday through Sunday evenings from 4-10 p.m.

That Chevy's Fresh Mex on the San Francisco Bay waterfront in Emeryville was not unlike the famed Taco Bell Cantina in Pacifica a mid-range (at best) generic chain restaurant location that transcended into a cult-hit destination because of its remarkable surrounding waterfront scenery. And while I would not normally mourn the loss of a Chevy's Fresh Mex, it was legit sad when the the Emeryville waterfront Chevy's closed permanently in April 2024.

Owners Manuela Fumasi and Francesco Zaccaro posted a letter on their restaurant window and via social media sharing the announcement. As you can imagine, this decision hasn't been easy, but we know it is the right one for us at this time, they said. This has been a beautiful adventure, extremely hard at times, but definitely filled with laughter, friendships, and memories that we will carry in our hearts forever.

A little over a year after original owner Melissa Myers sold the neighborhood beer bar and bottle shop the Good Hop to two of its best customers, it is closing its doors. The bar announced its closure on Instagram after more than a decade in Oakland. Adam Clark, a former Good Hop bartender, and their partner, Monica White, a loyal regular at the Uptown Oakland bar and shop, took over the Good Hop from Myers in September 2024.

Old favorites are all over the menu at this Livermore Chinese spot, like spicy kung pao chicken, silky wonton soup, and flavorful tea-smoked duck. But you'll also find updated dishes, like buttery lobster shumai, a fun and vibrant "pizzetta" of raw sliced salmon atop a crispy onion pancake, and warm goat cheese wontons that taste like a crab rangoon's sophisticated older sister.

Like a lot of restaurants in Livermore, this spot's strip mall location might throw you off the scent of how good the quality of the food within is. You'll find plenty of classic Mexican specialties on the menu, like still-warm housemade chicharrónes, chicken tinga, and perfectly spiced equites. But don't ignore some of the less-expected dishes, like the parmesan-encrusted cauliflower with chipotle aioli for dipping, or the tender honey butter vegetables-stuffed chile relleno-a pleasantly light take on what is usually a heavy entrée.

For her series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse is reporting a story about food and farming from each of California's 58 counties. Mike Reddick, who's worked at CJ's for about five years, sharpened knives. Larry Turner trimmed, rinsed and seasoned slabs of ribs, the way he's done for more than 15 years. Nick Gamble took inventory of the freezers. Watching and managing it all was Gamble's uncle, Charles Evans - CJ himself - who's nearly 80.