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Restaurant Review
Broken Dreams delights with reinvention
When I sat down at The Temple Club a decade ago to interview Geoffrey Deetz, he and his wife, Quỳnh Như Nguyen, were a few years away from taking over Le Colonial in 2021. Pilloried in 2019...
Divan delivers uneven Turkish cuisine
In the fast-food economy, falafel wraps are now as ubiquitous as cheeseburgers. That is to say their quality is wide-ranging. At $8 for pita bread or $13 for khobz hamam, one eats Shawarmaji’s on repeat because the...
Maya Murchison-Turner reinvents Cal Burger
At Cal Burger & More, Maya “Yaya” Murchison-Turner smashes burgers in six different ways. The Classic melts American and jack cheese on top of seared beef. Onions, pickles, tomato, lettuce, mayo and a “Go Crazy” sauce complete...
Jjampong Zizon expands franchise to Oakland
At the corner of 40th and Broadway, a new branch of an existing franchise opened its doors this year. A famous Chinese restaurant in Korea and with locations in Los Angeles, the franchise is expanding into Northern...
Ann’s Catering carries Rick & Ann’s legacy to Oakland
When I arrived in the Bay Area, I was immediately made aware of and drawn to three matriarchal spaces: Alice Waters and her incandescent Garden of Eden. Bette Kroening, always front and center at her Fourth Street...
Town Biscuits crafts butter-forward biscuits
Chas Barwick defines a good biscuit as, “One that doesn’t crumble to pieces when you bite into it, and really butter-forward.” Barwick opened Town Biscuits last fall with her husband, Will Kovach, a chef with 15 years...
Teni East Kitchen relocates to Piedmont Avenue
When we walked into the new Turkish restaurant on Berkeley’s Fourth Street, more than half of the tables sat empty. But without a reservation, even on a sleepy weeknight, they weren’t seating customers inside or outside on...
