Oakland Restaurant Week has arrived — the annual signal for gourmands, bargain hunters and prix-fixe menu connoisseurs to descend upon the Town’s finest restaurants in search of a good deal (or, conversely, for crowd-averse diners to consider staying home).
This year’s March 12–22 promotion, sponsored by the city’s tourism bureau, features no fewer than 135 participating restaurants, each of them offering a range of prix-fixe deals and special, this-week-only dishes. It’s a lot of information to sort through.
As a public service, then, I’ve taken the time to scour the dozens of menus (or, at least, the ones that have been posted publicly so far) and picked nine of the best deals — the ones offering the steepest savings and/or the most intriguing special items. Luckily, Oakland Restaurant Week offers a little something for everyone, no matter your taste, mood or budget.
The $15 lunch bargain
With all due respect to the classy joints serving up elegant $65 prix-fixe dinners this week, that simply isn’t an option right now for a lot of folks. So one of the nice features of Oakland Restaurant Week is that there are also plenty of $15 lunch deals. Among these, one of the best bargains is the lunch set at Chinatown’s Alice Street Bakery Cafe, featuring the restaurant’s popular shrimp tempura burger (nearly a $15 value all by itself) — plus spring rolls, crab rangoons, gyoza and tea.
The Colombian arepa fest
For a slightly heartier — and fancier — mid-day meal, I like Parché’s upscale Colombian prix fixe ($35), which, based on my back-of-the-envelope math, provides at least a $48 value if you pick the priciest options: crispy Brussels sprouts, a cheese-filled arepa de choclo or a steak sandwich, and one of Parché’s nonalcoholic tropical cocktails.
The Afro-Caribbean oxtail feast
By my reckoning, no participating restaurant has a more dizzyingly large variety of Restaurant Week deals than Cocobreeze, the popular Trinidian spot on High Street, which boasts $25, $35, $45 and $65 prix-fixe options, plus specials tied to specific days of the week — oxtail Saturdays, for instance, on March 14 and 21. But if you’re feeding a crowd (or two very hungry people), that $65 deal looks tough to beat: two appetizers (say, the jerk chicken wings and an order of pholourie), two entrees (maybe the oxtails and the deep-fried snapper), two housemade tropical drinks and two desserts. Worth noting: Ample vegan options are available, including plant-based “oxtails.”
The best pizza deal
One of the best bargains comes courtesy of Violetta Pizzeria, which has been slinging New York–style slices out of West Oakland’s Prescott Marketplace for about a year. For its $35 dinner deal — i.e., slightly less than what one of Violetta’s 18-inch specialty pizzas normally costs — you get a whole pie, an entree-size salad and four chocolate chip sea salt cookies. By my calculations, that’s a $63 value.
The casual chef’s counter
Mostly known for its hefty portions of fried rice, another Prescott Marketplace kiosk, Woo Can Cook, is making an intriguing pivot for Restaurant Week. Instead of highlighting its regular menu, the restaurant will offer something more akin to an intimate chef’s counter experience — right in the middle of the bustling food hall. The $45 prix fixe will include West Lake soup, braised Lion’s Head Meatballs and deep-fried sesame balls. Tickets need to be pre-purchased.
The whimsical bar bite
I love a bar with a fun gimmick, so I appreciate how Gold Palm is using Restaurant Week as an opportunity to make the combination of poutine and a martini — or, as they put it, a “poutini” — a thing. The poutine, like the rest of the food at this Uptown spot, is Pakistani-inflected, with spice-dusted fries, cheese curds and a shiitake mushroom gravy. And there’s a decent savings too, especially if you go for the $30 (two-person, two-martini) deal: Since one martini costs $14 by itself, you’re practically getting the poutine for free.
