After a Devastating Fire, Oakland’s Only Puerto Rican Restaurant Returns to Its Roots
Even the most suspenseful Netflix docuseries would be hard-pressed to match the tumultuous, up-and-down career of chef Eric Rivera. In the 2010s, Rivera co-founded Borinquen Soul, one of Oakland’s first and most beloved Puerto Rican food businesses — and then, at the peak of his success, wound up spending seven years in jail and state prison for a crime he says he didn’t commit.
Now, a year after the chef’s triumphant return with a new restaurant, Puerto Rican Street Cuisine, disaster has struck again. A few weeks ago, a huge fire broke out behind the East Oakland restaurant, destroying its back wall, its newly remodeled backyard (designed to look like a traditional Puerto Rican house, or “casita”), its walk-in fridge and Rivera’s personal office. All told, it’ll be a minimum of six to eight months of repairs before Rivera can even think about reopening what is, for the time being, the only full-fledged Puerto Rican restaurant in Oakland.
For fans of Puerto Rican Street Cuisine’s fragrant arroz con gandules and garlicky, slow-roasted pernil, there is a sliver of good news. It didn’t take Rivera long to find a new, temporary location for the restaurant — and there’s a bit of poetic symmetry to it as well. On Oct. 3, Puerto Rican Street Cuisine will reopen inside the Two Star Market in Oakland’s Dimond District. That’s the exact same corner store where Rivera opened his first restaurant, Borinquen Soul, more than a decade ago.
As it turns out, the owner of Two Star Market had recently started looking for a new tenant for the small kitchen inside the convenience store. When he heard about the fire, he reached out to Rivera right away.
“He was like, ‘Bro, this is your kitchen. This is where you started your first takeout. Come back,’” Rivera recalls.
So, the new restaurant will be a homecoming of sorts. As Rivera puts it, “I know this neighborhood loves me.” And though he’ll be constrained by the limited kitchen setup, he still plans on offering more or less the full Puerto Rican Street Cuisine menu. He’ll offer all of his combo plates, including the fan favorite pollo encebollado (grilled chicken with caramelized onions), served on a bed of white rice or yellow rice flecked with pigeon peas. He’ll have alpacurrias (stuffed plantain fritters) and Puerto Rican–style empanadas, and pasteles for the holidays. He’ll sell pernil, Puerto Rico’s iconic crispy-skinned roast pork dish, every day the restaurant is open.
Importantly, securing a new kitchen so quickly means Rivera won’t have to cancel the dozens of catering gigs he’s already booked for the coming months. And because the convenience store is open late, he plans to keep his kitchen open for the night owls as well, selling food from noon to midnight six days a week.
As for his flagship East Oakland location on 23rd Avenue, Rivera says he’s just thankful that no one was hurt: “Anything that was lost can be replaced.” The fire happened on a Friday afternoon, when the restaurant was open for lunch service. According to Rivera, the fire department’s preliminary assessment was that it started outside, behind the restaurant, due to a power cord that overheated and erupted in flames.
Perhaps the biggest setback, Rivera says, is that he’d only just opened up the restaurant’s backyard to customers on weekends. He’d put a cigar lounge back there and set the whole thing up to look like diners had been transported to Puerto Rico, including the facade of a little yellow house, which he’d dubbed “La Casita.” (Miraculously, he says, the casita is the only structure in the backyard that didn’t burn down.)
“We converted the space to look beautiful,” Rivera says. “On weekends, customers would come all the way from Watsonville and Redding. I had weddings booked.”
So, while Rivera has signed a lease to stay in the Two Star Market for at least a year, his long-term goal is to reopen the East Oakland restaurant as a gathering place for the community. And he’s hopeful that he’ll be able to make it happen. After all, in the course of Rivera’s rise-and-fall-and-rise-again career, he says he’s always tried to look for the silver lining.
“You could be positive or you could be negative,” he says. “I choose to get up every day and keep going, man.”
Puerto Rican Street Cuisine at Two Star Market will open on Saturday, Oct. 3, with a grand opening promotion of a free empanadilla with the purchase of a combo plate. The corner store location will be open from roughly noon to midnight six days a week — it will be closed on either Sundays or Mondays, exact hours TBD.