Why Lake Merritt’s Street Food Scene Is Worth Saving
For more than a decade, I’ve had the same Sunday morning routine: wake up, slap on some sunscreen, and head down to Lake Merritt to do my 5K. The vibe is more laid-back than it is on Saturdays — dads pushing strollers, moms enjoying their lattes, the scent of meat grilling over open coals.
When I get to the eastern stretch of the lake, I see dozens of vendors. One sets up a stand for barbecued oysters. Another has brought a special machine for Korean-style shaved ice. Dozens of others sell jewelry, clothing and visual art. One artist paints neighborhoods of corrugated tin roofs on actual corrugated tin — miniature landscapes familiar to the many immigrants who now call Oakland home.
This informal gathering is one of Oakland’s largest regular street vendor markets. None of the tables are manned by fancy chefs or trendy boutiques. Most of the vendors are Black or brown — just regular working-class folks hustling to make a living.
But lately, the city has cracked down on these vendors, snuffing out some of Lake Merritt’s family barbecue feeling. After a 2024 Juneteenth shooting in which 15 people were wounded, officials moved to limit large gatherings. This past 4th of July, the city fenced off the main arteries around the lake to deter crowds. Then, later in July, a vendor was arrested for selling alcohol to minors during an undercover sting. The arrest caused the vendor to lose her vehicle and rendered her homeless.
The crackdown has gone beyond the street vendors by the lake. This past May, Oakland police officers were filmed destroying food vendors’ storage coolers in Fruitvale and downtown. One vendor, who asked not to be identified, told me she believed she was singled out because, in a separate incident, she’d testified against the city.
Vendors push back
For its part, the City of Oakland maintains it’s simply making sure everyone follows the rules. In a July press release, the Oakland Police Department stated that “OPD will continue to partner with EWD [Economic and Workforce Development] and other agencies to address unpermitted and unlawful activities, to ensure Oakland remains safe for residents and visitors.”
Nearly every vendor I spoke to agreed that selling alcohol to minors is wrong. They also say they’ve felt disproportionately targeted all summer long, and that police shouldn’t have the right to destroy vendor property. Especially in light of 2018’s Safe Sidewalk Vending Act, which is supposed to decriminalize street vending in the state of California.
Now, the vendors are suing the city of Oakland. Led by Anita Miralles (aka Needa Bee) of the Lumpia Ladies pop-up, nearly 90 vendors have come together to form what they’re calling the Oakland Street Vendor Collective. During an August rally Miralles organized, the vendors protested police harassment and, as they argue in their lawsuit, the “summary destruction of property of street vendors in Oakland.”
For regulars like me, Sundays at Lake Merritt don’t feel dangerous. They’re for friends around a fire pit and lazy stretches on strewn picnic blankets. At busy times, you’ll walk away with more samples than at your local Costco: a bit of banana pudding here, a little shaved ice there.
And if you’re lucky, you’ll snag a “likkle” plastic sampler cup overflowing with jerk oxtail and corn on the cob — all on the house thanks to Brent Hunte, the Guyanese chef-owner of Jerk’n It.
Lake Merritt’s oxtail king
Seven years ago, Hunte quit his job as a manager at Walmart. He started his own business the old-fashioned way: walking the entire lake and handing out free samples, driven by the love for his culture and passion for its cuisine.
“I couldn’t find no Caribbean food,” he recalls of the years after he immigrated here from Guyana as a child. “If you go to New York, the culture there is big, but not in California.”
Hunte is especially passionate about jerk. The Guyanese style has its own unique spices, Hunte explains. Unlike Jamaican jerk, it’s cooked over an open flame instead of inside a drum.
Ultimately, Hunte’s desire to share his culture carried him through the lengthy process of trying to obtain a legal permit to sell food in Oakland. The first time he applied for a permit for his food trailer, he says, no one from the city notified him to let him know he’d been approved. He’d paid $1,000 to apply. By the time he found out, the permit had already expired.
“Some people got approved in a month, and others are still waiting,” he says of the bureaucratic process. “Can you quit on yourself just because of the runaround they’re giving you?”
Vending at Lake Merritt saved him. In 2020, at the peak of COVID shutdowns, the Lake was one of the only places where people could gather in large numbers. Those weekend markets allowed Hunte to thrive.
These days, whenever Hunte has a large event, he wakes up at 4 a.m. and heads to his commissary kitchen in San Leandro to prep 100 pounds of oxtails, along with his other signature favorites: jerk chicken, jerk salmon, rice and peas, plantains, stewed cabbage, and mac and cheese. The most important thing, Hunte says, is the energy he pours into his food.
“”Be in a kitchen, music playing, good vibe, good energy, and then going to the food, going to the people,” he says. “So people feel it, I’ll feel it, and the customers see it.”
As for how the food tastes, suffice it to say that my family of four fought over our takeaway container, which was stuffed to the brim with meat and sides. Naturally, the oxtails were our favorite. (I made a mental note to come by myself next time so I could tuck into the saucy meat without being uninterrupted by prying kid hands.)
Hunte knows the other vendors at the lake, and has taken it upon himself to support them through each step of the permitting process. He’s even familiar with the police officers who come by to check his paperwork, though he points out that their standards of enforcement don’t seem consistent. ”We have some Caucasian vendors out there, and they go out there, they sell coffee…and they don’t ever get bothered by the police or the city,” he observes.
In spite of the recent confrontations with law enforcement, Lake Merritt’s collaborative spirit has pushed Hunte to keep going. Often, he’ll send customers to other businesses that have menu items he doesn’t. He even occasionally gives his jerk salmon pan drippings to a neighboring business that pours it over the grilled oysters they sell.
“When [vendors get] shut down, like now, it feels like they want to control where the people go or what the community do,” he says about the recent police interactions. “You know, we all come to the lake and we congregate. We chill, we drink, we party in a safe space. Like, you want us to go on the street and do it? I don’t get it.”
Hunte and other members of the collective encourage new vendors who haven’t yet gotten their paperwork sorted to attend the “Permit-palooza,” hosted by the City of Oakland on Oct. 8 at Frank Ogawa Plaza. It’s a rare opportunity for them to receive permit fee waivers and steep discounts on vehicle inspections.
To Hunte, and others who continue to vend as they wait for their paperwork to be approved, Lake Merritt is one of the last places to sell their lumpia, lemonade and lunch plates to the community directly, hand over hand. It’s a freedom that’s rare these days in the Bay Area, where small businesses are already up against the region’s astronomically high real estate costs.
But for now, Jerk’n It’s reputation as a community hub has kept Hunte in business, even as he’s once again waiting for his food trailer permit to come through.
“I used to walk the lake looking for customers, and now they come looking for me,” he says.
The Jerk’n It tent typically sets up Thursday through Sunday, from around 1–7 p.m., on Lakeshore Drive in Oakland (near Cleveland Cascade). On weekends, Hunte often also posts up near Broadway and 17th Street in downtown Oakland, from 8 p.m. until late, and at the monthly First Friday event at 24th and Telegraph avenues. Follow the Jerk’n It Instagram page for the most up-to-date times and locations.
Rocky Rivera is a journalist, emcee, author and activist from San Francisco. She has released five projects through her label, Beatrock Music — her most recent, The Craft, dropped in October 2026.