Sushi handroll expert expands, and more East Bay restaurant openings
The newest restaurants to hit the East Bay offer a wide spread of flavors.
The anticipated return of Daytrip as a casual, chicken-oriented restaurant and the latest from the chef behind popular sandwich shop Ok's Deli are now live. Other new arrivals include a German street food favorite and a wine bar that's heavy on the French vibes.
Handroll restaurant grows
Fourth generation Japanese-American chef Kyle Itani has expanded his temaki sushi restaurant, Yonsei Handrolls. The second location in Albany brings a selection of handrolls that include dungeness crab with miso butter, soy-cured tuna or seared albacore with black garlic, among others. These are available in sets of five or by the piece. Cocktail selections incorporate rare Japanese whiskeys and ingredients like yuzu cordials and miso honey.
Berlin-style doner arrives
Spots for shawarma and kebab aren't hard to find around the East Bay. But a new Oakland restaurant is bringing Berlin-style doner kebab into the mix. Black Forest Kitchen shaves chicken off a rotating spit onto warm flatbread, with the addition of red onions, cucumbers feta and a spicy sauce. Owner Pierre Slack, born and raised in Frankfurt, told East Bay Nosh he hopes the brick-and-mortar sets off a doner revolution in the Bay Area.
478 25th St., Oakland. blackforestkitchen.square.site
Oken, the newest Oakland restaurant from chef Albert Ok of the perennially popular Ok's Deli, is now open. The former fine dining chef told the Chronicle the restaurant will combine Korean, Japanese and Southeast Asian flavors in dishes. The influences are visible in offerings like a tsukune dumpling soup, made with a chicken dashi spikes with gochugaru, and a grilled half chicken accompanied by sauces like Lao jeow som and a house hot sauce. Ok's hit Sichuan chicken, which goes into sandwiches at his deli, appears on the menu as popcorn chicken bites ready to dip into honey mustard.
6200 Claremont Ave., Oakland. okenoakland.com
Awaited seafood spot finally lands
In a day that was seven years in the making, Peninsula favorite Cook's Seafood is now serving diners at its second location in Pleasanton. The Mercury News reports that the restaurant announced its first-ever expansion in 2018, but the project ran into delays and was set aside for years. The original Menlo Park restaurant has operated for nearly 100 years and is well known for its classic fish and chips made with Alaskan halibut.
Nouveau vibes on Piedmont
Wine bar La Loulou is now pouring glasses of French vintages and serving small bites. Step in and take in the art nouveau flair, with flowy wood details over mirrors, ornate lamps and scarlet walls.
4250 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. laloulouwinebar.com
A Temescal favorite returns
The latest from Daytrip owners Finn Stern and Stella Dennig, is now open. Daytrip Counter reanimated the same Telegraph Avenue space where diners took to dishes like a hit celery salad and funky miso-butter noodles. The new focus is a rotisserie chicken brined in a vinegar solution, coated in a flavorful rub and injected with a rich sauce made from chicken fat and stock. Sandwiches stuffed with pickled vegetables, salads and quinoa bowls will also make use of the dripping birds.
Smoothie shop back on
Smoothie shop Drink Thicc opened at its new location in Uptown Oakland. The shop offers smoothies with ingredients like tropical fruits, vegetables and berries. Its website claims all smoothies have a minimum of 28 grams of protein, leaving no intake gaps for customers counting macros. It previously operated inside Swan's Market in Old Oakland.
372 24th St. Oakland. drinkthicc.com
Bakery and restaurant reopens
Wingen Bakery owners Bryan and Aimee Wingen are preparing their sourdough loaves once again. The couple reopened at a new location, where customers can continue to pick up their favorite baked goods during cafe hours in the morning. Dinner offerings lean Italian with a selection of classic pizzas, salads and antipasti.
50 S. Livermore Ave., Livermore. wingenbakery.com
Bagel empire pushes on
Boichik bagels continues its march to take over the Bay Area with its crusty, chewy bagels. The Berkeley-born bakery announced its anticipated Concord location. Find bagels covered with all the hits, from salt to 'everything' seasoning, with your choice of shmear and fillings.
2980 Treat Blvd., Concord. boichikbagels.com
Mexican dishes fly into the Laurel
East Bay Nosh reports Golondrinas Mexican Grill has made its nest in Oakland. The restaurant offers mole made in-house along with more commonly found dishes like tacos and burritos and flan for dessert. Golondrinas is the newest tenant at the former Communite Table space.
4171 MacArthur Blvd. Oakland.
A buzzy new bar
Step past a secret door to sip on cocktails in a plush banquette, under sultry lights and oil portraits at Livermore's newest speakeasy. Honeycomb Cocktail Lounge, initially a private events venue, is now open to the public. True to its namesake bees are all over the menu, figuratively. House cocktails, like the Hive Mind and Royal Jelly, are fittingly made using honey. Similarly, riffs on classics include an Old Fashioned made with beeswax-washed bourbon and a whiskey sour using bee pollen and crowned with honeycomb. The hidden bar is the latest from Tom and Teresa Lawrie, owners of the adjacent Sons of Liberty Alehouse.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Markets mixed as investors turn their attention to ECB rate decision
Markets are widely expecting the European Central Bank (ECB) to cut interest rates again at its monetary policy meeting later today. "At its most recent meeting in April, the ECB reduced its key interest rates by 25 basis points, bringing the deposit facility rate to 2.25%. Markets are now pricing in another cut in June, though expectations for further easing beyond that remain uncertain. A potential pause in July is gaining traction, as the ECB evaluates incoming economic data and inflation dynamics," market analysts at said. The latest decision will come as inflation in the euro area cooled more than expected in May, bolstering expectations that the ECB will announce another interest rate cut. Annual consumer price growth slowed to 1.9% in May, down from 2.2% in April, according to a flash estimate from Eurostat this week. The figure came in below economists' forecast of 2%, and marks the first time inflation has dipped below the ECB's 2% target since September 2024. The decline in headline inflation suggests that business uncertainty, partly driven by renewed global trade tensions and soft consumer demand, is weighing on pricing power across sectors. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, also showed signs of easing. It slowed to 2.4% in May, from 2.7% in April, falling below expectations of 2.5%. On a monthly basis, core prices rose by just 0.1%. Related Eurozone inflation falls below ECB 2% target in May: Rate cut in sight Meanwhile, Asian shares were mixed on Thursday, as Wall Street's big recent rally lost some momentum following a pair of potentially discouraging reports on the American economy. US futures edged lower and oil prices declined. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.2% to 37,658.46, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 declined nearly 0.1% to 8,535.10. In South Korea, the Kospi jumped 2.1% to 2,829.48 after the country's new president and leading liberal politician Lee Jae-myung began his term, vowing to restart talks with North Korea and beef up a trilateral partnership with the US and Japan. Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.9% to 23,856.54, while the Shanghai Composite was little changed, inching down less than 0.1% to 3,374.30. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 finished the day virtually unchanged at 5,970.81 and remained 2.8% below its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2% to 42,427.74, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite added 0.3% to 19,460.49. The action was stronger in the bond market, where Treasury yields tumbled following weaker-than-expected economic updates. In other dealings early Thursday morning, benchmark US crude fell 8 cents to $62.77 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, edged up 1 cent to $64.87 a barrel. The US dollar rose to 142.87 Japanese yen from 142.78 yen. The euro cost $1.1413, little changed from $1.1418.
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Musk turned on Trump's tax ‘abomination'
In the world of Elon Musk, five days is a very long time. Last Friday, Donald Trump described Musk as a 'very special' friend as he stepped down from his role as cost-cutting tsar, bidding farewell by presenting the Tesla chief with a golden key to the White House. After accepting the gift, Musk told reporters in the Oval Office that he would make good use of it. 'I'll continue to be visiting here and be a friend and adviser to the president,' he said. Just a few days later, it appears the billionaire's punchy advice may already be pushing this friendship to breaking point. Late on Tuesday, Musk escalated his criticism of Trump's 'one big, beautiful bill', attacking the US president's package of tax cuts over fears it could add trillions to the national deficit. 'I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore,' he told his 220m followers on his social media site X. 'This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Congress is making America bankrupt.' More ominously, he took aim at the 215 Republican members of the House of Representatives who voted for the Bill. 'Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong,' he said. He didn't stop there. Two hours later, he warned of reprisals at the crucial Congressional midterm elections in 2026. 'In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.' These are words that could send a chill through Republican Party politicians, including the president himself. Last year, Musk pumped almost $300m (£220m) into Trump's election campaign, providing the financial firepower required to restore him to the White House. And while the Tesla chief has recently exited his role in the Trump administration and vowed to cut his political spending, Musk still looms large over US politics. Unsurprisingly, the White House has so far played down Musk's criticism. 'Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this Bill,' White House spokesman Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday. 'It doesn't change the president's opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he's sticking to it.' The Bill's next stop is the Senate, where it's already facing a less unanimous welcome from Republicans. John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, is sticking with his boss. 'My hope is that as [Musk] has an opportunity to further assess what this Bill actually does, that he comes to a different conclusion,' Thune told reporters. But the Tesla billionaire has found a vocal ally in the fiscally hawkish Republican Senator Rand Paul, a longstanding Trump critic. The pair spent Tuesday sharing each other's posts on X. 'I've been pretty consistent in my time in the Senate: I oppose deficit spending no matter which party is in charge,' Paul said in one X post that Musk then promoted. 'If we don't get serious about reining in the debt, the next generation will pay the price. Fiscal responsibility isn't a campaign slogan. It's a duty which I take very seriously.' For Musk, this isn't just a matter of policy. It's personal. The Bill's fiscal profligacy flies directly in the face of the mission that brought him into politics as a chainsaw-wielding Maga maverick: cutting government spending. His department of government efficiency, or Doge, has been on a move-fast-and-break-things campaign to reduce the size of the state. At the White House ceremony to receive his golden key, he wore a T-shirt with the iconography of The Godfather film reworked as 'the Dogefather'. He compared Doge to Buddhism, describing it as 'like a way of life'. He is yet to reach fiscal nirvana, though, having fallen well short of initial ambitions to cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget during his allotted 130 days as a government agent. By the start of June, his 'wall of receipts' was showing savings of $180bn, although several independent efforts to verify Doge's claims have struggled to make the sums add up. 'Maybe why Elon Musk is a bit worked up about this is that he thought he had a mandate to cut spending, and that didn't really happen very much with Doge,' says John Stopford, of fund manager Ninety One. Musk has publicly vented frustration at what he sees as obstructionism from Trump lieutenants and Republican members of Congress keen to protect spending that benefits their districts. Now Trump is in his sights, too. Musk told CBS over the weekend that the tax-cut Bill 'undermines the work that the Doge team is doing'. Musk isn't alone in questioning whether Trump's signature legislation is as beautiful as it is big. Yields on longer-dated US Treasury bonds, which finance the government's deficit, are at or near their highest in decades. Investors are worried that the US fiscal trajectory is unsustainable, and are demanding a bigger reward for holding debt beyond the next few years. Term premiums on 10-year US Treasuries – the extra compensation that investors demand compared with shorter-dated bonds, and which can be used as a proxy for investor caution on long-term debt – have hit their highest level in more than a decade. The higher the term premium, the lower the demand. 'What we have been seeing is just a lot of worry about the sustainability of US finances. Worries that there just simply aren't enough investors, especially foreign investors, in the market,' says Gennadiy Goldberg, head of US rates strategy at TD Securities. A dearth of buyers raises the risk of a crisis in which sellers could become unable to clear their sales, Goldberg warns. This would drive a sharp surge in rates and could force an emergency intervention from the Federal Reserve. 'If there was a big deleveraging that happened and there was a big source of selling, whether it's from foreign investors or hedge funds or levered investors or basis investors, it could potentially overwhelm the system,' he says. Ninety One's Stopford agrees. 'There is a risk that you reach a tipping point at some point,' he says. However, beyond the economy, it's possible that if anyone has reached a tipping point, it's Musk himself. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
28 minutes ago
WWII veterans speak of sacrifice and freedom on France's D-Day battlefields, 81 years later
OMAHA BEACH, France -- The D-Day generation, smaller in number than ever, is back on the beaches of France where so much blood was spilled 81 years ago. World War II veterans, now mostly centenarians, have returned with the same message they fought for then: Freedom is worth defending. In what they acknowledge may be one of their last hurrahs, a group of nearly two dozen veterans who served in Europe and the Pacific is commemorating the fallen and getting rock-star treatment this week in Normandy — the first patch of mainland France that Allied forces liberated with the June 6, 1944, invasion and the greatest assembly of ships and planes the world had known. On what became known as ' Bloody Omaha ' and other gun-swept beaches where soldiers waded ashore and were cut down, their sacrifices forged bonds among Europe, the United States and Canada that endure, outlasting geopolitical shifts and the rise and fall of political leaders who blow hot and cold about the ties between nations. In Normandy, families hand down D-Day stories like heirlooms from one generation to the next. They clamor for handshakes, selfies, kisses and autographs from WWII veterans, and reward them with cries of 'Merci!' — thank you. Both the young and the very old thrive off the interactions. French schoolchildren oohed and aahed when 101-year-old Arlester Brown told them his age. The U.S. military was still segregated by race when the 18-year-old was drafted in 1942. Like most Black soldiers, Brown wasn't assigned a combat role and served in a laundry unit that accompanied the Allied advances through France and the Low Countries and into Nazi Germany. Jack Stowe, who lied about being 15 to join the Navy after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, said he gets 'the sweetest letters' from kids he met on previous trips. 'The French people here, they're so good to us,' the 98-year-old said, on a walk to the water's edge on Omaha. 'They want to talk to us, they want to sit down and they want their kids around us.' 'People are not going to let it be forgotten, you know, Omaha, these beaches,' he said. 'These stories will go on and on and on.' At the Normandy American Cemetery that overlooks Omaha, the resting place for nearly 9,400 American war dead, workers and visitors rub sand from the beach onto the white gravestones so the engraved names stand out. Wally King, a sprightly 101-year-old, wiped off excess sand with a weathered hand, resting the other atop the white cross, before saying a few words at the grave of Henry Shurlds Jr. Shurlds flew P-47 Thunderbolt fighters like King and was shot down and killed on Aug. 19, 1944. In the woods where they found his body, the townspeople of Verneuil-sur-Seine, northwest of Paris, erected a stele of Mississippi tulip tree wood in his memory. Although Shurlds flew in the same 513th Fighter Squadron, King said he never met him. King himself was shot down over Germany and badly burned on his 75th and last mission in mid-April 1945, weeks before the Nazi surrender. He said pilots tended not to become fast friends, to avoid the pain of loss when they were killed, which was often. When 'most veterans from World War II came home, they didn't want to talk about the war. So they didn't pass those experiences on to their children and grandchildren,' King said. 'In a way, that's good because there's enough unpleasantness, bloodshed, agony in war, and perhaps we don't need to emphasize it," he added. "But the sacrifice needs to be emphasized and celebrated.' With the march of time, the veterans' groups are only getting smaller. The Best Defense Foundation, a non-profit that has been running veteran trips to Normandy since 2004, last year brought 50 people for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. This year, the number is 23. Betty Huffman-Rosevear, who served as an army nurse, is the only woman. She turned 104 this week. The group also includes a renowned romantic: 101-year-old Harold Terens and his sweetheart, Jeanne Swerlin, were feted by France's president after they tied the knot in a symbolic wedding inland of the D-Day beaches last year. D-Day veteran Jake Larson, now 102, has made multiple return trips and has become a star as "Papa Jake" on TikTok, with 1.2 million followers. He survived machine-gun fire when he landed on Omaha, making it unhurt to the bluffs that overlook the beach and which in 1944 were studded with German gun emplacements that mowed down American soldiers. 'We are the lucky ones,' Larson said amid the cemetery's immaculate rows of graves. 'They had no family. We are their family. We have the responsibility to honor these guys who gave us a chance to be alive." As WWII's survivors disappear, the responsibility is falling on the next generations that owe them the debt of freedom. 'This will probably be the last Normandy return, when you see the condition of some of us old guys,' King said. 'I hope I'm wrong.'
