Good Taste offers a road map to eating well in the Bay Area. This week, we begin a new miniseries to celebrate local streets that are teeming with amazing options for self-guided food adventures. Point your GPS to these mapped thoroughfares to begin the delicious side quests. Are you subscribed to 48 Hills’ newsletters? Paid subscribers receive exclusive food news from Tamara every Saturday!
Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley
Check out my map of where I like to go on Shattuck, which contains a lot of classics and a fair share of ice cream. A recent field trip over there for lunch offered two new revelations: Roast & Toast Café (1746 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley), where the much-hyped stretchy booza ice cream has been stealing the spotlight from some of the best sandwiches ever, and an outpost of China’s fabulous Hey Tea (2125 Shattuck Avenue). At the latter, go ahead and start with the most-popular drink, Crisp Grape Boom, which has peeled green grapes and a grape-jasmine tea slush.
Broadway, Oakland
There are several solid food streets in Oakland that will be covered in this miniseries, but I thought it’d be interesting to start with one of the BART accessible ones, which is Broadway. Souley Vegan (101 Broadway, Oakland) is back in business, Everett & Jones (126 Broadway) is still kicking, and husband and wife Paul Iglesias and Sophia Akbar operate the vibrant Colombian restaurant Parche (2295 Broadway) and a newer Afghan spot called Jaji (which is technically on the corner of 24th Street and Broadway at 422 24th Street). Here’s a map of where I like to eat on Broadway in Oakland. And shout out to nearby Shawarmaji (2100 Franklin Street)!
Clement Street, San Francisco
One of my favorite places to eat Chinese food (and European Princess cake) for my whole life, I find myself also returning to Clement Street for relative youngsters like the impeccable Vietnamese restaurant Lily (225 Clement Street, SF), Japanese tea house Kiss of Matcha (750 Clement Street), Brandon Jew’s fast-casual Chinese spot Mamahuhu (517 Clement Street) and the modern Asian bakery/café Breadbelly (1408 Clement Street). Consult my map of personal favorites on Clement Street.
El Camino Real, South San Francisco to San Jose
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I’ve spent my whole life trying to find the best places to eat on the royal road that stretches between South San Francisco and San Jose anyway—a route where mom-and-pop places thrive and the research is never done. Here’s my map of current personal favorites to cruise on the El, and right now I’m probably most obsessed with two places on the Peninsula: stellar Hawaii snack shop and eatery Diamond Head General Store (260 El Camino Real, San Bruno) and an incredible Hong Kong-style spot called Blue Sky Café (1625 El Camino Real, Belmont).
With nine counties in the Bay Area to graze through, there are certainly many more fabulous local food streets to research and share with you in future columns as well as with deeper dives in the new paid weekend edition of the Good Taste newsletter (here’s how our newsletters work). Mission accepted!
Tamara publishes the California Eating and Food Book Club newsletters as well as 48 Hills’ Good Taste.
