Oakland

Oakland's dining record begins on the estuary and in the immigrant districts. Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon opened on the waterfront in 1883, taking its name from sailors' first and last drink ashore and later serving as a haunt of Jack London. Oakland's Chinatown, settled in the 1850s, is among the oldest in the country; its earliest residents fished for bay shrimp and worked canneries and farms, and the quarter absorbed thousands displaced by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, an influx that shaped its Cantonese and Taishanese kitchens and, later, its Vietnamese ones.

Seventh Street in West Oakland formed the city's other axis. Harold "Slim" Jenkins, a Louisiana-born former waiter, opened his café at 1748 Seventh Street on December 5, 1933, the day Prohibition ended; his supper club, with a large dining room and bar, anchored a corridor of Black-owned restaurants and clubs that drew touring blues and jazz musicians through the 1960s.

The modern fine-dining line is shorter. Commis, opened on Piedmont Avenue in 2009 by James Syhabout — previously of Manresa, elBulli and the Fat Duck — brought sustained Michelin recognition to the city; Syhabout's later Hawker Fare and its 2018 cookbook drew on his Isan Thai and Lao background. Menus and dining ephemera from Oakland and the wider East Bay are held at the Oakland History Center.