A Villainous Comic Book Bar Flips Back Open in Oakland

Welcome to p.m. Intel, your bite-sized roundup of Bay Area food and restaurant news. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.

• Oakland’s comic-book themed cocktail and taco bar First Edition reopens for business Friday, May 7, with 50 percent indoor capacity, reports Berkeleyside. The East Bay bar first opened at the end of 2019, just months before shutting down due to the pandemic, with villainous comic book decor splashed across the walls and a focus on variations of six “root categories” of cocktails: the old fashioned, martini, daiquiri, sidecar, highball, and flip. New hours are 3 to 9 p.m., Thursday through Sunday. [Berkeleyside]
• In the continuing fallout from a SF Chronicle report outlining rape and sexual assault allegations against Windsor Mayor and winery owner Dominic Foppoli, town officials have requested that the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office authorize a grand jury investigation into Foppoli’s “willful or corrupt misconduct in office.” Last month, Foppoli said he would “step back,” but not resign, from his post in the wine country town, despite demands from colleagues to do so. Windsor officials cited the “magnitude” of the allegations that may “render him unfit to hold public office.” Foppoli has previously claimed those leading the effort to remove him from office “seek to advance their own leadership by any means necessary.” [SF Chronicle]
• After shutting down in 2020 after 15 years, Oakland’s Uptown Nightclub is up for sale, according to a Craigslist ad spotted by Broke-Ass Stuart. The ad says “a new owner can step in and operate as-is (once COVID restrictions are lifted), or adjust the concept as desired while making use of all the underlying infrastructure and at a fraction of the original construction and permitting cost.” The bar, which has hosted major Bay Area and national acts since opening in 2005, has shut down twice before, once in 2007 and once in 2014, before its most recent closure last year. While the ad doesn’t include a listing price, it does imply the guitar-neck neon “Uptown” sign is part of the deal. [Broke-Ass Stuart]
• Shawarmaji, chef Mohammad Abutaha’s crowd-attracting pop-up-turned-restaurant in Oakland, is collaborating with Nashville-style hot chicken purveyor World Famous Hotboys for a special chicken shawarma wrap, on sale every Thursday and Friday for the month of May. The gratuitously sauced situation involves hot chicken–style shawarma, toum, “money sauce,” cucumber pickles, and coleslaw, and will be available for pickup at Shawarmaji, 2123 Franklin Street.

• The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) reopened to the public this week after more than a year of being closed, and with it, the museum’s longtime cafe, Babette. The restaurant, which closed along with the museum in March 2020, was eventually able to open for delivery service after petitioning the UC Berkeley chancellor to resume kitchen operations at BAMPFA. Babette is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday through Sunday, with limited capacity indoor dining for ticketed museum patrons. [Berkeleyside]