Sistory Thai Kitchen serves its own brand of Thai food in Berkeley, a tough thing to pull off in a city rife with other Thai food options. Where Sistory shines is its willingness to push traditional Thai dishes forward, along with the willingness to riff on dishes with unconventional ingredients. The lobster ravioli tom kha is one shining example of this, along with others like the kanoom jeen nam ngew, a Northern Thailand soup dish boasting a pork and shrimp paste base with vermicelli noodles and a smattering of vegetables tucked inside.

Matt Horn has done it again, this time trading slow smoked meats for crispy fried chicken served between fluffy potato buns or atop puffed buckwheat waffles. In the tastefully updated former Pretty Lady Diner corner space in West Oakland, Horn turns up the heat with Nashville-style hot chicken sandwiches and wings (they’re incredibly spicy, consider yourself warned), and dives down South with the Honey Bird sandwich that’s drenched in sticky sweet honey butter sauce. Don’t skip the housemade lemonade and sweet tea, plus a side of the blissfully complex white mac n’ cheese. 

The co-founder of Sequoia Diner is branching out on her own with Tarocco, a plant-forward restaurant serving California-Mediterranean dishes. The menu changes regularly, but expect to find dishes like grilled cabbage with tahini sauce and herbs, turmeric roasted cauliflower, or breakfast-y plates like chia seed pudding with tahini almond granola, Sicilian orange marmalade, and a variety of seasonal fruit. If you enjoy the food and want more of it, the restaurant also has a meal delivery program serving the same style of food each week.

It’s all pretzels, all the time at Squabisch, Berkeley’s new bakery from former record label manager Uli Elser. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the German native is using his grandmother’s recipe to bring both classic salt-topped pretzels and more innovative twists to the small takeout-only shop — think, sweet variations stuffed with ricotta and apricot preserves and rolls filled with uni and furikake.

Chef Juan Jaquez is bringing his fine dining experience to Alameda with Ceron Kitchen, executing a New American menu with touches of details from other cuisines. In dishes like the octopus a la plancha, tendrils of octopus get a punch of Spanish chorizo and beans, and other menu options get similarly thoughtful pairings that showcase Jaquez’s previous work at restaurants such as Paradiso and Boulevard.

La Guerrera’s Kitchen has moved quite a bit since 2020, from its spot in Fruitvale to pop-ups at Ale Industries to (more recently) a spot in Old Oakland, but this business that came from La Cocina’s incubator program has landed once again on its feet at Swan’s Market. The tamales are still a draw, as well as the pozole verde, but spring for the slow-cooked barbacoa or mango ceviche if you can.

For now, Joodooboo is primarily a takeout deli operation but don’t let that stop you from swinging by to pick up the Bay’s freshest dooboo, the Korean word for tofu, and a box of banchan. It’s all made right there, in the former Kebabery space, and gets its creamy texture from being cooked at a lower temperature and molded gently, with help from gravity alone. The banchan selection rotates weekly but always offers a constellation of pickled, stewed, and fermented vegetables sourced from farms around the region. 

This University Avenue pizzeria and wine spot comes from a husband-and-wife duo of industry vets who returned to the Bay Area after opening a “very, very good” pasta shop in Chicago, Berkeleyside reports. Now Gerad Gobel and Alexis Rorabaugh pull 12-inch thin-crust pizzas from an electric oven and top them with local burrata, smoked mozzarella, and truffle sauce. Wines and beer are also available to enjoy with a pie on the cute (and heated) rose garden patio.

When it came time to reimagine what to do with their first restaurant space, Nido owners Sylvia and Cory McCollow decided to do something they’ve always wanted: open a mezcaleria. Sample the mezcal selection at Odin in a cocktail or flight, before diving into tacos or tostadas made with local and seasonal ingredients from Devin González of Tacos El Precioso. For a snack, try the tabla de carne or tabla de Quesos Salazar, González’s take on meat and cheese boards. (And there’s typically some vegan or vegetarian options available on the rotating menu, if that’s what you prefer.)

Bay Area folks love a good rooftop bar, and the lucky residents of the East Bay recently welcomed not just one rooftop bar, but two. High 5ive is the second rooftop bar to debut within the last six weeks, and already people are hyped on not just the views, but also the drink menu, which has vibrant and showy cocktails like the Tony Bennett, which is their smoked version of a manhattan.

Chef Paul Canales is looking to deeply explore southern French cuisine with his new restaurant, Occitania. Located inside the Kissel Uptown Oakland hotel, expect an artfully designed restaurant that plays against Canales’s menu of French standards and not-so-standards. Explore the charcuterie menu, with its selection of terrine, pate, and rillettes of pork made in-house; there’s also a number of appetizers, from escargot to an omelette crepe to pigeon cooked three ways. If you’re looking for heftier dishes, there’s slow-cooked lamb shank or seafood stew made with petrale sole.

Local farms are the star at Oakland’s Pomet, and with good reason: the proprietors behind the new spot hail from K&J Orchards, and they’re centering local food producers in each dish. Each menu item highlights where the ingredients hail from, such as quail from Wolfe Ranch, carrots from Star Route Farms, and honeynut miso butter made by Shared Cultures. This is farm-to-table to the extreme and a celebration of those who grow local produce.

Part commissary kitchen and part cocktail bar, Korner Kitchen & Bar is an undeniable destination for exciting cocktails and a wide selection of food from some of the East Bay’s hottest pop-ups. Noodle Belly, pasta pop-up Sfizio, and Bad Walter’s Ice Cream all call it home, plus there’s an outdoor cocktail bar mixing drinks with playful ingredients like horchata, ube-infused vodka, and Red Bay Coffee cold brew. 

Lita landed in Walnut Creek to much fanfare, bringing its Miami vibe and Latin-Caribbean food to the East Bay. Expect high drama at Lita with the vibrant decor, and delightful bites like the guava kampachi ceviche, coconut curry empanadas, and heartier fare such as ancho chile coffee short ribs.