Pearl Oyster Bar - Oakland - TravBuddy

This is an ultra-trendy restaurant in the Rockridge area of Oakland. It
is so trendy that you hardly can tell it's a restaurant. When you walk
by it, you just see an industrial facade with a narrow entryway, and if
you don't look carefully you might mistake it for a club or swanky
apartment building lobby rather than a place to eat. The inside of the
place is even more stylish, with dim blue lighting and music that
sounds like the unfortunate offspring of techno and 80's pop. While you
are waiting for a seat to open up, they give you a wireless pager
shaped like a lobster that beeps when your table is ready.


On to the food. To start things off, they neglected to tell us that
they ran out of bread, and only mentioned it to us when we asked for
some. They didn't offer us any substitutes to snack on. This is
unfortunate, because the portions were so small and pricey that some
complimentary bread might have gone a long ways towards alleviating our
hungry stomachs and empty wallets.

That's not to say that
the food wasn't good. It just wasn't good for the price. The meals are
served "tapas" style, which basically means you order a bunch of small
dishes to share among your table. Split among four people, each $10-$15
dish was enough for maybe two bites per person. The oyster sampler dish
was tasty, but the nimian ranch beef skewers, while tender at first
bite, became rubbery and almost inedible as you chewed more and more.


Bottom line: It's hard to justify paying this much for food when there
are so many other great, cheaper places to eat in nearby Berkeley.