What's New to Eat in Berkeley This Summer, Block by Block

If you have lived in Berkeley for more than a couple of years, you already know the rhythm: a beloved spot closes, the windows go brown paper for six months, and then something opens that either honors the address or ignores it entirely. This summer the churn has been unusually concentrated, and if you map the openings from April through late July, a pattern shows up that the running lists on Berkeleyside don't quite spell out. Shattuck is becoming a customizable, grab-a-bowl street. Fourth Street and San Pablo are doing the opposite. And a striking number of the new tenants have moved into addresses locals still call by their old names.

Here is what has opened, where, and what it says about the map you already walk.

Downtown Shattuck is trending quick, cold, and customizable

Walk the six blocks between Cheese Board and University Avenue right now and count the new counters where you build your own thing. Palmetto Superfoods soft opened inside Anchor House downtown on Friday, July 24, offering customizable frozen bowls with blended bases including acai, coconut, spirulina, matcha, mango, or dragonfruit plus unlimited toppings. A few blocks north, Berkeley's Pop Bar location is now open at 2125 University Avenue, serving embellished gelato and sorbetto popsicles that can be dipped in chocolate and covered in peanuts and drizzles, all customizable. Serotonin Scoops has landed inside Epicurious Garden at 1511 Shattuck, with ice cream featuring extra protein, prebiotics and no added sugar. A Cold Stone Creamery franchise co-owned by a Cal alum opened at the ACE Berkeley apartments at 1951 Shattuck. And Dumpling Day at 2115 Kittredge Street has an extensive menu of pan-fried mini dumplings, xiao long bao, mala soups, smoked chicken, and noodle soups.

Five of the six openings within a short Shattuck walk are counter-service formats built around picking bases and toppings. That is not what downtown Berkeley looked like ten years ago, when the block leaned toward sit-down brunch and slow coffee. If you have kids, this is the summer to actually let them design dinner.

Fourth Street and San Pablo went the other direction

The west side is doing the exact opposite thing. The modern Turkish restaurant Divan on Fourth Street soft opened for lunch on June 22 and is now serving dinner, with starters, flatbreads, and main entrees including fish, vegetarian, and beef or lamb dishes. This is a full sit-down operation on a stretch that has quietly kept its restaurant density even as retail elsewhere thinned.

A few blocks over on San Pablo, Nudi Blue opened April 9 at 2049 San Pablo Avenue from Tanzie's Cafe owners Jezreel "Jae" Rojas and Krissana "Tanz" Tussanaprasit, running as a Thai teahouse during the day focused on teas from Chiang Mai and small pastries like housemade scones and tea sandwiches, then serving seafood and a wine bar in the evenings. And in West Berkeley, the Bay Area's only sourdough donut company has moved into a permanent home at Hammerling Wines at 1350 Fifth Street after three years of pop-ups, also serving sandwiches and focaccia with toppings, under the name SoDo Cafe at Hammerling Wines.

Two different Berkeleys are emerging within a fifteen-minute drive. If you want a bowl in eight minutes, go east of MLK. If you want to sit for two hours, go west.

A remarkable number of these are taking over addresses you already know

Half the fun of walking into a new Berkeley restaurant is figuring out what used to be there. This summer's openings are unusually rich in that game.

The Joshu-ya turnover is the one that will stop longtime residents in their tracks. El Trompudo, a new taco spot specializing in Jalisco-style Mexican food from the owners of a restaurant in El Sobrante, opened near the Cal campus in the former Joshu-ya space, one of Berkeley's first sushi restaurants that opened in 1978 and closed in 2017. Eight years of dark windows, now tacos. That is a Berkeley story.

The Guerilla-to-Dera change is the other emotional one. Dera Cafe has soft opened in Berkeley in the former location of Guerilla Cafe, which closed in December after 20 years of operation, and serves chai, coffee, pastries, and desserts.

Telegraph is becoming Yemeni coffee country

If you noticed a specific kind of coffee shop expanding across the East Bay this year, you are not imagining it. Sana'a, a Bay Area-based Yemeni coffee chain, recently opened a location on the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Dwight Way in a former Peet's Coffee, serving specialty coffee drinks, pastries, and food. The Telegraph opening lands alongside sister Yemeni-coffee openings in Oakland and Newark this same window, which means Berkeley residents no longer need to trek to San Francisco or Fruitvale to try the category. A qishr or a jubani cardamom pour is now a fifteen-minute walk from most of Southside.

Telegraph has also picked up serious ramen and regional Chinese range. Hinodeya, a ramen chain known for dashi broth ramen soups including a creamy vegan ramen and a house ramen special with chashu, soft opened at 2309 Telegraph Avenue and held its grand opening on Monday, June 1, with several existing restaurants in San Francisco and one in Newark. A few blocks down, DH Noodles and Grill at 2475 Telegraph Avenue serves Chinese regional dishes such as Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles, "da pan ji" (big plate chicken), spicy cumin lamb, and a variety of other Northwestern Chinese classics. And Gurkha Kitchen Express at 2493 Telegraph is a Nepali restaurant serving momos and other Nepali dishes as well as Indian cuisine, with other Bay Area locations in Hayward, San Jose, and San Ramon.

Three unrelated openings within a two-block Telegraph stretch, all offering something the corridor didn't have a year ago.

North Berkeley and the campus edge

North Berkeley picked up one of the more quietly consequential neighborhood cafes. Hopkins Cafe is now open in the former Espresso Roma space in North Berkeley, with a menu including espresso drinks, juices, omelettes, bagels, salads, sandwiches, burgers, and milkshakes. If you live between Solano and Hopkins and have felt the coffee options thin out over the last few years, this is the one to try on a Saturday walk.

On the campus edge, Gateway Cafe opened on July 20 with Mediterranean food and build-your-own bowls, located inside the Barbara and Gerson Bakar Gateway Building on the North side of campus at the corner of Hearst and Arch, as part of UC Berkeley Dining. Non-students can eat there too. It is a legitimate lunch option if you are walking down from the Rose Garden.

The Cheese Board is rearranging itself

The most locally significant story of the summer isn't a new restaurant at all. It is the Cheese Board Bakery at 1504 Shattuck Avenue, where worker-owner Radcliffe Eccleston told Nosh: "We are going to have a dedicated line for cheese service, a dedicated line for bread and pastries," adding that people can expect "a much more pleasant, much smoother flow, where they can take their time shopping. No one is going to be rushed."

For a Berkeley institution to publicly redesign its counter flow after decades is a bigger deal than any single opening. If you had stopped going because the pizza line and the cheese line kept tangling, this is the summer to try again.

A weekend map for locals

If you want to feel like you have caught up with the city in one Saturday, here is a walking sequence that works:

• Morning coffee and a scone at Nudi Blue on San Pablo, then a browse through Fourth Street before an early lunch at Divan
• Afternoon dumplings at Dumpling Day on Kittredge, then a popsicle at Pop Bar or a bowl at Palmetto for the walk back through downtown
• Late afternoon Yemeni coffee at Sana'a on Telegraph, then ramen at Hinodeya for dinner
• If you still have room, sourdough donuts to go from SoDo at Hammerling Wines

You will have covered West Berkeley, downtown, Southside, and the west side warehouse district in one loop, with no meal repeated from the last five years.

Why this matters if you own here

New restaurants are the least dramatic form of neighborhood change, which is exactly why they are worth reading closely. They tell you which corridors are still absorbing capital, which addresses are turning over, and which stretches are quietly repositioning. When Fourth Street picks up a full-service Turkish dinner house in the same season that Shattuck picks up four customizable-bowl counters, that is not random. It is the market answering a question about what each block wants to be next.

If you are thinking about selling in the next year or two, the block-level texture of what has opened near your home is a real input into how buyers will experience their first visit. At Salt & Pine Real Estate, we spend a lot of time walking these blocks with clients before we ever talk about price. If you would like a conversation about your specific street and what the recent openings around it might mean for buyer impression, we would love to hear from you.