The Grand Avenue block that lost Luka's Taproom in 2022 and Sidebar in early 2024 spent most of the last two years dark or half-lit. This summer it flipped back on, and not with newcomers. The people who built Oakland's Uptown dining scene in the 2000s came back across the lake to open something new inside the same footprint they used to run. If you already live within a walk of the pergola, that is the story worth knowing, because it is quietly rearranging where you eat on a Thursday.
The Grand Avenue reshuffle, in one sentence
Bar Skula opened at 542 Grand Ave., across from Lake Merritt, from Maria Alderete and Rick Mitchell, the couple behind Luka's Taproom & Lounge, which closed in January 2022 after 15 years in Uptown Oakland. Luka's is often credited with helping catapult the revitalization of Uptown; the couple closed it after they couldn't negotiate a new lease, and a lot of the old crew is involved again, including chef Wilson Mendez, Luka's very first employee, who stuck around for all 18 years it was open, and founding chef Jacob Alioto.
That team did not choose Grand Avenue at random. The project is personal for the couple, who live walking distance from the space, and the Grand Avenue storefront has been Mitchell's dream location dating back to when it housed Trio Bistro and Grill, before Sidebar or Luka's opened. The short version, if you have watched the block for a decade: the operators who used to commute to Uptown are now betting on their own neighborhood.
"My goal in life is to own my local so I always have a restaurant to go to." — Rick Mitchell, in an interview with The Oaklandside
What Bar Skula actually is, if you are walking over tonight
Here is the practical version, because the room fills quickly and the format is specific.
- Address and hours. 542 Grand Ave., soft-open Thursday to Monday, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.
- How to get in. Walk-ins only for now; once the crew nails down the pacing, they will start taking reservations.
- Room size. The mural-covered dining room seats about 60, stares right out at Lake Merritt, and an outdoor patio is in the works and expected to open soon.
- What the menu leans on. Seafood-focused, drawing on Alderete and Mitchell's travels through Mexico, Central and South America, alongside vintage Luka's favorites like the burger and fries.
- The cocktail program. Designed by Jared Hirsch, who previously served as Sidebar's bar manager, leaning into the Iberian diaspora, with three distinct gin tonics as the anchor.
- The art on the walls. Oakland muralist Pancho Pescador painted underwater scenes, inspired partly by an old Oaklandside story about the creatures that actually live in Lake Merritt.
The last point is the one worth pausing on. A restaurant that names its murals after the specific fish and invertebrates biologists have pulled out of the lake you walk around is not staging a theme. It is telling you it expects the room to be filled with people who know the lake.
What is changing on Lakeshore, one avenue over
Grand is not the only side of the water shifting. A few blocks down, the corner that used to hold Cafe Lakeview has a new tenant. Mazar Cafe by Lake Merritt soft opened in late July, serving premium, authentic Yemeni coffee and handcrafted drinks, with pastries on the menu, in the former Cafe Lakeview location at 2834 Lakeshore Ave. Yemeni coffee bars have been landing across Oakland this year at a pace worth noticing. In the same week Mazar opened on Lakeshore, a new Yemeni coffee shop called Shibam moved into the former Red Bay Coffee flagship store in Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood at 3136 International Blvd., with expanded space on the mezzanine level; Shibam is a national chain based in Michigan that focuses on single origin coffee.
If you are counting, that is two new Yemeni coffee bars on opposite sides of the lake within a month, sitting in the recently vacated shells of two of Oakland's best-known coffee names. That is not a trend piece. That is a signal about what kind of small-format operator can now afford these storefronts.
The one loss on Grand you should plan around
Not everything is arriving. Enssaro, one of Oakland's classic Ethiopian favorites, is relocating after operating on Grand Avenue near Lake Merritt for roughly two decades; the opening of the new location is Friday, July 31, and the restaurant is still family-owned and operated by the same mother, daughter, and son team. The new home is 5897 College Ave., in Rockridge. If Enssaro was your walk-to-dinner default, the walk is now a drive or a bus ride. The upside is that the Grand storefront is now the kind of address other operators watch, which is how a block resets.
Two more Uptown returns worth knowing
If you sometimes wander past the lake into Uptown on a weekend, two more names came back this month.
| Restaurant | Address | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet Fingers Jamaican | 1707 Telegraph Ave., Uptown Oakland | Reopened on Telegraph after moving from its Foothill Boulevard location, which closed in April. |
| Oakland Athletic Club | Uptown Oakland | Reopened uptown under new ownership; the sports bar has tons of TVs and two levels of seating, plus wings, burgers, roast chicken, and plenty to drink. |
Neither is on the lake, but both are on the short list of places a Grand-Lakeshore resident actually ends up on a Friday, and both changed hands or addresses within the last several weeks.
The October date to hold on your calendar
The next real event to plan around is the one that turns the north side of the lake into something you can only see three nights a year. The Autumn Lights Festival runs October 15 to 17, 2026, and tickets go on sale September 1st. It is a fundraiser for the Gardens at Lake Merritt, a seven-acre collection of themed gardens in Lakeside Park, our nation's first wildlife refuge. Local artists create gigantic and small works of art using light, and the festival includes fire dancers, live music, and immersive installations.
A few notes if this will be your first year:
- The gate is at 666 Bellevue Ave., inside the Gardens.
- Ticket demand climbs in the last two weeks, so the September 1 on-sale date is not a suggestion.
- The festival is on grounds that also host the Bonsai Garden and the Vireya House, so it rewards people who walk the paths slowly rather than treating it as a single loop.
The summer bracket, before the leaves turn
Between now and October, the lake is still inside its warm-weather programming. Love Our Lake events run from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and the program is run jointly by Children's Fairyland, the Oakland Museum of California, the Oakland Public Library, Visit Oakland, the Oakland Parks & Recreation Foundation, and PG&E. If you have friends coming in from out of town before Labor Day, the OMCA Friday nights and Fairyland afternoons are the pair that reliably works for mixed-age groups without needing a reservation.
LakeFest sits inside the same window. The festival celebrates six years of culture, community, and connection at Lake Merritt with 200+ vendors, live performances, a Kids Zone, and a Tech Pavilion. If you have lived here through a few of them, you already know the drill on parking. If you have not, the short version is that the lake is closed to through traffic for the day and every block within four of the shoreline is treated as festival overflow.
Reading the block, if you have lived here a while
Put the last six weeks together and the picture is specific. The two most recognizable food storefronts on the Grand-Lakeshore side of the lake, Sidebar and Cafe Lakeview, both went dark inside twelve months. Both came back inside another twelve, one as a restaurant from operators who used to run Uptown from across the lake, one as a Yemeni coffee bar that is part of a citywide pattern. A twenty-year Grand Avenue tenant left the block for College Avenue. Two Uptown names, Sweet Fingers and Oakland Athletic Club, moved or reopened within walking distance.
None of that is a story about prices or listings. It is a story about who is choosing to sign a five-year lease across from the pergola in 2026, and about the fact that the answer is often people who have already lived nearby for years. The best thing about living around Lake Merritt right now is that the block that used to reward you for knowing the history is starting to reward you again for showing up.
A soft ask, if you are new to the area
If you moved here in the last year and this is the first summer you have watched the Grand-Lakeshore block turn over, some of the pattern is easier to read with someone who has watched it turn over before. That is most of what these posts are for. If you want to talk through the neighborhood the way a friend who lives here would, Ryan Weible and the team at Team Wang Real Estate are always up for a coffee at whichever Lakeshore spot is open that week. Start with a conversation.
