Ah, Oakland’s Chinatown: one of the oldest in North America and a waypoint for luminaries as diverse as Amy Tan, Bruce Lee and Feng Ru, the West Coast’s first pilot. And despite the pandemic’s best efforts, the neighborhood is still a great place to explore. Here are five things to experience the next time you’re around.
Oakland Fortune Factory
This family-run bakery dates back to 1957 and still uses its original recipe. But the factory is not in the business of making strictly traditional fortune cookies. Their cookies are decadent and super colorful. They can be as large as summer melons, and as for the fortunes hidden inside, forget mysterious stranger forecasts. These fortune cookies hold meaningful and socially relevant messages.
The cookies are handmade daily and can be customized to your liking. Want one flavored with natural fruit oils like peach, strawberry and pineapple? Dipped in Swiss white or Belgian dark chocolate, then bedazzled with silver crystals or birthday sprinkles? Done and done. There’s a jumbo variety that weighs half a pound, vegan varieties and a Year of the Dragon one that’s hand-stenciled in gold and takes up to five days to make.
You can write a personal fortune to surprise your friends or your betrothed or go with some of the factory’s timely inclusions, which over the years have included quotations from civil rights leaders in the LGBTQ and Black Lives Matter movements.
Details: Open from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on weekdays at 261 12th St. in Oakland; oaklandfortunefactory.com. Factory tours are available by appointment and typically aimed toward K-12 students and youth programs.
Oakland Asian Cultural Center
Where can you go to take calligraphy classes, see a film about Cambodian queer identity and attend a fireside chat about how K-drama can change your life? The OACC, of course, which has put on such creative events since its founding in 1984.
The center has held release parties for books by local celebrity chef Tu David Phu and Tyrus Wong, a Chinese-American animator who created indelible scenes for “Bambi.” It has staged performances about Pasifika Futurism and the precolonial music of the Tausug and Kalinga Philippine ethnolinguistic groups. It curated art shows about the Asian community’s power in civic engagement and the violence against Indigenous women. And that was just in 2024 – the schedule in 2025 is likely to be just as exciting.
The center is also a great spot for anyone to hone their skills in Asian-themed arts. There are weekly cultural classes on crafts like Chinese painting and Japanese flower-arranging, meditative exercises like qigong and tai chi and even a workshop on how to mend your clothes with a speed-weave loom. It’s never boring here – check the schedule and head on over for some self-improvement.
Details: Open from noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and by appointment at 388 Ninth St., Suite 290, Oakland; oacc.cc.
Peony Seafood Restaurant
Peony is the kind of grand Chinese banquet hall you might find in New York or Chicago. Among its delights are a wall of live-seafood tanks – with crabs that would rank 4.0 on the “Pacific Rim” kaiju scale – and unusual dishes you won’t find elsewhere in Oakland, and the chance to order dim sum, not just for brunch but dinner, too.
The kitchen boasts chefs from Hong Kong who come in with fascinating, artful presentations. Manila clams and sweet eggplant are hidden beneath a pyramid of crispy vermicelli noodles. “Curated custard tofu” looks like a colony of savory, caramelized abalones arranged around a fresh nest of pea shoots. The dim sum can be straightforward and tasty or leaning toward the luxurious, with abalone (real this time) in lotus-wrapped sticky rice and pork buns with fish roe and Iberico pork.
Your Instagram friends will appreciate Peony’s devotion to keeping things cute. The roasted-duck puffs are sculpted into swans and the mango-jelly dessert molded into little piggies – adorable and jiggly, like a Moo Deng you’d put in your mouth.
Details: Open for lunch and dinner Wednesday-Monday at 388 Ninth St., Suite 288, Oakland; peonyrestaurant.com.
UC Dessert
Sno-balls, shave ice, granita and Slurpees – many cultures have their own versions of everybody’s favorite treat that’s fun to eat, ice. In Hong Kong, one version is bingsu or bingsoo, a Korean dessert that stands out for its supremely fine-grain ice (or milk) and toppings that range from nostalgic cereal to actually healthy things.
UC Dessert is a small operation that specializes in bingsoo and Hong Kong-style desserts. The UC in the name is not University of California but “you see,” and the desserts are indeed worth ogling. The bingsoo has ice shaved so delicately, the texture is almost creamy. Start with a base flavor such as mango-sago, matcha-red bean, fresh strawberry or black tea, then customize it with a fleet of condiments, including coconut sauce, Frosted Flakes, fruit syrup and tapioca pearls. The sweet, snowy bowls easily feed two people. And if you’re not in the mood for something cold, there are handmade taro balls with fresh fruit and waffle-like crispy egg puffs.
Details: Open from noon to 10 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday-Sunday at 388 Ninth St., Suite 159, Oakland; ucdessert.com.
Oakland Museum of California
Where to begin with the treasures of OMCA? The museum sits right on the Chinatown border and is home to the recently renovated Gallery of California Natural Sciences, filled with immersive taxidermy habitats, microscopes to peep through and a killer Nature Playspace for kids. There’s the massive collection of historical California artifacts that recalls a World’s Fair in its variety and scale, and a permanent arts collection of heavy-hitters like Dorothea Lange, Albert Bierstadt and Richard Diebenkorn – and a relatively new exhibit devoted to the Black Power movement, reflecting the museum’s place in Oakland.
The special exhibits are always eye-opening. In 2024, there were shows devoted to the art of Xicanx peoples and photographs of modern Indigenous culture in California. The sprawling outdoor garden is a work of art in itself, with curious sculptures peeping around every turn, as are the Southern plates put out by chef Michele McQueen at the museum cafe, Town Fare. (The line for brunch is notorious.) And if you’re in the mood to party, show up on Friday nights from April to October for Off the Grid food truck bashes, featuring live music and tasty bites from all corners of the world.
Details: Open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday at 1000 Oak St. in Oakland; museumca.org.