The Bold Italic’s 2020 Awards

This article is part of The Bold Italic’s 2020 Awards, which celebrate the Bay Area’s small businesses and local residents who have hustled and shown creativity throughout 2020. See all the award winners here.

Opening a restaurant during a time considered the worst time to be in the restaurant industry requires a special kind of personality, hustle, and drive. Despite the unthinkable challenges presented to a new business in 2020, Oakland has seen its fair share of brand new restaurants this year, and they’re producing some of the most exciting food in The Town.

Case in point: Lion Dance Cafe, TBI’s official Best New Restaurant in the East Bay in 2020, selected by our readers for its vegan Singaporean-Chinese food that’s bubbling over with flavor. Co-owners C-Y Marie Chia and Shane Stanbridge opened Lion Dance Cafe in Uptown in mid-September after a successful Kickstarter campaign funded by a loyal fan base built over the years doing business through their pop-up, S+M Vegan.

Chef Chia says the food is “authentic, not traditional,” blending her Teochew Chinese-Singaporean roots with Stanbridge’s bread-obsessed Cali-Italian sensibilities. The result is something that feels incredibly fresh and exciting, unlike anything else you can get in the Bay Area.

Late last year, San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Soleil Ho called the Shaobing sandwich she had from their pop-up the best sandwich in the Bay Area. The craze had already begun, but that review fueled it further.

Ever since, people have asked for “the sandwich Soleil had,” but Lion Dance Cafe’s menu is never constant — it changes weekly. The owners say they want to keep things inventive and interesting, so while they’ll always have a Shaobing sandwich available, it won’t ever be exactly the same. But don’t worry, we’re pretty sure you won’t be disappointed.

The menu is full of plant-based dishes that are packed with rich flavors and textures that keep every bite interesting. Recent choices include LDC nuggets (crispy brined Hodo tofu with sambal mayo, curry leaf, and pickles) and a laksa spicy coconut soup with rice noodles tofu puffs, pulled yuba, roasted pumpkin and herbs.

Hours at Lion Dance Cafe are limited. Dinner is offered Friday and Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m., with preorders starting Wednesdays at 12 p.m. The sandwich on the menu almost always sells out. Brunch is also now available on the second Sunday of the month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with guest Tai Zhan Bakery for walkup ordering only. The restaurant continues to be takeout, with no outdoor dining, for the length of the pandemic.

We caught up with co-owners C-Y Marie Chia and Shane Stanbridge (who were also recently joined by a third partner, Rachel Metcalf) to congratulate them on their win, check-in with them on how 2020 has gone, and see what plans they have for 2021.

Read the interview below —and see the other nominees for Best New Restaurant in the East Bay you should check out.

The Bold Italic: How have you managed to stay afloat this year?
Massively thanks to our community. When the pandemic shut down bars and other businesses two days before our following weekly pop-up at Eli’s Mile High Club, Tacos Oscar graciously invited us to use their space for the next couple months until they were ready to pivot. This allowed us to keep offering our food to our customers with very little interruption, as well as to offer free meals to industry peers out of work and other folks going through a rough patch.

This also gave us the confidence to sign a lease for our brick-and-mortar in August, despite us thinking we had to shelve our restaurant hopes earlier this year. When the time came to launch a crowdfunding campaign to help us open our doors, our friends showed up to shoot and edit our video. And then backer support came in… we were shocked to meet and exceed our funding goal in just 25 hours.

Like many food businesses we received no adequate government aid, and had little savings as a result of our industry’s notoriously low margins on top of all our catering events — most of our income — being canceled for the foreseeable future. Years of pop-ups taught us flexibility and resilience, but none of it would’ve been enough to allow us to not just survive but take it to the next level by opening a B&M without the incredible support of those who believe in us.

How are you holding up now, heading into a month of shelter-in-place?
As a restaurant opening amidst a pandemic, we accepted from the start that we’ll have to operate as a skeleton crew (it’s still just us three co-owners all day: Shane, myself, and Rachel) and be open for only takeout for as long as it makes sense. Outdoor dining was never an option for us. So we were able to build our current model around the restrictions caused by the virus crisis, and as a result we don’t have to change how we operate every time Covid-curbing measures are updated. Many of our favorite local businesses have had to keep pivoting, and it’s been really hard on them and their workers. We want all of them to make it through, and it’s not right that support from customers (many of whom are facing their own challenges at the time) is all that there is to count on right now.

What are your hopes for 2021?
Generally, we hope 2021 will bring more security and equality in terms of what should be widely accepted as human rights like housing, health care, and food accessibility. We hope to see the carceral system abolished, and reparations made to Indigenous and Black people.

As a restaurant, no matter how small, we feel extremely lucky to be the ones to open when so many are closing. No one should have to be working their way through a pandemic to survive, but as folks who so far have had the privilege to stay afloat, the least we can do is keep using our platform and resources to extend that to others, and we will continue to participate in and support initiatives such as Town Fridge, North Oakland Mutual Aid, and People’s Breakfast Oakland.

We want to be there for others the same way others have been there for us, and we’d like to host more pop-ups in addition to Tai Zhan Bakery every second Sunday.

We hope to get to a place where we can responsibly start hiring and expanding our menu and hours at some point. There’s so much more we want to do and share with you all. We also want to cook more from Shane’s Cali-Italian background eventually because those are also flavors we’re passionate about and have cooked up at our pop-ups before. We look forward to having a grand opening at LDC and celebrating properly with a lion dance troupe performance!

How can people help support your business?
By continuing to enjoy our food and merch, and other things that help with boosting visibility such as getting the word out, writing positive reviews, and voting for us if and when the opportunity arises.

Other Nominees for Best New Restaurant in the East Bay

1. Pomella

Oakland was devastated when Ba-Bite—the popular Israeli fast-casual restaurant—closed in August 2018 due to a landlord dispute.Chef-owner Mica Talmor always had plans to reopen at another location, and that finally happened with Pomella during what seemed like a bad time: spring 2020.

Quickly, Talmor shifted to a small menu of prepared dishes that can be eaten at room temperature or easily preheated at home for curbside pickup. The restaurant offers modern California-Israeli food inspired by Talmor’s northern Israel roots and the seasonal ingredients of the Bay Area.

The restaurant now offers curbside pickup and delivery through their online store. (They encourage this over third-party apps.) They also have a nice patio for when outdoor dining resumes.

2. Horn Barbecue

Oakland has been awaiting the day pitmaster Matt Horn would open a permanent location to shell out his Central Texas-inspired brisket and beef ribs. For years, Horn built up a cult following with his pop-ups bringing massive lines of people waiting to get a taste of that authentic, slow-smoked, Texas-style barbecue that you can’t find anywhere else in the Bay.

After months of permitting and construction delays, Horn finally opened his brick-and-mortar location in West Oakland, an intentional choice of neighborhood as the historic center point for Oakland’s Black migration and culture. “This year has been an unexpected daily battle, not just to get the restaurant open, but the uncertainty of the industry. It feels like you are under water and ever time you try to come up for air, you aren’t able to. So what do you hold onto? Hope,” Horn told The Bold Italic. “We are staying hopeful, and doing are best to make sure our staff is safe and taken care of. We must endure at all cost, and not give in to losing hope. No matter how challenging it may be, we must be resilient.”

To support Horn, order take-out, follow them on social, buy a gift card, and support the Horn Initiative.

3. Coco Breeze

The Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland got a true gem when Coco Breeze opened its doors on High Street this year. With the restaurant, Annabelle Goodridge (Ann) and her daughter Merissa Lyons bring authentic Caribbean food to the East Bay— especially recipes from their roots in Trinidad and Tobago, like roti with goat and potato curry, pholourie (split pea fritters), roti wraps, and pelau, the classic Trinidadian rice dish. Its entrance into the food scene make it the only Trinidadian eatery in the city — whether you live nearby or not, it’s worth a trip ASAP.

4. June’s Pizza

June’s Pizza opened to much fanfare (over the internet and food media) this year in West Oakland industrial area O2 Artisans Aggregate, which also houses soba noodle shop Soba Ichi as well as the new trendy Magnolia Mini Mart, making this area now a full-on destination for foodies across the Bay. Every day, chef/owner Craig Murli make a margherita pizza as well as one filled with seasonal produce. June’s is super small-scale and runs an old-school operation by only taking phone orders when their line opens at 1 p.m. on Wednesday through Sunday — and selling out quickly. This whole phone battle situation gives off some nostalgia for the pre-internet days and only makes people want to eat these wood-fired pizza more.

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