LandfallVoyages

Happy hour comes twice a day at the 8th Street Cafe in Oakland’s Chinatown. There’s an almost cafeteria-like feel to the place, with its nondescript booths and industrial linoleum. The walls are plastered with a hodgepodge mixture that is one part pictures of food, to two parts hand-lettered specials. In Chinese. Because why not?

It was nearly ten at night by the time we finally rolled into town and most places were already closed. The 8th Street Cafe seems like it never closes and, lucky for us, it’s also never a disappointment. Eli says when you pick something off the menu, you never quite know what you’ll get, but it’s always good and always kind of a surprise 😉

He’s right, I mean–where else can you order Jellyfish & White Chicken Feet, alongside Peanut Butter French Toast? I kid you not. They have an entire page of the main menu devoted to beverages. You can get typical run-of-the-mill drinks, but why would you want to with exotic options like tapioca & red bean paste, honeydew melon juice, or hot milk tea?

You can order a ton of stuff off their $5 rice plate menu (some cool dish you never heard of, plus rice) or give one of their “wall specials” a try, but we also like their 3 items for under $20 deal. It probably took us 10 minutes to figure out which three items we wanted and just as we got it mostly nailed down, our waitress breezed by and unceremoniously dumped yet another menu on top of the two we already had.

The Happy Hour menu is more limited than their regular ones, but 35% of a wide variety of dishes is still a heck of a lot to choose from, sooooo yeah…back to square one. We ended up getting Green Onion Pancake, Drunken Chicken, Macaroni Beef (which turned out to be a beef-based soup with macaroni, peas, and carrots in it), some tidy little foil triangles which ripped open to reveal succulent chicken and mushroom bits, hot milk tea, two watermelon drinks, and French Toast with a surprise peanut butter filling. Our bill came to all of $20.62.

Seriously, you’ve got to check this place out for yourselves.

P.S.–one caveat though—if you check them out on Yelp you’ll find a lot of people loving the food and the prices, but not feeling the love when it comes to service. Indeed, the servers are usually busy and it can be hard to get their attention. My husband thinks it comes down to genetic evolution…his Eastern European voice just doesn’t get picked up very easily, amidst the roiling tumble of background conversations and kitchen sounds. My Eurasian voice, however, seems to cut through the chatter much better.

No matter–we’ll take spotty service if it means great food at outrageously good prices