Buzzy yet controversial Oakland restaurant closes for good

Calavera, a buzzy yet controversial Mexican restaurant in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood known for its wide assortment of mezcal, toasted chapulines and carnitas tacos, permanently closed on Saturday after just over eight years in business. 

“This is not the way we wanted the new year to start, however, we have made the more than difficult decision to shut our doors,” read an Instagram post shared by the restaurant last week. “As you all know, the state of Oakland hasn’t been kind to small businesses—with less foot traffic and severely decreased sales, we cannot continue on.”

SFGATE was unable to immediately reach Calavera staff by phone Sunday for further comment. But Ryan Dixon, a general managing partner for the restaurant, told SFGATE in an interview last September that frequent break-ins, coupled with the Bay Area’s hypercritical perception of Oakland, were causing sales to plummet. At the time, he said business had fallen by 25%, and that staff had dwindled from 50 employees to about 30.

Customers from neighboring suburbs just didn’t feel safe walking in downtown Oakland or taking BART, he explained, and because they were so worried about their cars getting broken into, they’d shell out as much as $60 for an Uber to see a show at the Fox Theater. Then, they’d skip out on dinner altogether because the night out was already so expensive. He added that his own car had been broken into four times, but he worried publicly speaking about it would drive away more potential customers. 

“We want them to be safe. We want their cars to be safe. We want them to come back. Our biggest problem right now is our lack of revenue because of people not coming,” he told SFGATE. “Hyping up the crime here scares more people away.” 

But the cracks started to appear in April 2016, when Calavera employees filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the owners of wage theft, claiming they had failed to provide minimum wage and overtime, in addition to meal breaks, Berkeleyside first reported. One of those employees, Flor Crisostomo, a Zapotec from Oaxaca, said she worked 12-hour shifts with no breaks and had to teach owners how to execute the culinary techniques she grew up with, such as grinding alkalized corn for tortillas, in addition to contributing her own family recipes to the menu, per court documents obtained by Oaklandside. She was terminated before Calavera opened to the public after asking for a raise, the Chronicle reported. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms).

Calavera’s owners denied the workers’ claims, but the case was settled in 2022 after more than 260 employees signed onto the class-action suit. The restaurant was later transferred to a group of employee-owners, and crowds often gathered for its extensive cocktail menu and convenient location near Drake’s Dealership.

It continued to draw criticism from some diners, however. On a recent visit, the Chronicle’s associate restaurant critic Cesar Hernandez noted its tumultuous past and questioned its role in the East Bay’s food scene, skewering not only the quality of the dishes, but the taste of “gentrification” they left in his mouth.

“On a brunch-time visit to Calavera, I saw a table of women toasting with $15 June in Tulum cocktails and eating tacos with their forks, scooping up the saucy proteins and leaving behind the stained, limp tortillas,” he wrote. “As I studied the brunch crowd, I was nagged by a central question: Who is this restaurant for? It’s certainly not for me. It’s not for anyone who likes and respects Mexican food. My answer: It’s apparently for diners who confuse cost and ambience for taste.”

Calavera was at 2337 Broadway in Oakland.

SFGATE news features reporter Ariana Bindman contributed to this report.