The Kingfish Pub & Cafe
Bill Traverse sold bait out of this shack in 1922 and put a beer licence in it the year Prohibition ended, and in 2015 Emil Peinert had the whole building rolled 35 yards up the street.
Why go
The Kingfish started as a bait shack behind Traverse's mother's house on Claremont Avenue, selling to fishermen riding the East Bay rail lines out to the Delta.1 When Prohibition was repealed in 1933 he took a beer and wine licence, put in stools and started serving carry-out bologna sandwiches, crab cocktail and chowder.1 The room is stacked with Cal salvage: the floors carry the script and bear logos cut from Harmon Gym's Newell Court, home plate from Evans Diamond is set into the patio, and benches came out of the old Memorial Stadium.1 The shuffleboard sits in a hallway built specifically to hold it, and people queue for a turn.1
In January 2015 owner Emil Peinert had a crew roll the entire building 35 yards from Claremont to Telegraph rather than lose it to a development, and every piece of the old shack survived.1 He explained the choice himself: I worry that if we attempted to re-create it, it would feel phony.
1
Order this / avoid
- Order: a beer, and eat the popcorn, which is free and endless.1
- Avoid: treating it as a dinner stop. There is no kitchen, and food comes from whatever truck is outside.1
What locals & experts say
- Emil Peinert, owner, on why he moved the building instead of rebuilding:
I worry that if we attempted to re-create it, it would feel phony. The power of the Kingfish is that there is nothing phony about it.
Quoted by Nosh from a 2014 Chronicle interview.1 - Vincent Traverso, co-owner, on the crowd:
You'll see guys in their 80s sipping beers along with much younger folks, and they all enjoy hanging out with each other.
1 - The Kingfish, in its own words:
Bait shop-turned-beer joint, the Kingfish Pub & Café has seen North Oakland through most of the past century.
2
Good to know
- No bookings, no events: Traverso says they run no trivia nights and no private hires, so
patrons know to expect that things will be the same every day, all year long.
1 - Food: snacks and popcorn inside, trucks outside. As of 2018 the owners were looking at bringing back the old soup and sandwich menu, and someone still has the original chowder recipe.1
Verdict
should-visit — Nosh reported this one properly, with the owner and the co-owner both on the record and enough physical detail to check: the Newell Court boards in the floor, home plate from Evans Diamond set in the patio, the hallway built around the shuffleboard table. That is a well-sourced page about a bar. It is also a page about a bar with no kitchen, so there is no cooking here to judge, and that ceiling is what stops the rung where it does.