Taking a dive at the new Starline Social Club.
Funky-hipster hybrid Starline Social Club still finding its way
“Wow, this place is really interesting,” exclaimed a friend as we settled into the well-worn vinyl booth and scarred table at Starline Social Club. “I’ve never been to Oakland.”
On further prodding, it turns out he had been to Jack London Square and a few other places. But he was now seeing Oakland in the raw.
Starline is in a part of the city that looks kind of like San Francisco’s South of Market area about 25 years ago: a neighborhood that’s home to restaurant supply stores, auto services and other warehouse-type businesses.
Built in 1883 as the Odd Fellows Hall, this venue has a long history; it’s been a saloon, janitorial supply house and a hiphop club that closed in the 1990s. Adam Hatch found the space four years ago and leased it last year with the goal of creating a community gathering spot. The newly restored building includes a 60-seat bar, restaurant and entertainment space on the street level and a 400-person ballroom on the second floor for hosting special events, music rehearsals, art openings and other gatherings.
The cavernous space is dominated by the bar topped by a 9-inch-thick wood beam set on salvaged doors and clapboards. The stained plaster walls are capped with the original tin ceiling, peeling and rusted in spots. Much of the furniture could have been found at nearby thrift stores, including a blond upright piano that looks as if it has barely survived generations of preteen lessons, and a collection of plants that I haven’t seen since the 1970s.
Yet as is increasingly the case, the food belies the surroundings. Chef Austin Holey is an East Bay native and worked at Boot & Shoe Service before heading to Paris where he was a sous chef at Bones.
When the room is empty the space feels down on its luck, but as the night progresses — the restaurant opens at 6 p.m., serves food until 11:30 p.m. and cocktails until 2 a.m. — it fills up and becomes more energetic. A bearded, well-tattooed guy ambled through the dining room with his bicycle. Then four people arrived carrying yoga mats and settled at a table. At around 8 o’clock the DJ came through carrying wooden crates of records that would soon fill the room with music and obliterate conversation. The place soon drew a casting call of creative types.
While it may look like a dive, the bar offerings have a hipster quality with such combinations as By All Means (a blend of rye, Montenegro, Sherry and Angostura bitters, $11), and Oaxacan Oldie (with Mezcal, Tequila, mole bitters and a touch of agave syrup, $11).
The scope of the menu varied widely over my three visits — from only five to nine items, including a main course or two.
Beer-battered onion rings ($8) are not only appropriate for a bar setting but will go down as one of my favorite dishes of the year. The layers are visible through the amber glasslike coating that shatters into the creamy rings and mixes with the seaweed salt that dusts the outside. If that isn’t enough, you can get another explosion by dipping into the accompanying mustard aioli.
Butter lettuce salad ($11) with goat cheese, purslane, mint, roasted shallots and whole walnut halves tasted as if it were just snatched from the garden. On other visits there was watermelon salad ($12) with figs, pickled rind, watercress and spicy crème fraiche; and red romaine with radishes and crème fraiche ($11).
The pork bahn mi ($12) was as good as what I had at the most famous stand at the main market in Hanoi: Tender slices of pork were intensified with liver pate and smoothed with fresh basil and pickled vegetables held in check by the soft torpedo roll.
Holey’s talent is evident in both the grilled Monterey squid ($14) tossed with Napa cabbage, corn, shishito peppers, and in ricotta toast ($14) piled high with wedges of heirloom tomatoes, shavings of fennel, basil, leeks, Gypsy peppers and Castelvetrano olives.
Main courses included a half fried chicken ($28) with burnt honey and collard greens. While the greens would make a discerning Southerner swoon, the chicken didn’t have the same allure as the onion rings; the heavy coating fell off in big sheets leaving bland steamed skin and flesh. It was a sharp contrast to the other main course that night: rack of lamb ($32) where the manicured bones interlocked and the medium-rare chops fanned over a hillock of whole grain mustard spätzle, corn, kale and turnips plucked whole from the ground in their infancy. It’s a dish that you know immediately is from Northern California because of the vibrancy of the produce.
As good as things were on two visits, on a recent Sunday night I began to question how seriously they were taking the food component. The offerings were so slim we ordered everything but the bread and butter ($3), and then went somewhere else for dinner. The menu consisted of butter lettuce salad ($12), heirloom tomato salad garnished with fried black beans ($15), the onion rings, fried anchovies with Belgian endive ($14) and an appetizer portion of albacore tuna cut into cubes blended with frisee, pieces of puffed rice and a kale citrus vinaigrette ($16). The menu also listed pork bahn mi, but we were told it was no longer available.
The experience that night felt amateurish and half-cocked. Even some cocktails needed a more balanced hand. We asked for a rye cocktail with a large ice cube — standard at top bars these days — and the waiter said he’d have to check if they had any. Turns out they did, fortunately.
Service has a similar lackadaisical approach. Diners are rarely greeted at the door and need to find their way to whatever seat is available. It may take several minutes for anyone to acknowledge their presence. We generally had to ask for most things we needed; at times the staff was knotted in the back of the room and unreachable.
In the end I walked away wondering what Starline Social Club really wants to be. While the food can be exceptional, after the third visit it felt like it was simply a placeholder for special events.
So I called one of the owners, Sam White, who is also a partner in the Ramen Shop in Oakland. He said they had major events both Friday and Saturday nights before my Sunday visit and the larder was depleted.
As originally conceived, the food wasn’t designed to be an important component, according to White, but that changed when Holey came on board as a partner.
So in this new world of restaurants, Starline Social Club is still finding its way.
“This is not quite a restaurant and not quite a bar,” says White. “It’s more like a social club, something kind of in between.”