What does gentrification taste like?

At this carefully curated restaurant in Uptown Oakland, the dishes are dreadful

The first thing you notice when you enter Calavera, an upscale Mexican restaurant in Uptown Oakland, is the imposing scale of the place: the large dining room, lined with exposed brick and a wall of cross-hatched shelves holding a litany of mezcals, sits below a tall, raftered ceiling. Colorful sculptures of spirits called alebrijes, figures you might have seen in the Pixar flick “Coco,” line another set of shelves. The spacious room, and its adjacent patio, are often packed with young professionals, many from nearby apartment and condo buildings that have gone up in the boom that has transformed this stretch of Broadway over the past 20 years.

On appearance alone, you’d expect to be served a fantastic meal, one that reflects the carefully curated vibe. The staff tortillera deftly churning out fresh tortillas by the hundreds adds to the anticipation. But then the food arrives.

As a critic who grew up on the food that Calavera claims to offer, to say dining there is a disappointment does not go far enough. In a town, in a region, with so much great Mexican food available, the restaurant’s failure to produce dishes that celebrate the cuisine, rather than palely imitate it, despite its obvious resources, is mystifying. Or maybe not.

I have specific issues with specific dishes, which I will get to. But as I reflect on my experience there, I realize the bad taste left in my mouth was not from the absence of a particular spice or misguided preparation. It tastes like gentrification. On the menu at Calavera is cultural appropriation with an almost total lack of respect for the culture being appropriated.

One restaurant can’t be saddled with all the sins of food gentrification in a changing neighborhood. But for me, Calavera is guilty of so many.

A restaurant in developer-driven Uptown

We’re used to thinking of gentrification on a more macro level: the changing of a neighborhood’s demographics, its economy, its culture through replacement and displacement. Wealth and new inhabitants move in, while the old and those who can’t afford to stay are pushed out.

The neighborhood where Calavera opened seven years ago, Uptown Oakland, is the result of a transformation set in motion more than 20 years ago by former Mayor Jerry Brown. Brown’s 10K

Plan aimed to draw 10,000 residents to the city’s downtown area by 2001. Some referred to it as “Jerryfication.”

The initiative promised to renovate the struggling area by attracting private developers. Brown made deals to provide millions of dollars in subsidies, shaping what the neighborhood looks like today. In a 2010 New York Times piece, Michael Ghielmetti of Signature Development Group spoke about how “accessible” Brown was to developers. Ghielmetti’s company created the Hive, the hip mixed-use development Calavera shares with a bakery, an art gallery, a barbershop and an open corridor where repurposed shipping containers serve specialty coffee and ice cream.

So this slice of downtown Oakland was refashioned into Uptown, a developer-driven rebrand to make the area more appealing to new, wealthier residents.

It worked: Over the last decade, census data shows, the median income in downtown Oakland has almost doubled, from $36,000 in 2011 through 2015, to $60,000 in 2016 to 2020. In the Uptown neighborhood, it’s $77,000, slightly lower than Oakland’s $80,000 overall median income.

While developers were closing in on Uptown, several restaurants arrived that marked a shift in the neighborhood’s dining scene. Luka’s Taproom brought comfort fare in 2004. A year later, Antojitos Tamarindo debuted with mezcal and plated Mexican dishes. Soon after, swanky New American spot Flora opened in an Art Deco building. Then acclaimed Southern restaurant Pican arrived.

But one by one, as rents in the area ballooned, those restaurants have all closed. When Luka’s closed earlier this year, co-owner Rick Mitchell told Oaklandside that his landlords had doubled the rent.

What does ‘food gentrification’ mean?

Food and dining can play a significant role in the process of gentrification. (So, I must acknowledge, can food media.) Prices, clientele and location — say, in a fancy new mixeduse development — are all factors.

Thus a restaurant can be a symbol — as well as a catalyst — of gentrification, according to Pascale Marcelli, author of “The $16 Taco” and the food studies program director at San Diego State University.

“A lot of it has to do with the aesthetic, the decor, the way things are plated … the specific ingredients that foodies recognize,” she says. Foodie culture, with its sights always set on the next hot spot and its emphasis on trends and social media, is a powerful marketing tool, drawing new, often wealthier, customers.

But what does “food gentrification” mean? Black feminist writer Mikki Kendall, who coined the term, says it’s the appropriation of cultural food dishes and ingredients that leads to the risk of increasing prices, which then excludes the people who typically use those ingredients. A kind of

displacement on the plate, in other words. Recent examples include oxtails or even avocados.

This occurs at world-renowned haute restaurants like Pujol in Mexico City. The famed restaurant’s use of chapulines (crickets) borrows from Indigenous communities, changing its context from “exotic” to “gourmet” and causing costs to go up.

This is not to say that upscale Mexican food can’t be impressive, or that it should not be upscaled. I believe the cuisine I grew up with deserves to be treated with sophistication.

Consider the Alta California movement in Los Angeles, which applied fine dining practices to Mexican street food in the early 2010s. Restaurants like Guerrilla Tacos, Broken Spanish (now-shuttered) and Taco Maria made food that synthesized personal identity with California cuisine to produce wonderfully complex food.

But that’s the slippery part of gentrification; it takes place on many levels at once. When it comes to Mexican food, we can acknowledge its growing stature as a win for diversity. The cuisine is evolving, joining the pantheon of “sophisticated” foods through chefs pulling from their own experiences and shattering the idea that Mexican food has to be cheap.

But we must also reckon with the reality that upscaling food, just like housing, makes it less accessible to everyone. Coupled with the changing demographics of a neighborhood, we can see the real harm done by lack of access and loss of culture.

It’s infuriating that Calavera could be anyone’s introduction

to the food that was so important to my upbringing. The restaurant makes a mockery of a cuisine that means something to people. Cesar Hernandez, Chronicle associate restaurant

critic

A splashy debut

Calavera opened in 2015. Restaurateur and previous owner Chris Pastena, who until October also ran popular American spot Chop Bar near Jack London Square, enlisted Jessica Sackler and Michael Iglessia for the drinks program and chef Christian Irabien for the food. In its early days, it was billed as a Oaxacan restaurant, and while it has expanded beyond that regional scope, the influence remains. In its first year, some of the staff were of Oaxacan heritage.

Flor Crisostomo, a Zapotec from Oaxaca, was part of the original crew. She was excited to work at a restaurant that promised to highlight aspects of her roots. She liked the restaurant’s focus on mezcal, its use of chapulines and the in-house nixtamalization — soaking and cooking in an alkali bath — of corn for tortillas. The owners even purchased a stone molino (mill) to grind the alkalized corn.

But there was a problem, she said: They didn’t know how to use it.

Crisostomo did. So, she said, she showed them how to grind corn; how to maintain and sharpen the stone. A prep cook, she said she found herself teaching the chefs how to execute techniques that she’d grown up with, even contributing family recipes to the menu.

It got to be too much, she decided; she was essentially doing the work of an executive chef without the pay or job title. It left her “disillusioned with the industry,” she said.

“Mexican food is very elaborate. Why are we not compensated for what we contribute? There’s many restaurants that exploit our people and only pay them minimum wage.”

When she finally did ask for a raise, she said, she was terminated. I reached out to Calavera for a comment, and Pastena denied these claims. He said Crisostomo was terminated for “refusing to take breaks,” and that he purchased and used the molino six months prior to opening the restaurant.

After Crisostomo was fired, she and more than 100 other workers sued the restaurant in 2016, claiming that Calavera’s management had failed to pay them fairly. In April, the restaurant agreed to a settlement of the class-action suit, which grew to include 263 employees, though it maintained it was not at fault. The details of the settlement are not clear; one of the conditions was a non-disparagement clause agreed to by the employees.

What seems clear, though, if Crisostomo’s experience is any guide, is that Calavera has not only profited from the labor of its working-class Mexican and Indigenous staff, it has taken from the culture of that staff without recognition — until recently.

In October, Pastena announced a transfer of majority ownership of his restaurants Chop Bar and Calavera to employees Geovanni Radilla, Sarah Ryan, Ryan Dixon, Omar Huerta and Desiree Maese.

When I asked Pastena if he thinks Calavera has culturally appropriated cuisine and culture, he rejected the idea. “I think using words like appro

priation is a very negative approach to things,” he said. “I think words like celebration are a much better way to approach topics like this.” He was quick to remind me that new owners Huerta and Maese are of Mexican heritage.

He also argued that talking about gentrification casts a negative light on Oakland. “What has happened in Uptown has made it a place where people relatively feel safer and is a very positive thing to the community,” he said.

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. 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.

That is the gentrification I was tasting: A restaurant that’s borrowed so heavily from Oaxacan cuisine and culture is not really for Oaxaqueños, either. Even the people who make the food there can’t afford to eat it — which might actually be a good thing, since it is, well, terrible.

Where to start?

Potato flautas ($14) covered in mango pico de gallo are the sort of red flag that might make my mom quietly gather her things and rush toward the exit. It’s a confusing topping, one more concerned with aesthetic than flavor. To make things worse, the potato filling itself is sweet. For those keeping score, that’s a sweet topping mixed with a sweet filling. It was so bad I was offended.

A breakfast tlayuda ($18) covered with leathery mushrooms, quinoa and a rubbery fried egg made me question whether whoever developed the recipe had ever eaten a tlayuda before. The lamb barbacoa torta ahogada ($20) was far too soggy, like a meatball sub sweating in an aluminum foil sauna. And, just like the sub, you get marinara sauce instead of salsa.

The most baffling item had to be the Tijuana-inspired Caesar salad ($14): a pitiful incarnation that’s more like lettuce sushi loosely wrapped with cucumber slices.

The big pill of gentrification is a lot easier to swallow when the food, at the very least, is good. But when the food is missing a soul, you’re more likely to feel it stuck in your throat, chalky and bitter.

Fortunately at Calavera, there’s plenty of Tequila and mezcal to wash it down.

It’s infuriating that Calavera could be anyone’s introduction to the food that was so important to my upbringing. The restaurant makes a mockery of a cuisine that means something to people and charges more than those who do it much, much better.

The real mystery is how a restaurant that was initially celebrated has fallen so short. It could be a case of bad direction in the kitchen, but it feels almost like poetic justice that the food has suffered in the wake of the lawsuit.

Several of Calavera’s contemporaries in the East Bay are disappointing, too.

Doña, on Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue, comes to mind. The splashy interior is covered in bright wood, with an upstairs that feels like a cabin getaway in the mountains. Sadly, the cool vibe doesn’t make the food taste better.

When I dined there, the carnitas tacos were stringy and over-perfumed with orange peel. The chile relleno had no confidence: A roasted pasilla pepper stuffed with cheese rested in a pool of tomato sauce like chicken Parmesan.

Come on, you say, there must be some hope in the East Bay’s upscale Mexican food scene. And yes, there is.

In Oakland’s Dimond District, Bombera excels with homey dishes like a rapturous bowl of roasted carrots and beans covered in fragrant almond salsa macha. In Temescal, Tacos Oscar could easily fit into the Alta California category, focusing on great, boundary-pushing food instead of an expensive aesthetic. Berkeley’s Comal, while not as bold as the previous examples, serves food that is at least alive with flavor.

In fact, the East Bay has many Mexican restaurants where the passion in the food bleeds through. But the scales are tipped by too many restaurants that whimper by comparison.

The reality of gentrification

You can’t write about downtown Oakland’s dining scene today without writing about gentrification.

Whether it’s explicitly acknowledged is another matter. Up until this point, I was one of those writers who did not engage with the idea — in part because I moved to the Bay Area relatively recently and the current Oakland is the only one I know.

It’s easy to be sedated by the honey poured over food gentrification. The cafes make the coffee the way I like it. The smashburgers wield nostalgia like a cudgel. The restaurants — the good ones — are some of the most exciting in the region.

As a practice I try to find hope in situations like the one exemplified by Calavera. There are plenty of Mexican restaurants in Oakland more deserving of your hard-earned dollars, places that might not have the splashy ambience but deeply respect the culture. Unfortunately, a problem caused by consumption isn’t solved with more consumption. That’s the reality of gentrification.

The real driving force in Uptown Oakland’s gentrification is the developers. Signature Development Group has several housing projects in the works that will continue to shape the neighborhood’s future. The group’s latest project is one block away from the Hive: the Kissel Uptown Oakland, a Hyatt hotel where a stay can range from $500 to $1,000 a night.

Restaurants like Calavera aren’t the problem in and of themselves; they’re a symptom of the larger problem. Dining and drinking attractions are the bright bead of light dangling in front of the obscured, toothy anglerfish developers. They distract and soothe you — except at Calavera, the light flickers and shows the darkness behind it.

Calavera is a spacious, upscale restaurant in Uptown Oakland with exposed brick and rafters.

Calavera was billed as a Oaxacan restaurant when it opened in 2015,

Photos by Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle with a focus on mezcal. A variety of mezcals and Tequilas line the shelves, along with other liquors.

Modesta Saenz-Gomez makes fresh tortillas at Calavera, above. A breakfast tlayuda (left) disappointed with leathery mushrooms, quinoa and a rubbery fried egg.