Murals of fish and other sea creatures are submerged and swimming on the blue surfaces of Bar Skula’s walls. Capitalizing on its location near Lake Merritt, the underwater theme extends to the menu, with a prominent section of raw and chilled seafood. Owner Rick Mitchell affectionately calls his new restaurant and bar a remix of Luka’s Taproom. The beers on tap are gone, but a small portion of the menu does include four dishes considered to be “Luka’s Classics.”
Bar Skula opened earlier this summer in Sidebar’s old location. When Mitchell wasn’t at Luka’s, Sidebar was one of his regular haunts. “I loved the bar; horseshoe bars are just a beautiful thing all around,” he said. “It was a very friendly, welcoming and convivial bar.”
Mitchell had, in fact, told the owners over the course of many years that he’d love to take it over. That didn’t happen. The owners of nearby Bardo bought and then operated the bar for more than a year before they ended up selling it to him. “I wanted to buy my local bar because I thought it was a great institution, and I wanted to make sure the neighborhood restaurant continues to exist and thrive,” he noted.
After Luka’s ended its nearly two-decade run in 2022, Mitchell and his wife, Maria Alderete, co-founded Community Kitchens in Oakland. They started the nonprofit organization during the pandemic.
“We learned that all of the nutritional support that had been going out for people living in the streets had evaporated with all of the Covid closures,” Mitchell said. Last year, they made 200,000 meals. Several Luka’s employees transitioned to jobs at Community Kitchens. “We did stay together and just transitioned into an organization that’s helping feed people and getting meals out for free,” he continued.
While Alderete remains on the transition team to find a new executive director, Mitchell’s full-time attention has turned to Bar Skula. Both of the restaurants were created out of experiences that he wanted to bring back to Oakland. Noted Mitchell, “We called Luka’s a California brasserie based on places I’d been in France, Netherlands and Belgium.”
At Bar Skula, he’s bringing Iberian traditions in California to the restaurant with culinary influences from Baja California, Peru, Barcelona and Mexico City. The taproom with 16 beers didn’t make the move because the new space is much smaller. Skula offers what he calls “a very good local” hazy IPA, a pale lager and a non-alcoholic beer, but the new drinks menu focuses on wine and cocktails.
Before I dove into the menu, I asked Mitchell for recommendations. “We style ourselves a cevicheria and grill, so definitely try one of our raw and chilled seafood items,” he proposed. Nayarit is the most popular ceviche, made with albacore, onion, cilantro, mango, coconut milk, leche de tigre and chile de arbol oil ($24). “I’m a big fan of our seco tostadas and the albacore crudo tostadas as well,” Mitchell continued. “We have really nice oysters and scallops, half shells.” He also suggested the corn-husk wrapped halibut from the grilled section.
But the trout Veracruzana is his favorite dish. “It’s a dish with Mexican origins, but it reads very Spanish with olives and capers and sweet peppers rather than spicy,” Mitchell explained. Since we were coming in the next evening, he also mentioned a special that they used to serve at Luka’s—pan-seared black cod on a bed of summer succotash. Made with a fish fumé butter sauce, every bite of the perfectly poached cod, when paired with the corn and zucchini, tasted luxurious. Only the gigante beans were underdone.
Also stellar, an order of carne deshebrada dobladas ($14). Two masa empanadas are slathered with shredded braised beef, cabbage, crema and a chipotle sauce. It was one of my favorite plates of food this year. Much less interesting are the salad options. By mistake, we were first served an arugula salad with pink pickled onions ($10). It was very much a side salad and not a viable alternative for vegetarians.
When the romaine salad ($14) arrived, it was the leafy green equivalent of white bread. The creamy garlic dressing held the gloopy taste and texture of mayonnaise, and was without any detectable traces of garlic. Julienned bits of preserved lemon and fried capers added something desultory to the party. And the four croutons that landed on the plate were stale and, therefore, slightly insulting. None of these ingredients worked together. With access to all of the Bay Area’s farmers markets, it’s surprising that both salads could be so unimaginative. Especially when compared with the highs of the succotash and the dobladas.
For dessert, we ordered mini-churros ($12). They’re presented vertically, the way that fancy french fries are served. I responded to the churros the way that I respond to french fries. I ate too many of them, not pausing long enough to think about what I was doing. They came with two dipping sauces, molten chocolate and dulce de leche, which only added to my ruination. As I walked away from the table, I exclaimed, “That was seven churros too many.” I’ve decided that will be the title of my autobiography.
Bar Skula, 542 Grand Ave., Oakland; barskula.com.
