- In a unanimous decision Monday, Alameda’s Planning Board ruled that patrons of sports dive Club House should be allowed to gather behind the bar, even though neighbors complain that they “can be noisy and sometimes use foul language.” The East Bay Times reports that “noise issues between businesses on the block and nearby residents have been ongoing,” as Club House’s Park Street neighbor, slow-roast spot Spinning Bones, faced similar opposition in 2019. According to the Board, Club House’s guests can continue to hang out in its nicely-appointed backyard if they refrain from smoking and are under observation by staff-monitored surveillance cameras.
- Berkeley Bowl’s cashier training program is a rigorous, four-week process that only a third of its prospects complete, reports SF Gate. To make it through the boot camp, potential cashiers must memorize “somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 different produce items,” cashier turned project manager Chi Dixon says, starting with a seven-day crash course in the store’s top 100 fruits and vegetables…and if you don’t pass a test on those items at the end of the first week, your cashier journey is over before it ever really started.
- Five-year-old Oakland restaurant The Kebabery, a meaty spinoff from Camino owners Russell Moore and Allison Hopelain, will close for good on Sunday, the SF Chronicle reports. It will reopen in what was first expected to be the restaurant’s second location, the long-vacant 2929 Shattuck Ave. storefront that most recently housed a location of Simply Greek. That Berkeley location was expected to start serving customers in late 2019, as Nosh noted over two years ago, but now its owners say it’s on track to open “in the coming weeks” with an expansive kitchen, a dessert operation called Sesame a Tiny Bakery and eventual lunchtime service.
- The winemaking region of Livermore Valley is grappling with climate change, as an increase in wind has slowed the ripening of the area’s grapes, NBC Bay Area reports. The solution might be a plan to plant more grapes like Loire Valley fave cabernet franc, winemaker Steven Mirassou says, as the robust dark red ripens earlier in the season and “is particularly suited to the Livermore Valley.”
- The Concord location of Lin’s Buffet has been closed for years, but somehow, it caught fire Monday in a blaze that sent four ladder trucks to the scene, KPIX reports. “The structure did not have gas or electric and it was completely boarded up,” Contra Costa Fire Protection District Battalion Chief Dominic Ciotola said, so now investigators are attempting to determine the source of the flames.
