Sideshow Kitchen Follows a Mash-up Fusion Ethos

Sideshow Kitchen Follows a Mash-up Fusion Ethos

PHOTO BY LORI EANES

West Bank shawarma is just one the many choices at Sideshow Kitchen.


Halal beef, free-range chicken, cage-free eggs, organic produce, and local ingredients find their way into Mexi Cali Shawarma, kimchee-aioli wings, hot-link-and-Diablo-sauce sandwiches, sangria, and other Sideshow Kitchen menu items.

He’s a personal trainer and private fitness coach. Committed to “healthy lifestyles and good habits,” as he puts it, Mike Beatrice is both founder and head coach of a gym—Oakland Fitness Company—and owner of the Home Grown Oakland juice bar, noted for its kale-cucumber-coconut oil smoothies and ginger-miso-brown-rice bowls.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love thick juicy burgers and Korean barbecue.

And that’s why they’re on the menu at Sideshow Kitchen, a fusion-tastic dog- and kid-friendly indoor-outdoor industrial-chic hangout that Beatrice—with his brother, cousin, and other partners—opened in August between Bushrod and the Emeryville border.

Choosing the location was easy: “It’s right up the street from our house. It’s in the center of a neighborhood that needed more life and a place for people to go. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 15 years. My daughter’s mom grew up here. It’s fun to have a business in the same neighborhood where we’re raising our kids.”

The five founding partners “all represent different ethnicities. One of us is Nicaraguan. My mother’s Filipino. All our friends are different races,” Beatrice said. “So, with a lot of love, we paired it all together and pretty much made up our own recipes” for the Mexi Cali Shawarma, kimchee-aioli wings, hot-link-and-Diablo-sauce sandwiches, sangria, and other Sideshow Kitchen menu items—which incorporate halal beef, free-range chicken, cage-free eggs, organic produce, and “as many local ingredients as we can find.”

His brother Aaron, who helms Petaluma-based Sons of Salvage, outfitted the space—formerly  occupied by Grease Box—with reclaimed wood, live plants, and artwork “to create an organic, modern, open-air vibe that shows off the cool history of this century-old building,” proving once and for all that urbanity can be cozy.

“We’ve been told that this was once a train depot. If that’s true, then it has always served as a meeting place. That’s what we want to bring back to life about it and to continue—the opportunity of creating, and having, a hub.”

 

Sideshow Kitchen, 942 Stanford Ave., Oakland, 510-808-7519, SideshowKitchen.com.