Watching MLB Around Oakland
It’s been a fun month of baseball in the Bay Area. Watching the Oakland Athletics win the American League West Division and the San Francisco Giants one game away from the World Series has been truly exciting. What makes baseball fun to watch is having people around you to help cheer on your team with food and drinks. My friends and I have been checking out places in Oakland to watch games and having a good time.
The Warehouse (Bar & Grill) in Jack London Square is a dive bar where you can easily find a spot at the bar and have inexpensive food and drinks. Their chicken wings are something to talk about as they sell them by the pound.
If you are looking for something bigger with a sports bar feel, the Grand Oaks Restaurant & Sports Lounge in the Lakeshore Area is a place to consider. There is an upstairs and downstairs with plenty of big screen televisions.
Quinn’s Lighthouse is a historic landmark in Oakland. Not only can you watch the game in the upper deck pub upstairs, but you can eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor.
When my BFF asked me to happy hour and watch the Giants play on Friday at the Vietnamese restaurant Vo’s in Uptown Oakland, I was intrigued. Happy hour runs from 3pm-7pm daily and their bar bites menu looked good with lots of fun finger foods.
We shared several items. The crispy harvest rolls are basically fried egg rolls with shrimp and chicken with Vietnamese fish sauce. They were delicious even without pork.
The chicken lettuce wraps are iceberg lettuce that you use as a cup for their filling of chicken, mushroom, water chestnuts, and peanuts. They have Sriracha sauce on the side.
We also ordered the shrimp spring rolls which are the healthy version of egg rolls. Rice paper is used to wrap around the shrimp, rice noodles, lettuce, and cucumber and dipped into a ginger peanut sauce. This is a typical Vietnamese appetizer, but it was quite fresh.
I have never heard of basil onion rings, but they were really good. Onions as well as basil pieces are deep fried. I really thought the fried basil was amazing. It came with a house made tomato-mustard and basil sauce to dip.
My absolute favorite thing was the spicy chicken wings. This bar bite proves that you don’t need a batter to fry good chicken. It came with a pepper lime sauce.
It wasn’t my first time at Vo’s, but it was the first time it made a good impression. Of course it did as the margarita and the bar food was good, and the Giants won!
