Fill Your Belly at Full House Café
East Bay Eater SFist Julie reports in from the other side of the MacArthur Maze!
To tell you the truth, we were hesitant to share this restaurant review with you, because we were worried that you would swarm our favorite neighborhood breakfast place and extend our wait for corned beef hash, but now, with the collapse of the 80/580 interchange, we have nothing to worry about. So here goes...
There are many good and great places for breakfast in the East Bay. Maybe it’s the easier parking, the slower-paced lifestyle, but in all our 18 years of living in the Bay Area, while we’ve had a good breakfast or two on the west side of the water, we always have associated a leisurely sunny Sunday scramble and coffee with Berkeley and Oakland.
And while locals and tourists flock to Bette’s Oceanview Diner on Fourth Street, and Berkeley foodies will wait forever for a table at the tiny Rick & Ann’s, we will now share with you one of our secret out-of-the-way favorites: the Full House Café.
Located in the unassuming Laurel District, off of 580 between 35th and High streets, the Full House is friendly, welcoming, generally blessed with not-too-long of a wait — especially in the earlier hours of the morning, and serves, of course, fabulous food.
In keeping with the name, the décor includes a fair amount of poker-referenced art, including that poster of the card-playing dogs. And perhaps in homage to the fresh ingredients, and a simpler time, walls are also adorned with burlap potato and vegetable sack art.
But the food is the thing. We love the hashes.
After the jump: corned beef hash, lots of other hashes, and -- can it be?? -- even more meat options!
Our favorite is the corned beef hash, with its fluffy darkly-crusted potatoes and thick chunks of salty meat, served with grilled tomatoes, creamy mustard horseradish sauce, and two poached eggs ($9.25). We HIGHLY suggest that you pay the extra 50 cents for the homemade biscuits: square cut, buttery, dense-yet-airy layered goodness, flecked with slivers of green onion.
Or the same fee buys you a choice of generously sized homemade muffin or coffee cake. On our recent visit, options included cherry-almond or blueberry cakes, and lemon-poppyseed or ginger muffins.
And corned beef isn’t the only hash available. Full House is unique in its selection of hashes: smoked chicken, red flannel (made with bacon, beets, and potatoes), Portobello mushroom, and additional daily special offerings.
Another reason we trek to this spot is the housemade sausage patties and chorizo — both excellent, perfectly spiced representatives of the ground meat product genre, if that’s your thing (like it is ours).
Yet another specialty item we find here and nowhere else is their Greek yogurt. Thicker than the usual stuff, almost like a creamy pudding, it’s available as part of a generous fruit-granola-honey combination bowl ($4.25) — or take our advice and order it on the side with your banana-pecan cornmeal waffle, served with real maple syrup, of course ($4.50 for plain waffle, $1.00 each for fruit and nut additions).
And yes, there are also omelets and benedicts, French toast and pancakes, frittatas and specialty scrambles like the LEO, hot link, and Mexican.
We find the coffee to be fine and strong, but if you want something in the espresso range, or to select from a broad range of fancy and medicinal herbal teas, feel free to cross the street to World Ground Café beforehand. Full House will let you bring in outside drinks, for a 50-cent “cuppage” charge.
A sandwich, soup, and salad lunch menu is available as well, from 11a.m. – 2:30 p.m., and that’s all good too. But for us, this spot is a champion in our breakfast book.
Full House Café
3719 MacArthur Blvd
Oakland
510-482-2200
Open Tuesday – Sunday, 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
(and they're on vacation until May 2)