East Bay Eats: The Seaman’s Soup Kitchen

Okay, it's really NOT a soup kitchen, but if you have a boat docked in Oakland’s Embarcadero Cove Marina (down the highway from Jack London Square and across from Alameda's Coast Guard Island), have a pot belly and a brush mustache, and a propensity for telling jokes like: “What kind of fish likes to sing? A tune-y fish!” -- and bursting into laughter at your own brilliance, you, too, have probably enjoyed a basket of fish and chips or a burger at Quinn’s Lighthouse Restaurant and Pub.

And, NO, we don’t own a boat. We did have a friend from England who was living here for a year, on a work visa at a business in a part of Oakland we’d never been to, and she was the one who introduced us to this little-known treasure of the East Bay. Ahoy and arrrrrgh!

After the jump: peanut shells, the historic lighthouse, and -- you can't go wrong with the classics (burgers and fish and chips)!