Owner/chef Geoff Davis poses for a photo at Burdell in Oakland, Calif., on Sept. 6, 2023.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
One of the Bay Area’s most celebrated chefs is taking over a beloved Oakland restaurant space in a second venture that will be a total departure from his nationally recognized food.
Geoff Davis, of Michelin-recommended Oakland soul food restaurant Burdell, is launching Uncle’s, a neighborhood bar and grill inside what is currently Oakland’s Wood Tavern, Davis confirmed to SFGATE. The news was first reported by Food & Wine.
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Wood Tavern, a staple for 20 years, announced its closure last week. When the brasserie at 6317 College Ave. shutters at the end of the year, Davis and his team will move in and begin building out what will be a 1970s-inspired homage to restaurants like San Francisco’s Brazen Head and Tadich Grill, and to hanging out with his uncles, particularly his Uncle Thea, who died when Davis was in elementary school.
“He loved having people over to grill steaks in the backyard, so it’s channeling that and just the idea of uncles,” Davis said. “It means a lot of things in Black culture and Filipino culture. As I’ve been doing this for a while and gotten older, I have a lot of employees and former employees who also call me Unc.”
The menu will focus on underrepresented cuts of steak like French coulotte and Brazilian picanha, plus martinis, oysters, Italian American pasta dishes and tableside Caesar salad. That latter dish is a throwback to Davis’ first job at a similar type of “nice” restaurant in his hometown of Modesto. He was just 16 or 17 at the time and wore a suit.
“I roasted the prime rib each day and did bananas foster and Caesar salad tableside,” he said. “I’m really nostalgic for that.”
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Unlike a traditional steakhouse, where doneness, sides and sauces are often chosen by customers, Davis plans to serve seasonal, composed plates designed by the kitchen. For example, a lighter bavette steak with tomatoes and horseradish in the summer and, come winter, a slow-cooked beef cheek finished in the smoker and served with chicories.
Davis also has a personal connection to Wood Tavern. He used to take his mother to dinner there whenever she was in town. It was also the first restaurant he went to when he moved to Oakland and began making his mark.
“It’s such an iconic Oakland spot,” he said.
Davis was originally looking at a different space around the corner, but when that “fell apart at the last minute,” he reached out to the owners of Wood Tavern as soon as the restaurant hit the market. His life partner, Zara Fernandez-Aurelio, is also a partner in the restaurant. He said with the help of Alex Spatzier Architects, they plan to reimagine the space, with a bar as the focal point.
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“If we borrowed some money from some friends and family in 1974 to open a restaurant and then kept it going in the ’80s and ’90s, how would it have changed and evolved? It will just feel like a restaurant that’s always been there,” he explained.
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Davis is a big proponent of Oakland and said he wants more people to realize how much of a miracle the city is. “The fact that we’re able to do stuff like this in Oakland and not have to take on VC money,” he said. “It’s funded by real people who care about us and Oakland and aren’t trying to get a bigger yacht.”
Davis has earned numerous accolades in recent years, including a place on Esquire’s Best New Restaurants list in 2023 and being named Food & Wine’s Restaurant of the Year in 2024. In 2024 and 2026, Davis was named a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: California. Burdell was added to the Michelin Guide in 2024.
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Editor’s note: This story was updated at 3:45 p.m., July 29, to correct the relationship between Davis and Fernandez-Aurelio.
