This ‘martini dive bar’ is the best new cocktail spot in the Bay Area

If you order the eponymous cocktail at Tallboy, a self-described “martini dive bar” in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood, you’ll get a drink that’s not only stiff and strong but teetering on the edge of saline. 

That’s no accident. To get the Tallboy Martini just right, owner Den Stephens says, the team tried every gin they could find. “We absolutely ran it through the gantlet,” he says. “We knew we wanted to create a lower-proof, crushable, but sophisticated martini.” 

They landed on a combination that’s 50% gin and, in lieu of vermouth, 50% manzanilla sherry, plus a touch of Jacobsen sea salt. Further, the gin is split between Bombay Sapphire and Gordon’s — a highbrow-lowbrow mashup befitting the 4-month-old bar.

Although fino and manzanilla sherry both come from the same grape (Palomino), Stephens preferred the latter’s oceanic quality, as it’s produced on the coast of Spain. The resulting martini, he adds, is “delicate, and there’s tension.” 

It’s also $10, an almost unheard-of price for a cocktail in the Bay Area.

The endless debates over the martini — what should go in it, what shouldn’t, how boozy it should be — can be tedious to those of us who don’t become argumentative after throwing back our second. But Tallboy may have the antidote. Stephens’ driving goal is simple: “How much cheeky irreverence can we fit into one relatively large space?”

Having endured some growing pains, like closing for a couple of days in August to expand the bar, Tallboy is back at fighting strength. In honoring the lineage of its signature drink, Stephens isn’t afraid to pay tribute to some saccharine concoctions, like a lychee martini, that might cause purists to blanch. Only instead of the hangover-inducing vodka-plus-lychee-plus-extra-sugar formula, Tallboy uses mezcal, with lime for acid and fino sherry for depth. 

There’s even a version of an appletini — essentially, the mid-aughts in a glass. Yes, Tallboy makes it with DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker, a truly unfashionable mixer in our era of foraged garnishes and fat washes. “It’s a surprisingly underrated ingredient,” Stephens says of the candy-green schnapps. “We know that these are oft-maligned drinks, but they still got us here. They brought us to the dance. Period.”

While martinis are the focal point at Tallboy — named for the 16-ounce can of beer, although it could be a reference to Stephens, who stands 6-foot-7 — the menu is broad, with beer, wine, a host of non-martini cocktails, $4 Jell-O shots, and nonalcoholic options like cucumber-mint lemonade and a Thai iced-tea slushy. Celebratory types can choose between bottles of “nerdy” Champagne (Paul Laurent Cuvée de Fondateur Brut, $72) and “baller” Champagne (Moet & Chandon Brut Imperial, $130). There are also “Cheekies,” 1-ounce cocktails from the freezer ($3), like a mini Boulevardier or the Mezzymeister, a 50-50 combination of mezcal and Jägermeister that sounds like a frat-house dare but goes down smooth.

There’s also a food menu crowned by hot dogs from the team behind Oakland’s much-missed Lion Dance Cafe, the Singaporean-slash-Cal-Italian sensation that closed in April. Everything coming out of Tallboy’s kitchen is vegan, a decision made less out of concern for animal welfare than for maximum accessibility. Served on brioche buns, the dogs are a new product from plant-based purveyor Impossible Foods — and, upon snapping into a mustard-and-onion-slathered Classic, this carnivorous reporter couldn’t tell it was meatless. 

Stephens and Lion Dance founder C-Y Chia had been emailing back-and-forth about hot dogs for years, and they became fundamental to Tallboy’s high-low ethos. “We wanted to be really casual and really informal, and hot dogs seemed perfect for that,” he says, adding that when he first tasted Chia’s offerings, he began stammering with glee. Now, Tallboy is one of Impossible’s biggest accounts. “We never saw this coming, that I would be, like, the vegan hot dog magnate of the East Bay.”