Eating is just one of about 20 things to do at Oakland’s plank.

Theme restaurants used to be a thing: your circus-themed ice-cream parlor, say. Or your Mars-themed burger bar.

Bowling-alley dining also used to be a thing: fries and shakes punctuated by that perpetual roll-crash-rumble-roll.

Both of those things ceased being things for a few decades. They became passé. But then —as is the case with most of history, despite our slack-jawed surprise when it happens—they returned. And, in at least one local case, these two reanimated food fads coalesced.

That local case, that local place, is plank, in lower-cased glory. It’s the home of the mountainous applewood bacon/Swiss/mayo/wild-mushroom Broadway Burger, the juicy stout mustard/caramelized onions/pickled jalapeños Oakland Dog, and the dare-you-to-stand-up-straight-afterwards Don Julio Blanco/Triple Sec/lime-juice/cranberry Oakland Cosmo.

Specializing in “concept” restaurants and seeking to expand its portfolio into the Bay Area, the Los Angeles-based Trifecta Management Group selected Oakland as the place to manifest its vision of a highly interactive urban eat-play hub.

It was an ambitious vision whose probable price boggles the mind. On the sprawling site departed in 2010 by Barnes & Noble now stands a Bladerunnerishly futuristic split-level world-within-a-world encompassing a restaurant, a circular full-service bar, 18 state-of-the-art bowling lanes ($5.50 a game per person or $55 per lane an hour), plus 60 interactive arcade-style sports, action and other arcade games (50 cents to $3 per game). There is also a panoramic 21-and-over-only lounge—dubbed “The Boardroom”—that offers six boutique bowling lanes, two billiards tables, a separate bar, cutting-edge audio-visual facilities, an upstairs dining room and patio. Wow.

And that’s only plank’s indoor part.

Outdoors, mere steps from the nearest sailboat and occupying 15,000 square feet, are fire pits, picnic-style seating, three 60-foot bocce courts ($6 to $9 a person an hour) and a beer garden serving 50 local handcrafted brews on tap, including Oakland-based Line 51, Walnut Creek-based Calicraft, and San Leandro-based Drake’s.

Installed indoors and outdoors, including above each bowling lane, are 40 high-definition flat-screen TVs tuned to sporting events. And that’s the point of plank: sports. Games. Winners, losers, defeats, victories. You should have seen its Warriors-watching crowds.

If you dislike games, you’ll pretty much hate plank. If game-lovers drag you there, you could sit outside sipping a 20-ounce Linden Street Common Lager or a sturdy Bloody Plank (Absolut, Bloody Mary mix, barbecue sauce, Tabasco and applewood bacon) alongside garlic-aioli fried pickles and a dozen sweet-chile buffalo wings while sniffing the salt air. But you’d still hear the click of balls and the TV-sports roar.

If you like games, plank’s a wonderland.

A little healthy competition can really crank up the hunger and thirst. And what kind of food feeds play-to-win appetites? Assertive. Generous. Un-vague. With big strong drinks to match.

That’s what’s served at plank. Hefty sandwiches. Meal-sized salads. Amply topped, almost-thick-crusted pizzas. Tender-crispy tater tots that go so well with tall, cold glasses of local beer, bourbon cocktails, vodka-spiked sweet tea, and hard lemonade. As is not the case at many other trendy restaurants, at plank you’ll never wonder what that thing on your plate is, or how to eat it, or whose idea it was to put Gruyère and gochujang sauce in sorbet.

“We created the menu by incorporating items that are easy to eat with hands, skewers, or another functional tool, and showcase big, bold flavors,” says plank’s executive chef Bradley Rishmany. “We wanted to provide dishes that are bright and colorful and stand up for themselves.”

Which they are. And they do. These hearth-oven pizzas—the pesto/pepper/pickled-onion/wild-mushroom/onion Veggie and applewood bacon/Mozzarella/green-onion Curry Chicken, among others—stand and deliver. Smoky, plump, piled-high-with-sauerkraut bratwursts; beer-battered fish-and-chips; and fusiony ginger-soy-grilled Asian-style pork burritos and char siu tacos are unpretentiously mouthwatering and gratifyingly filling. Colossal, brioche-bun-runneth-over burgers feature turkey or locally farmed beef patties. Meatless standouts include a bittersweet, texture-tastic watermelon-feta salad and a feta/cranberry/spicy-nuts/baby-kale salad, and both are generously portioned (another Bay Area relative rarity) and decisively dressed.

“I really do love everything on the menu. I wouldn’t put anything on there that I wouldn’t like,” Rishmany asserts. “Our menu was built as a core menu that changes seasonally, supplemented with weekly specials that the sous chefs create. We also recently launched a quick-serve menu that we offer during peak periods.”

A lunch menu was also launched this spring.

Creamy white-bean hummus. Spunky chipotle-beer-broth mussels. Awash in caramely syrup, melt-in-the-mouth-fluffy flan. This is satisfying, fun, family-friendly food. But—and you can take this as an advertisement or a threat—you’ll be hard-pressed to converse during meals here. Old-skool bowling alleys had noise issues. Compound that with towering TVs, other game noises, and the no-absorbent-surfaces, all-concrete-and-steel design ethic for which this decade will always be known and, even at uncrowded times, you’ll find yourself shouting merely to be heard across the table.

Buying takeout from here, if you’re not a game-lover, isn’t actually a terrible idea.

It’s high time that the East Bay had an all-inclusive, all-ages place where friends, families, coworkers, and total strangers can feel welcome together while eating, drinking, enjoying bay views, watching gigantic TVs, and hurling balls around. With its designed-down-to-the-last-inch vastness—soaring ceilings, geometrically gorgeous suspended lighting fixtures, sanitary-sleek blond wood and leatherette seating, circus-colored arcade games, and soaring expanses of shiny surfacing—plank feels a bit more corporate than stereotypical East Bayites tend to tolerate. Yet its beers and cocktails are crafted; its food is chef-created. Both are, to a decent extent, locally sourced.

It’s all up to the crowds, now. Can they finally make Jack London Square, and its almost-a-year-old eat-play-love (at least, love games) beer/bowl/bocce/burger-opolis a thing?

plank

98 Broadway,
Oakland, 510-817-0980
www.plankoakland.com
Open daily 11am-midnight
(21 and over only after 9pm)
Food and drinks $4-$15.
Beer, wine, and spirits served.
Accepts credit cards.