Hopscotch Catering & Takeout • Oakland — Restaurant in Oakland

Hopscotch can be a very conflicting experience. Brunch is great; dinner is lackluster. Service is great; then it sucks. One dish can be amazing; the next dish can be a dud. I've been here a few times, and always leave scratching my head, wondering how I should feel. Here are some takeaways:

First of all, the place is TINY. I think maybe eight tables and a bar with eight stools. It can be very crowded, so factor that into your plans.

Brunch is very solid. The fried chicken is out of this world, maybe the best I've had in California. The Bloody Mary is fantastic. They'll even do a solid French 75, which isn't always the best experience if the bartender doesn't know their stuff. If you sit at the bar, the bartenders are always pleasant and your service (and your cocktails) will be great. Get the donuts, you won't regret it.

A few days ago we went in for a Christmas special "whole lamb platter," which consisted of a few different cuts of lamb, broccoli romanesco, cauliflower puree, and cornbread. It sounded good in the e-mail, but the dinner was just... underwhelming. For $65 we got a "portion for two" that was generously made for one, and immediately regretted not ordering something else. All of the food was fine, but none of it was special.

The service was also pretty bad. When we asked for cocktail pairings instead of wine pairings, the waitress basically said, "Um, well, the wine is really good. Are you sure you don't want wine?" and then offered no help when it came to cocktails. In a place that actually has a great bar, you'd think they would be more willing to talk cocktails. We felt like we were being pushed hard towards the wine pairings in a gross, upselly-type way, and it was a bummer.

I keep thinking I should go back to Hopscotch and give them another try, because for every negative point, there's a positive point. Really and truly, I've had some great bites and drinks here. But it's just not solid enough to stay in my thoughts or stomach for long, especially with so many great restaurants in the Oakland/Berkeley area.

Hopscotch needs to up its game. There are some ballers...

I came here for my 30th birthday during Restaurant Week and the team at Hopscotch was very accommodating leading up to dinner - very responsive over email, answering questions, giving me an option to add a customizable message on the menu, etc.

I didn’t have a cocktail but my friends did and they all enjoyed them. The Norteño comes to mind as a particularly good one with green pepper vodka (perhaps from St. George’s?). Nice selection of wine that is reasonably priced. As for the food, Restaurant Week for our group size was a set menu, family style.

A few key items: started off with a kale salad (👍🏽), Kakiage - tempura veggie/bamboo shoots which was great, and burrata with squash (best of the bunch).

For the mains, the spatzel with brats was fine but nothing unique about it. Same with the buttermilk fried chicken which seems to be their most popular dish (not as much flavor as expected and ours were a bit dried out). The soba malfadine carbonara was great! I added some salt to bring out the flavors after breaking the yolk but I liked the fusion between Japanese + Italian.

Dessert was awesome. Loved the donut and mud pie combo. Donut could’ve been hotter but I imagine it’s because of our large party + the extra 45 seconds of the HBD song 😆

Overall, I didn’t think it was worth the $40 price tag, mostly because the quantities weren’t on par. Now, this might be due to the group/family style/restaurant week factor but none of us left full. One note about their service: they graciously comped one meal as my gluten-free guest was mostly neglected throughout the meal. I had to ask several times what she could eat and what she couldn’t eat despite stating in advance and getting confirmation days before) her dietary restrictions. That bit was disappointing but this stuff happens and I appreciated their manager apologizing profusely and making amends. Would I return? Possibly but perhaps with a...

Discrimination! Went to lunch with a reservation. The waiter was disinterested in serving us from the beginning. Didn't say hi, not even to my 2 year old. Server was extremely dry when taking our order. I ordered a mimosa which took over 30min to come after I asked 2x. After 45min our food still had not come even though people around us which came after us and ordered after us had already received their food. The server was avoiding coming to our table chatting with other tables. At this point my 2 year was starving and crying. I went to the server and inquired about the food to which she literally acted annoyed about my inquiry. Part of our food finally came 10min after that. My child was crying and on the floor as it was nearly 2pm and we had Sat down just before 1pm. I took one tiny sip of my drink and decided we had enough were not comfortable being treated like this. As we were about to leave the server told us they were out of biscuits and would take it off our bill. We ordered our food almost an hour ago and you wait until then to tell us? No empathy for us having a starving small child. They even had the nerve to charge us after all that. I can't understand why we would be treated like that other than we were the only Indians at the restaurant. This place has an issue with customers who don't "fit it". If you read others who had similar experiences there's a pattern. I will never dine here and make it a point to tell everyone in my network about the poor treatment...