A Middle Eastern bakery with a hit following is coming back to its homeland of Oakland.
Reem’s, run by Palestinian-Syrian chef Reem Assil, is set to debut a large, new location in Jack London Square this fall. The 3,000-square-foot space will open at 85 Webster St. in the former spot of Timeless Coffee. It will be part production center – supplying Assil’s wholesale operations as well as the San Francisco restaurant Reem’s California Mission – and part cafe, with a menu of favorites like the spice-showered flatbreads called mana’eesh.
The news was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Assil is a former labor organizer who quit her job to open an Arabic street-corner bakery in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood in 2017. The concept actually began several years earlier, Assil recalls on her website, during an epiphany at a street bakery in Lebanon: “The scent of za’atar, yeasted bread and sweet orange-blossom syrup right out of the oven and the sounds of laughter and chatter in Arabic all around me conjured up memories of my childhood and my yearning to create home and community in the United States.”
Reem’s in Fruitvale became a community fixture adored by locals and critics alike. In 2018, Reem’s was honored in Food & Wine’s “Restaurants of the Year,” and in 2022 the James Beard Foundation picked Assil as a finalist for Outstanding Chef. The Fruitvale location closed in 2020.
Reem Assil’s original mana’eesh, the starring dish at Reem’s California in San Francisco, is also a quintessential street food of the Levant. (Alanna Hale)
Assil told the Chronicle that she envisions the Jack London Square facility as a supply post for Reem’s outlets throughout the Bay Area. The additional cafe will mainly be geared toward take-out orders.
There are also plans to have the new Reem’s be worker-owned by the time it opens. According to a post on the bakery’s Instagram seeking to raise funds:
“Many of us have experienced the overwhelm and despair of existing in a disaster capitalist society the past two years, being careful not to spend our dollars in ways that contribute to these oppressive systems. With this campaign, Reem’s invites everyone to proactively invest their dollars into a project that truly uplifts our communities, expanding our capacity to create worker-owned spaces, spread the warmth of Palestinian food and build generational wealth and resilience for our communities.”