Oakland

Saucy? Old Oakland Restaurant’s Name Begs The Question

by Sarah Bass | Jul 27, 2023 10:50 am

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Posted to: Food

Saucy, a pan-Asian pop-up turned brick-and-mortar restaurant, has occupied at its current location on 8th Street in Old Oakland since spring of 2022. A few blocks from BART, Jack London Square, city center, and downtown, its handmade window signage and outdoor picnic table drew us in. The name prompted an obvious question: How’s the sauce?

On a previous visit, I had found the sauces lacking, despite the name in the window. Figuring maybe I had ordered the wrong dishes, I returned with my friend Simone to give the restaurant a second try.

Sauce matters: the elements of a meal or dish should work in harmony with one another, and the right sauce or sauces can be just the way to make that happen — pulling together disparate flavors, marrying the crunch with the ooze and the sweet or bitter with acidic or creamy.

This time around, Simone chose the hamachi pokè lunch set and a passion fruit lemonade,. I ordered the saucy veggie udon, clocking in at $20, $8, and $16, respectively.

We filled our waters, disposed of the trash left on the outdoor table, then sat in the sun with our buzzer. A few minutes later, the server brought Simone a lemonade garnished with a lime slice and blueberries skewered with a tiny gold ball.

Slightly sweet, lightly tart, just barely effervescent, it hit all the right spots without setting off a pucker or leaving any cloying sugary aftertaste. I think we both knew that this high was not likely to be sustained through the whole meal. But that $8, 12-ounce mason jar of who-knows-what mixture was good.

A short while later our buzzer went off, and Simone went to fetch our meals. She returned with a bowl of vibrantly sauced noodles for me and a sweet box of rice, edamame, kimchi, salad, and pokè for her.

Her salad glistened in its dressing. The fish sat in a thick coating of creamy sauces, bits of pink visible through the pastels.

My bowl presented an almost shockingly red-orange sauce covering fat udon noodles, pieces of shiitake mushrooms, and a few stalks of charred broccolini. 

As sauce is wont to do, much of it pooled at the base of the bowl, so I frequently mixed the noodles to redistribute with bites. The noodles were a nice middle ground of chewy but not too firm, slippery in their sauce but not so much so as to make an enormous mess. (Side note: I was wearing an ivory colored blazer and am shocked it made it out unscathed.)

The broccolini was in pieces a bit too large to eat in one bite, which added to the messiness of consumption. But their fresh greenness and deep char provided much needed flavor and chewing contrasts to the bowl.

The shiitakes, on the other hand, did not appear to be cooked in any meaningful way, some small caps whole, the rest in chunks that got a bit lost amidst the similarly colored and textured noodles. I did not notice major umami emanating from them either, which I felt the dish lacked as a whole.

The plentiful sauce was smooth and luscious and left a slight spice on the palate, but no discernable, distinctive flavor, no acid or sweetness or, again, umami, to balance it out. As the dish dwindled, I also noticed the sauce beginning to separate more, looking and feeling a bit less appealing. Noodles swimming in neutral-flavored oil sauce doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Back to Simone’s meal. She liked the kimchi and the drowned fish well enough, and found the accouterments (edamame, salad, rice) did the job if not with any special touch.

Neither of us cleared our proverbial plates, but we left satiated. As a glutton for chewy carbs, I had my needs met. Her sampler set was good, but not good enough to return and pay for again.

The lemonade, the true standout, was savored to the end. And the blueberry I ate that had been soaking in the drink was an excellent pop of freshness to cut the heavy sauce from the noodle dish.

For a restaurant founded on the back of pop-ups built around homemade sauces (so says their website), Saucy perhaps has lost some finesse in the moves and growth over the years. But it has retained its efficiency, aesthetic appeal, prime location, and fresh, house-made foods that are nourishing people. Mostly the wealthier omnivores, but the people nonetheless. 

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Sit down/table service Y
Outdoor seating Y
Takeout Y

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Ready to go options/cafeteria style N
Less than 15 min wait Y
Under $20 w/tax and tip N
Many options under $20 N
More than 1 veg option Y

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Open weekdays Y
Open weekends Saturday Y/Sunday N
Open Mondays N
Bartable Y