A long-treasured haven for upscale plant-based cuisine is closing in Oakland.
Millennium, located at 5912 College Ave. in the Rockridge District, announced the news late last week on Instagram. “It’s clear to us right now that this isn’t financially sustainable for us anymore. We just aren’t busy enough to keep operating this way,” co-owner Alison Bagby said in the video.
The restaurant’s last day is scheduled for May 16. The restaurant is encouraging its fans to come try their favorite dishes, and financially support the staff, before the lights go dark.
Millennium debuted in 1994 in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, back when vegan cuisine still seemed edgy and different. Bagby and executive chef Eric Tucker later assumed co-ownership and moved to the restaurant to Oakland in 2015.
It aimed to be a “vegan restaurant that has food that omnivores love — which I can’t say as much about the other places I’ve worked,” Bagby told production company The RV Project the year it moved. “Eric just knows how to make plants taste delicious.”
The menu is inspired by global cuisine and farmers markets throughout the Bay Area. And it gained a fervent following. Over the years, Millennium snatched a Bib Gourmand award from the Michelin Guide and rose to the top of local and national food lists for plant-based restaurants.
Pictured in this 2015 file photograph is the Red Lentil Lemongrass Coconut Curry, with jasmine rice cake, Asian vegetables, kohlrabi, Blue Lake green beans, gai lan, anise glazed yuba, ginger-black bean oil, Thai basil, spicy plum and shallot sambal at Millennium in Oakland. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
But the pandemic took its toll, and crowds have thinned in recent years. This January, the restaurant started offering free crusted oyster mushrooms as a promotional deal, posting online: “We won’t be busy enough to stay open past 7:30 tonight, and tomorrow is looking similarly slow.”
“Like so many independent restaurants, the years since 2020 have been incredibly hard,” Bagby said in the latest Instagram post. “We’ve been doing our best. The lack of sufficient business really tells us it’s been hard for everybody. And we get it.”
Bagby thanked the restaurant’s customers for their support and the staff for their years of service. And the co-owner extended a sprig of hope, saying that the Millennium team hopes to put together “something small, intentional and sustainable after this current chapter closes.”
The date for that unspecified dining project is the end of May, Bagby added, “so please stay tuned for updates.”