Oakland bar and restaurant Friends and Family will close on Saturday, December 20. With it goes nearly six years worth of memories for the Bay Area’s restaurant industry and queer community. The restaurant is still taking private bookings in January and February. Owner Blake Cole says it was not a decision made overnight. “We were a special place to people,” Cole says, “but we just weren’t consistently busy enough. We opened under overwhelming debt and just kept trying to get out of that hole.”
She let her many fans know of the impending closure on Sunday, November 2, via Instagram. The restaurant opened at the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, scheduled days after the shelter-in-place mandate was implemented. Since then the business was named a 2022 semifinalist in the Outstanding Bar Program category by the James Beard Awards and as No. 33 on the 50 Best Bars North America. In 2024, former State Bird Provisions chef Gaby Maeda joined the team, pioneering powerful dishes including upscale onigiri and the creamy roe-topped les eggs.
The accolades weren’t enough to overcome its debt, though. Though Friends and Family was exactly the place Cole and her team dreamt of, the financials never bore out. Cole says she has been working without a salary for years. The hope was that summer 2025 would be the one to push the numbers up. “We have one of the greatest chefs in our kitchen,” Cole says. “If that’s not going to do it, we had to ask ourselves if this was going to work.”
Maeda started going to the bar in 2020 and says she watched Cole navigate all those decisions and hurdles: parklets, outdoor dining, to-go cocktails. Maeda’s gig was meant to be temporary, coming off her time at State Bird Provisions — navigating those same pandemic-era difficulties. “The last five or six years, places come and go and we forget there’s this real struggle,” Maeda says.
Working with Cole changed Maeda’s life, and she wanted to be a big part of the Friends and Family story. The grounding that Maeda found working at the bar and restaurant was rare for her in the restaurant industry.
Going forward, Cole says the space is on the market to sell. The brand won’t go away, but until they find someone to take the lease off their hands Friends and Family will operate with private events and dinners. Both Cole and Maeda are looking forward to cooking on the road; they both participated at the Hawai’i Food and Wine Festival in fall 2025.
That queer diners in the Bay area losing a place of refuge isn’t lost on Cole and Maeda. Economic times are tough, Cole says, and flexible income isn’t as available as it used to be. It’s endearing to see the outpouring of emotion in the face of this closing news, but frustrating for the two as they recognize restaurant trends have changed. Even a successful bar or restaurant is still down to the wire, Cole says. Both are fully proud of the business and will keep it alive in the future.
“I’ve never seen a space where the staff has really built these life-long relationships,” Maeda says. “It’s generational. There’s something soulful about it. But the magic is that it is for everyone.”