After searching across the East Bay for the past year, chef Jacob Croom has finally found a home for his first restaurant in Oakland. The Tartine alum and co-founder of popular Bay Area popup My Friend Fernando, known for seasonal, creative tortas, plans to open Pico, a Mexican bar and restaurant, at 365 19th St. in late winter.
“I want it to be a place where you can have a fun dinner with lots of drinks, or come in later to party and maybe have a bite to eat because you’ve been drinking all night,” he said.
The menu is still taking shape, but many dishes will build on My Friend Fernando hits. Customers often lined up at popups for tortas stuffed with mole-drenched maitake mushrooms or porchetta with pickled mango and herb salad. The pork milanesa torta, which Croom has served since the early days of the popup, will be on the menu at Pico. The sandwich features a huge pork chop breaded with panko and sunflower seeds, fried and dressed with salsa macha.
Croom also plans to serve seafood dishes, such as ceviche and tuna tostadas. At popups, these dishes have often featured a seasonal bent, such as tuna with carrot aguachile. Salads and fruit dishes will be on the menu, as well as bar snacks such as chorizo-stuffed chicken wings and birria fries. After 9 p.m., Pico will offer a smaller, late-night menu. The restaurant will close sometime between midnight and 2 a.m., sometimes with DJs spinning vinyls.
For cocktails, Croom envisions a collaborative relationship between the bar and kitchen, using the same fruit, vegetables and ferments in both drinks and dishes. The bar will also offer few beers and a short list of natural wines.
Jacob Croom makes a pork milanesa torta at a My Friend Fernando popup in 2021. He’s now opening his first restaurant, Pico. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle)
Pico will be casual: Customers will order at the bar and seat themselves. The restaurant will likely include bar seating, banquettes, two- and four-person tables and standing room near the back. Croom is working on the design with architect Aaron Porter, who co-owns Los Altos Mexican restaurant Tal Palo and previously ran Oakland’s now-closed bar The Trappist, where Croom once worked. The Pico space, a former Vietnamese restaurant, currently has an industrial feel, which Croom hopes to soften with red pendant lights, candles and artwork curated by his wife, art consultant Christine Koppes.
Croom has cooked at some of the Bay Area’s top restaurants: chef Daniel Patterson’s Alta, as well as Kronnerburger (both now closed) and Tartine Manufactory. After a year at Tartine, he became a sous chef at Salesforce. He launched My Friend Fernando during the pandemic in 2020 with baker Jaren Wilkinson; the pair met working at Alta and reconnected at Tartine Manufactory. Croom left Salesforce in 2022 to focus on My Friend Fernando, which has become a means for him to reconnect with his Mexican heritage. He named the popup after his maternal grandfather, Fernando Almanza, who left Mexico for Southern California at the age of 15 and once ran a restaurant in East Los Angeles. Pico refers to Pico Rivera in Los Angeles County, where Croom’s mother was raised and Croom grew up visiting his grandfather.
Croom originally hoped to open Pico in Hayward, where he lives. Although he found vacant storefronts, few were equipped for a restaurant. While looking at a Hayward property, a landlord directed him to the downtown Oakland space.
He’s excited to join the neighborhood’s nightlife scene, with Bar 355, Drexl and natural wine bar the Punchdown, where My Friend Fernando once held a residency, nearby. “It just felt right in a whole lot of ways,” Croom said.
Pico. Opening late 2026 or early 2027. 365 19th St., Oakland. instagram.com/pico.oakland
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This article originally published at Oakland to get a creative Mexican restaurant from a Tartine alum.