A celebrated Oakland restaurant known for rare California-Israeli cuisine is closing after five years on Piedmont Avenue.
Chef-owner Mica Talmor of Pomella told SFGATE that she is closing her restaurant at 3770 Piedmont Ave. on May 26 due to shrinking sales and rising costs for everything from food and packaging to labor and utilities. Many restaurants in the Bay Area have called it quits for similar reasons .
“The space is large and doesn’t really align with the business model anymore,” she told SFGATE in a phone interview. “As people are spending less money eating out, they want to go to a date night place or the place that just opened. We’re an everyday place. We’re casual. It’s really hard right now, and I just don’t see how it’s going to change in the future. And I don’t have the resources to wait it out. I think it might get worse with the tariffs and everything else going on.”…