"He was like, 'Bro, this is your kitchen. This is where you started your first takeout. Come back,'" chef Eric Rivera told KQED in September. He was describing the owner of Two Star Market, the convenience store at 2020 MacArthur Blvd. near Cañon Avenue.
The owner had started looking for a new tenant for the small kitchen inside the store. When he heard that a Sept. 3 fire had damaged Rivera's Puerto Rican Street Cuisine on 23rd Avenue, he called. Puerto Rican Street Cuisine reopened in that kitchen on Saturday, Oct. 3, Oaklandside's Nosh roundup reported.
That makes it at least the fifth named food business to cook out of the same room. The Dimond has had bigger restaurant spaces, but few have stayed busy as long as this counter behind the store's aisles. It is also how Puerto Rican food came back to the neighborhood.
A Takeout Counter With a Long Line of Tenants
Before any of the names below, the store's takeout counter was known as The Snack Bar, according to a 2015 East Bay Express profile. Here is how the kitchen has turned over since then.
| Years | Kitchen | Who ran it | What happened next |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before Borinquen Soul | The Snack Bar | Not named in the reporting | Gave way to Borinquen Soul |
| 2015 to 2017 | Borinquen Soul | Eric Rivera and Chris Caraballo | Closed in 2017 when the owners went separate ways |
| 2017 to early 2021 | La Perla | José "Cheo" Ortiz | Moved to its own restaurant at 3409 Fruitvale Ave. |
| By spring 2024 into 2025 | Dimond Kitchen | Carl Bolling | Counter closed in 2025 |
| Oct. 3, 2026 to now | Puerto Rican Street Cuisine | Eric Rivera | Lease runs at least a year |
Rivera and Caraballo started Borinquen Soul as a food truck in 2012, and the store's kitchen was their first fixed address. Three of the five businesses on that list served Puerto Rican food. For most of the past decade, a MacArthur Boulevard corner store has been one of the main places in Oakland to find it.
La Perla Outgrew the Room
La Perla's path shows what the Two Star kitchen does well and what it can't do. José Ortiz took over the counter after Borinquen Soul and cooked there from 2017. Eater SF reported in 2020 that he wanted room to grow and to serve larger groups.
The move came in early 2021, and it stayed in the Dimond. According to Berkeleyside, La Perla took over a 1,500-square-foot former Subway at 3409 Fruitvale Ave., near Bienati Way, and invested about $80,000 to renovate it. By its first anniversary in February 2022, the family was adding a parklet. Ortiz's son Gabriel and daughter-in-law Kimly Touch Ortiz were running day-to-day operations.
So the corner store served as a starting kitchen. A business could build a following there for a few years, then move a few blocks away into a full dining room.
Puerto Rican Food Left the Dimond in 2024
La Perla's stay on Fruitvale ended on Nov. 30, 2024. The Oaklandside reported that the restaurant was moving to the Castro Valley Marketplace at 3295 Castro Valley Blvd., closer to the family's Castro Valley home. The marketplace's merchant directory lists La Perla on the mezzanine level, which makes a Saturday drive possible for anyone who misses the mofongo.
That left the Dimond without a Puerto Rican restaurant. In the meantime, the Two Star kitchen went in a different direction. Carl Bolling's Dimond Kitchen was there by spring 2024. Bolling had made his name with late-night sidewalk pop-ups in downtown Oakland before cooking inside the store six days a week.
In March 2025, KQED profiled the counter as some of the Bay Area's best soul food sold out of a convenience store. The menu included fried chicken wings, smothered pork chops, garlic shrimp, collard greens, yams, dirty rice and jalapeño mac and cheese. On weekends it stayed open until midnight.
Dimond Kitchen closed in 2025. By this September, the market's owner was looking for someone new to run the kitchen.
The Room Filled Again in About a Month
The kitchen's history explains how quickly things moved this fall. The fire at Rivera's 23rd Avenue restaurant happened on Sept. 3. KQED reported that repairs there would take at least six to eight months. Rivera reopened at Two Star on Oct. 3, one month to the day after the fire. He could move that fast because the kitchen he needed was already built, empty and a short drive away, in the same store where he had started.
Rivera told KQED that the quick move meant he would not have to cancel the dozens of catering jobs already booked for the coming months. He has signed a lease to stay at Two Star for at least a year. His long-term goal is to reopen the East Oakland restaurant. For the Dimond, that most likely means a year or more of Puerto Rican food on MacArthur before the room turns over again.
"I know this neighborhood loves me," Rivera told KQED.
What's on the Counter Now
The kitchen is small, but Rivera told KQED he planned to offer close to the full Puerto Rican Street Cuisine menu:
- Pernil, the crispy-skinned slow-roasted pork, every day the kitchen is open
- Combo plates, including the pollo encebollado, grilled chicken with caramelized onions over white rice or yellow rice with pigeon peas
- Alcapurrias, stuffed plantain fritters
- Puerto Rican–style empanadas
- Pasteles for the holidays, which puts them on the menu soon
The plan KQED reported before opening was roughly noon to midnight, six days a week. The day off was still being decided between Sunday and Monday, and exact hours were to be announced. The restaurant's Instagram account is the place to check the current schedule before you walk over. A late closing time would continue a Two Star habit. Dimond Kitchen also stayed open until midnight on weekends.
The Same Pattern Down the Block
Two Star isn't the only place on this stretch of MacArthur where a kitchen is changing hands without being rebuilt. At 2129 MacArthur Blvd., the owners of Mohka Kitchen, which served shawarma and other Middle Eastern dishes, reworked the business into Dimond Halal Eatery. It opened on Saturday, July 25, with wings, burgers and steak hoagies, the Oaklandside reported. In both cases, a working kitchen in a modest space was quick to fill with a new menu.
Pairing a Plate With a Morning in the Park
Several neighborhood volunteer groups meet within walking distance of 2020 MacArthur, and their schedules end around the time Rivera's kitchen plans to open.
- Friends of Dimond Park meets Saturdays, Nov. 21, Dec. 19 and Jan. 16, from 9 to 11 a.m., gathering at the Scout Hut. A planned noon opening leaves time to walk from the park to the counter.
- Friends of Sausal Creek holds Dimond Park restoration sessions on Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to noon, removing non-native plants and putting in native species. Sessions may be canceled if it rains.
- Keep Dimond Clean, a Dimond Improvement Association program, meets Wednesdays from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. in the Giant Burgers lot at 2055 MacArthur Blvd. That's a few doors from Two Star, though too early for lunch.
The Saturday, Nov. 21 Dimond Park meetup is the first one after this post goes up, and it ends an hour before pernil is scheduled to be on the counter.
At Red Oak, we follow the Dimond at the level of who's cooking behind which counter, because that's the level where neighborhood life happens. If you'd like to talk with someone who knows MacArthur Boulevard block by block, Red Oak Realty is here. Work with a Seriously Local Agent.
