’Tinis and Weenies Are a Winning Late-Night Combination

The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.

A minute after walking into Tallboy, Oakland’s new self-styled “martini dive bar,” I thought I may have made a mistake in coming here. It wasn’t just that this was the most crowded bar I’d been in since pre-pandemic times, with a throng of people three deep all the way around the big, horseshoe-shaped bar counter. It was more that all of the hip party people in Oakland seemed to have packed themselves into this unmarked, dimly lit watering hole in Temescal, and we couldn’t have felt more out of place. Sharply dressed twenty-somethings were doing rounds of Jell-O shots, and the buzz of boisterous conversation was so loud, I couldn’t even really hear the music — all I could make out was a thumping electronic bass line. I had to raise my voice to almost a shout just to be heard by the person right next to me.

And all we’d wanted was to eat some hot dogs at 10 o’clock on a Friday night. So it felt like maybe we had come to the wrong place.

What I do like, however, is a bar with a legible theme. And among Oakland’s new cocktail spots, Tallboy has the clearest, most appealing three-word elevator pitch: hot dogs and martinis. Or, as the bar has branded itself online, “’tinis and weenies” — a TikTok dinner party trend turned into a whole brick-and-mortar business. The cocktail list is mostly martinis and martini-adjacent drinks — seven different varieties served in classic V-shaped martini glasses, plus shot-size “teeny-tinis” and frosty espresso martini slushies. The food menu, meanwhile, is all hot dogs. And we’re not talking your average bar weenie, but an entire menu of whimsically souped-up vegan hot dogs created by the team behind the recently closed vegan Singaporean sensation, Lion Dance Cafe.

’Tinis and (plant-based) weenies is the promise of a particular kind of good time — the kind of high-low schtick that plays particularly well online. The important thing is that once we finally squeezed into a spot at the counter, we found out that Tallboy’s martinis and hot dogs are both uncommonly good. The dirty martini I ordered came vigorously shaken and was cold and refreshing as hell, shot through with enough olive brine to make it taste a little bit like the sea. If I were less of a lightweight, I would have happily thrown back two or three of them.

The hot dogs, meanwhile, were a thousand times better than the sad, desiccated Tofu Pups I remember from vegan-friendly cookouts I attended when I was in grad school. The dogs themselves are a relatively new product from Impossible Foods, a multibillion-dollar corporation that doesn’t exactly need me to shill for it. But suffice it to say that the faux-beef wieners deliver on their promise of tasting almost indistinguishable from the real thing, down to the firm but slightly squishy texture I associate with all processed meats. The only thing missing? The springy snap of the casing that you get with the best beef dogs.

But the main selling point of Tallboy’s hot dog menu is the Lion Dance–pedigreed array of multiculturally inspired topping combinations. The namesake Lion Dancing Dog comes garnished with cucumber, peanuts, pickled chilies, cilantro, fried shallots and a seriously spicy sambal aioli — a fire blast of bold, Southeast Asian flavors and crunchy textures. We liked the Korean-inspired Cheese in the Trap even better: The combination of well-fermented kimchi, vegan American cheese, gochujang aioli and crispy noodles is incredibly soothing, like a bowl of dressed-up Shin ramyun in hot dog form. If we had any minor complaint, it was that the buns were too big and overly bready — your classic wiener-to-bun ratio problem. But even the simplest dog, topped with nothing but brown mustard and an avalanche of diced onions, scratched a certain comfort food itch.

Tallboy also serves a handful of other snacky vegan dishes created by the Lion Dance Cafe team. There’s a wedge salad, served chilled and topped with faux-bacon bits and an uncannily funky vegan blue cheese dressing, and a chips and dip plate that features a creamy, umami-rich dill pickle dip. And the limey, smoky, toasted-chile-spiked roasted peanuts — a Lion Dance Cafe staple — are simply an elite bar snack. (For the budget-minded, there’s also a free, serve-yourself popcorn station.)

For meat eaters, there’s an initial novelty to a meal like this, where upon sampling each new dish, you think, “Wow, is that really vegan??” It’s a testament to how far plant-based meats and cheeses have advanced — and to the broad appeal of Tallboy’s crowd-pleasing menu — that once we really dug in, we stopped thinking about that altogether. It was just damn tasty food.

After a while, the whole vibe of the place started to grow on us too. This is hardly the first time we’ve been in the position of being the only customers ordering a four-course feast at a cocktail bar. But Tallboy is so crowded, and everyone is in such good spirits, there’s a pleasant kind of anonymity to the experience: No one is going to give you the side-eye for your gratuitous Joey Chestnut impersonation.

More to the point, though, when we finally took a minute to look around, what struck us was how vibrantly diverse the crowd was — bar patrons of all races and ethnicities, often mixed together in surprising groupings, everyone vibing and having a great time. It’s the kind of crowd you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in the Bay other than in Oakland. The kind that makes the idea of some all-pervasive “doom loop” — everyone too scared to have fun — seem almost laughable. That makes you fall in love with Oakland all over again.

Tallboy is open 2 p.m.–midnight on weekdays and 2 p.m.–2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays at 4210 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland.