5 Bay Area Bar Bookstores Where You Can Drink and Read in Good Company

Pair drinking with reading at an eccentric used bookstore with an attitude, where a high-end Thai eatery and wine bar lurk within, in Santa Cruz; a wine and tinned fish bar surrounded by poetry books in San Francisco; and a cocktail bar and patio where books recommended by well-known writers line shelves or a bookstore with a small bar in a cozy setting in Oakland.

Bad Animal in Santa Cruz is co-owned by former University of California, Santa Cruz professor Andrew Sivak and chef Jessica LoPrete, who worked at Zuni Café, Contigo, and Greens restaurants in San Francisco. They have a three-pronged focus: food, wine, and a highly curated selection of used books, mostly fiction, poetry, philosophy, and the occult. 

A Thai dinner-only pop-up, Hanloh, started in late 2022 in the bookstore’s front, next to the wine racks and bar. Chef Lalita Kaewsawang, who emigrated from Thailand at 13 and has experience from three-Michelin-starred Manresa in Los Gatos (now closed), serves starters like mieng, a street food snack of toasted coconut, peanuts, tamarind caramel, crispy shallots, and lime atop nasturtium leaves, plus entrees like shrimp red curry with pineapple and apples or Monterey Bay black cod in a chile-lime broth.

The wine list of mostly natural and small organic producers roams the globe from Slovenia, the Republic of Georgia to Trentino-Alto Adige, with eight by-the-glass choices. A sofa and armchairs allow customers to relax with wine and a book to the tune of a musical soundtrack from the 1960s and ‘70s, but there’s no WiFi. Ask if they have travel books, as I did, and hear there’s a “People and Places” section but “only for books that subvert the Colonial eye,” in bookseller Nick Pillsbury’s words. For other questions, like “Is it OK to sleep with someone who doesn’t read books?,” consult the cheeky website FAQ (Answer: a laconic “No.”) Perhaps you wonder, “Why used books and raw wine?” (Answer: “a certainly more profitable venture than raw books and used wine.”)

Bad Animal’s wine club offers two bottles a month with literary and food pairings, and a 10% discount on bottles or books. Private group dinners can be reserved in the Rare Books room. That name: It’s an allusion to a play by Euripides and to Beat writer William Burroughs’ short story, “Kill the Badger,” where humans are called the only bad animals because they embrace evil. (Now you know why the badger logo is on the front door.)

In San Francisco, Golden Sardine is a bar with a Riesling-dominant wine list and strengths in orange and sparkling wines, paired with cheese and charcuterie plates and a tinned fish menu rich in sardines, trout, octopus, anchovies, and sprats (tiny anchovy-like fish, smoked with heather and chamomile) from Portugal, Denmark, and Spain’s Basque province. Fittingly, poetry books line shelves in the two-story bar, which opened in January in North Beach, once famed for Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. 

It’s owned by Andrew Nelson, an ex-owner of a wine bar in Russian Hill called Habibil, and his wife, Caitlyn Wild, assistant manager at City Lights. The bookstore, a block away, was founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the late Beat poet. Named for Golden Sardine, a poetry book by Beat poet Bob Kaufman, the bar offers more than 40 Rieslings, mostly from Germany but also the Willamette Valley’s Love & Squalor and Santa Barbara’s Stirm Wine Co., plus 10 wines by the glass, starting at $8. 

In Oakland, Clio's, a shop for new and used books amid worn Oriental rugs, wood floors, a sofa and chairs, and a bar also opened in January. Books organized by timeline, from ancient civilizations like Egypt and Sumeria to the 20th century, are in the main room. The no-seats bar (which serves six wines by the glass for $10, plus cocktails and beer) and a red-walled nook for erotica, illuminated by a lava lamp, separate them from a room of contemporary and design/art books. The former art editor at literary journal Lapham’s Quarterly, Timothy Don, and Adam Hatch, owner of a now-closed Oakland bar, own Clio’s, which posts a “no screens” policy on its door.

North Light, a cocktail bar with a wood-walled patio, opened in Oakland in 2019. Books suggested by authors like Samin Nosrat (whose cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat won a James Beard Award); Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma; travel writer Pico Iyer; and musician Patti Smith line shelves and are all for sale. The most popular cocktail, Furtive Glance, combines mezcal, melon liqueur, lime juice, and mint leaves. Expect the unexpected, like Japanese-accented tater tots (with katsu sauce, bonito flakes, furikake, and garlic aioli) and beet “poke” with kelp, tamari, and sesame, on the menu, as well as asparagus pesto pasta, pulled pork sandwiches, and burgers.

Come October in Berkeley, another bar and bookstore called Book Society is slated to open. “A paradox: The things you don’t need to live – books, art, cinema, wine, and so on – are the things you need to live,” a quote from Matt Haig, author of The Midnight Library, is on its website.