Berkeley’s legendary palace for meat tubes, Top Dog, is about to open a new location.
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It will be called Top Dog Downtown to differentiate it from the UC Berkeley-adjacent original and will be located at 2021 Shattuck Ave., inside the BreakRoom pool hall. It could open as soon as the “next week or so,” according to BreakRoom owner August Wagele.
“With the BreakRoom, we’ve been open almost three years, and we’ve tried several different food options,” Wagele says. “When it was time to try a new one, I was looking around and noticing how many restaurants try to start from zero and be successful. There’s not a lot — maybe one in a hundred.”
But Top Dog, whose first (and still-standing) shop opened at 2534 Durant Ave. in 1966, is as ingrained in Berkeley’s collective consciousness as much as the mustard stains are on the sidewalk.
“I grew up in Berkeley my whole life and have heard so many people say, ‘I came to Berkeley and my cousin brought me to Top Dog,’ or ‘I took my grandfather there.’ It’s the first place a lot of people take others when they arrive here,” Wagele says.
Top Dog Downtown is basically a franchise operation. Wagele will run it using the business’ familiar name and products. To begin, there will be maybe five or six types of hot dogs and sausages, as opposed to the original’s dozen. The price will also be a little bit more — $5.75 versus $4.50 – because “downtown is different,” he says.
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The new location will boast a couple of features lacking from the charming but homely original, a hole-in-the-wall plastered with political and philosophical screeds.
“One difference is we will have seating, both upstairs and on the patio and downstairs in the pool hall,” Wagele says. “Another difference is we will serve ice-cold beer. I think that will be a big difference.”
Top Dog Downtown marks an upswing for the revered dog shack. In 2024, it closed a location in Berkeley and the year after closed a shop in Oakland, leaving the Durant Avenue enterprise as the last dog standing.
Details: Scheduled to open soon from 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays and 11 a.m.-midnight Fridays-Saturdays at 2021 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley (inside the BreakRoom); breakroomberkeley.com, instagram.com/breakroomberkeley
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