Spenger's Fresh Fish Grotto prints its menu daily, featuring over thirty selections of seafood, fresh fish, shellfish and more from the Bay Area, Pacific Ocean and other regions around the globe.
The classic, traditional presentation of the menu items, combined with professional, knowledgeable service and the unique, eclectic atmosphere make for a truly memorable dining experience.
Spenger's Fresh Fish Grotto opened in 1890 and the name Spenger's has become synonymous with wholesome fresh fish to dock workers, fisherman, Cal Berkeley students on a budget, politicians, socialites and movie stars. Over a century of ship's wheels, anchors, rigging and paintings are mounted on Spenger's collection of more than 500 antique and modern guns and the Diamond Bar's Star of Denmark, a 34-carat diamond ring given to Hawaii's Queen Kapiolani.
The Spenger family has been supplying fresh fish to the Bay Area for four generations. The original founder was John (Johan) Spenger, who came to Oakland from Germany in 1865 and worked as a fisherman when Oakland's Lake Merritt, the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean teemed with fish, shrimp, oysters, mussels, clams and crabs. He sold to markets around the Bay, eventually building up a small fishing fleet, which fed the ever-increasing population.
Visitors and regular patrons are not surprised to find themselves dining elbow to elbow with such local luminary fish lovers as Robin Williams, Huey Lewis or Joan Baez. Tom Hanks ate at Spenger's when he was a bellhop at a nearby hotel. Old timers still tell tales of great nights spent eating and drinking at Spenger's with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Harry James and Betty Grable, Charles Laughton, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy and Ernest Hemingway.
