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 everincreasing
population.
Visitors and regular patrons are not suprised
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 bell hop 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.
