Anyone seeking a breath of fresh air from the normal restaurant scene — air that’s breezing down out of the Caucasus Mountains — might want to try Oakland’s new Bistro 4293.
The eatery, located at 4293 Piedmont Ave., is one of the few or perhaps the only extant restaurant in California serving the cuisine of Azerbaijan. (A couple in San Diego recently closed.) Diners can dig into regional specialties like Xocali lamb shank and dushbara, gumball-sized fried dumplings stuffed with ground meat, while sipping a 2022 Estate Rosé from Kakheti, Georgia.
The restaurant Bistro 4293 opened in June 2025 in Oakland, serving cuisine and wine inspired by Azerbaijan and the Mediterranean. (John Metcalfe/Bay Area News Group)The restaurant has an elegant dining room with hanging greenery, tables on the sidewalk and a massive bar that would fit right in at a Baku palace. That bar is stocked with everything needed to make its formidable number of cocktails ($14-$16) — honey-rum smash, spicy-hibiscus and Aperol margaritas, a “Choco Inferno” with red wine, chocolate liqueur and Tabasco — as well as cans of beer from Oakland’s Brix Factory Brewing and Seaside’s Other Brother Beer Co.
The wine list has bottles and glasses and goes heavy on vintages from Italy and California, with a few high-baller French Champagnes. It also includes picks from around the Black Sea. For reds, there is a 2020 Sevilen Kalecik Karasi from Turkey made with native grapes known for their unique flavor, for example ($16/$64). An option for white is the 2020 Mtsvane from Georgia, fermented with yellowish-green grapes that lend a bright, fruity flavor $15/$56. Nondrinkers might want to try the fruit-enhanced lemonades or the mysterious tincture of citrus and flowers called “Lacish Petals” ($13).
Unfamiliar with Azerbaijani food? A way to start might be the chef’s-choice mix plate of hot and cold appetizers ($30 per person). On the slab you might find fried prawns and calamari, a beef/turkey crepe with herbs and sour cream and those crispy dushbara dumplings served with an exotic sauce known as… cocktail. (The dushbara also appear in a soup with savory broth and mint.) There could be dips like beet hummus and tzatziki, grilled-eggplant rolls stuffed with onion and walnuts and mangal, an olive oil-dressed salad of roasted eggplant and red peppers.
Caviar appears on the menu a couple of times, sprinkled with prawns and avocado in a martini glass ($18) and accompanying an entree of salmon fillet with lemon-butter sauce ($35). Other mains include that Xocali lamb shank, named for a place in Azerbaijan called Khojaly, which is slow-cooked in aromatic spices and plated with butter-mashed potatoes ($39). There’s a fire grilled octopus with eggplant puree and cherry tomatoes ($31), a whole-grilled sea bass ($36) and Khan Plov, saffron-rice pilaf and beef layered with dried fruits and caramelized onion and wrapped up in lavash bread ($33).
You might be full at this point, which something new tingling the taste buds to ponder on the road home. Or you might crave dessert — and it’s hard to say “no” when the dessert is Azerbaijani baklava with ice cream.
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