A family tradItion
bringing drink, Food & passion since 1970.
Here at The Fat Lady, our goal has always been to create an environment to indulge your senses - sipping on cocktails while gazing upon the cross cut oak back bar & dining with friends under warm amber light, swaying to the sultry sounds of Ol’ Blue Eyes & reveling in the hospitality of our continually amazing staff - that’s what keeps guests coming back time and time again.
We are absolutely tickled to welcome you all back through our beveled glass front doors ~ adorned with Art Nouveau brass handles straight from Paris ~ joining together with friends & family, enjoying all the indulgences The Fat Lady has to offer...dining on our expanded covered heated patio under the glow of café lights & staple red umbrellas and into our front dining room, immersed in all the familiar sights and sounds of The Fat Lady.
It was nearly 54 years ago, on 𝐌𝐚𝐲 14𝐭𝐡, 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟎, that a small family business took Oakland by storm - a little bit of San Francisco in Oakland. The Fat Lady Bar & Restaurant...and here we are today, celebrating our 54nd year in 2024!
Our third generation family business began as the dream of patriarch, Louis Shaterian’s, an intimate spot much like the places of San Francisco’s old Barbary Coast era. It was a perfect showcase for the warm hospitality, great food & beautiful 𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐮 atmosphere that Lou loved so much. With his wife, brother & three daughters, The Fat Lady Bar & Restaurant became an Oakland hot spot where family is at its heart & everybody knows your name. In 5 decades, not much has changed. The tradition has been carried on by Patricia Shaterian-Rossi & Jerry Rossi since 1980. Members of our large family can always be found here, working or stopping by to catch-up with one another or with our Fat Lady family of customers.
𝐓 𝐇 𝐀 𝐍 𝐊 • 𝐘 𝐎 𝐔 to all of YOU, our amazing guests who show endless love & support for our small family business. It has been such a pleasure serving you all these years & we can’t wait to have our bar & dining room filled with smiling faces, raising a glass to 50 more years in Oakland!
so how did
The Fat Lady
get its name?
Well, there are twO stories . . .
Fact & Legend
Fact has it…that while patriarch owner, Louis Shaterian, ran the historic Overland House Bar, he was carefully renovating his new place. He had a wonderful collection of treasures found throughout the Bay Area & Sierra foothills, each with its own story to be told. Lou & Patricia, his wife, were about to open their new restaurant when a friend, superior court judge Lou Lacera, told him about a nude painting his son, Ray Smith, had done of a pleasingly plump lady. This aroused Lou’s curiosity. He was taken to view the painting and upon seeing it, with the judge’s encouragement & her enormous presence, decided it was definitely unique and should hang in the new restaurant and thus became the namesake of The Fat Lady Bar and Restaurant.
Legend, on the other hand, suggests that The Fat Lady building {built in 1862} was once a house of ill repute - So who would have been its Madame you ask? Well our very own Fat Lady of course! Rumors also say that Jack London slept here a time or two . . . or three or four. Considering he lived within walking distance, then maybe . . . just maybe he did know the infamous Fat Lady. On the second floor a narrow hallway split the space with matching rooms on either side. Look up at today’s windows & you’ll see for yourself how very small (and busy perhaps) they all were.
We’ll let you decide. In the meantime, remember her motto . . .
It’s much better to live rich than to die rich!
• the Shaterian family •
From left . . . Patricia { Rossi }, Patricia Shaterian, Louis Shaterian, Karen { Vinci } & Cori { Stavrianopoulos }