Named for the Caldecott Tunnel (Lamorinda’s gateway), Fourth Bore is Theatre Square’s craft beer destination. With 28 rotating taps and solid pub grub, it’s the spot for catching a game, meeting friends, or grabbing a drink before or after a movie at the Orinda Theatre next door.
The Beer
28 craft beers on tap, rotating regularly. The selection skews local and California craft-forward — expect to find options from East Bay breweries alongside regional favorites. If you’re not sure what to order, the staff knows their taps.
Beyond Beer
The grill menu covers comfort food essentials — burgers, pizza, and shareable appetizers done well. This is pub food with care, not an afterthought. Good for groups, good for casual nights.
Live Music
Here’s what sets Fourth Bore apart from your typical tap room: live music roughly 8 months a year. Check their website or social media for the current schedule. It adds real energy to an already lively space.
The Fun Part
The owners also run The Forge Pizza Fire Truck — a 1970 Ford fire truck converted into a mobile wood-fired pizza operation with a char broiler and beer on draft. They cater private events. Yes, seriously. Check out theforgepizzafiretruck.com if you want a fire truck serving pizza at your next party.
Local Lore: Why “Fourth Bore”?
The Caldecott Tunnel is Lamorinda’s gateway — four tubes (called “bores”) carrying Highway 24 through the hills between Oakland and Orinda. For decades there were only three bores, creating legendary traffic bottlenecks. The fourth bore finally opened in 2013 after years of construction, adding much-needed capacity. The restaurant’s name is a tribute to this local milestone — and a nod to the relief everyone felt when that fourth tube finally opened.
Weekly Rhythms Worth Knowing
A couple of standing weeknight patterns give Fourth Bore its Monday–Tuesday character:
- All-Day Happy Hour every Monday. Not the usual 3–6pm slot — the full open-to-close window runs on happy-hour pricing. On a Monday when Casa Orinda is dark, this is the single biggest reason to walk down Theatre Square.
- Trivia every Tuesday at 7pm. A steady weekly draw that pulls the room past its usual Tuesday early-week quiet — teams show up, the bar fills, and the 6:30–9:00pm window shifts from walk-in-easy to genuinely lively.
Both are worth planning around if you’re picking a weeknight to visit.
Today: Friday, July 10, 2026 — Live Music Returns to the Beer Garden Patio
Tonight is the first Friday-night live-music-on-the-patio night since the Fourth-of-July-week compression cleared — the return of the standard 6:30pm start on the beer-garden patio, confirmed against thefourthbore.com. Sunset tonight is roughly 8:31pm — twenty days past solstice, the cluster-wide one-minute-a-week retreat now shows a full four minutes below the Jun 20 peak, but night-to-night the difference is still imperceptible on the patio. The room follows its live-music-Friday shape: walk-in-easy from open through the 5:00–5:45pm early-dinner window, filling steadily from about 6:00pm as the patio load-up begins, holding at full capacity from the 6:30pm downbeat through the standard 10pm Friday close. If you want a table and a menu before the music starts, the 5:00–5:45pm seating puts you at your food by 6:00pm and lets the music arrive as the second act; if you want the full patio-plus-live-music experience, come at 6:15pm and stake out a stool at the bar or one of the standing rails near the beer-garden edge. Casa Orinda is open tonight (Wed–Sun) as the quieter dinner counterpart, and Shelby’s fifty steps away runs its white-tablecloth Friday dinner service through 8pm — a 5:30pm dinner at Shelby’s and a 9:00pm nightcap here with the music still going is the classic Theatre Square Friday-night pairing.
Looking ahead (Sat–Mon, July 11–13): Saturday July 11 repeats tonight’s live-music-on-the-patio pattern — 6:30pm start, 10pm close, full-capacity beer-garden throughout — making this the first fully-normal-summer Fri–Sat live-music pair of the post-holiday stretch. Sunday July 12 returns to the standard 11am–9pm Sunday rhythm (no scheduled live music), walk-in-friendly across the day and a natural post-Moraga-Sunday-farmers-market landing spot for a late-afternoon beer. Monday July 13 brings the All-Day Happy Hour back — the second Monday of the month, running open-to-close on happy-hour pricing, and the single biggest reason to walk down Theatre Square on a night when Casa Orinda is dark.
Good to Know
- Located in Theatre Square — grab a beer before or after a movie
- Casual, lively atmosphere — not a quiet date night spot
- Great for groups and sports viewing (TVs throughout)
- Outdoor patio seating available
- Reservations not required but can book for larger groups
Pair It With
- Before: Grab a craft beer here, then walk five minutes around the corner to the historic Orinda Theatre for an early showing. Theatre Square’s parking lot is the same lot — no second move required.
- Instead of: If you want the opposite of the tap room — quieter, dimmer, no TVs, fried chicken instead of pub grub — Casa Orinda is the in-town counterpart. Same 1932-vs-modern split that defines Orinda dining: Fourth Bore is the lively Theatre Square 28-tap option, Casa is the 90-year-old roadhouse on Bryant Way three minutes away. Casa is closed Mon-Tue, so on those nights Fourth Bore handles the casual-dinner overflow.
- The upscale counterpart: If you want the dressed-up Theatre Square experience instead of the tap room — white tablecloths, lobster ravioli, a curated wine list — Shelby’s is fifty steps away in the same complex. The two rooms cover the full Theatre Square spectrum: Fourth Bore is the casual 28-tap room for groups and game-watching, Shelby’s is the date-night and pre-theatre dinner room. On a Friday or Saturday night, a 5:30pm dinner at Shelby’s and a 9:00pm nightcap at Fourth Bore is a complete Theatre Square evening with no driving in between.
- After: Post-game nightcap on the patio works year-round; in the post-solstice stretch the past-8:35pm sunset means you can stretch a 9pm beer well past dark before the after-movie crowd arrives. Friday and Saturday close at 10pm — the only two nights of the week the patio holds past 9.
- The cone afterward: Loard’s Ice Cream is a four-minute walk across Brookwood Road and stays open to 10pm Fri–Sat. A pint of craft beer here, then a scoop on a fresh waffle cone over there, is a generationally-stable Orinda Friday-night rhythm.