On a picturesque Thursday morning in West Oakland, where temperatures idled in the mid-60s, Ellen Sebastian Chang helped carry a 3-foot-long sandy brown cask filled with soju toward the bed of a pickup truck. As the Korean alcohol sloshed around, she braced against the shifting weight, with Earl Brown of nearby Wright & Brown Distillery lifting the other end of the barrel.

Brown’s pickup truck was parked in the courtyard of FuseBox, the small Korean fusion restaurant that Chang opened with her husband Sunhui on Magnolia Street five years ago. Her mission that morning was simple: Empty the restaurant, and close it for good.

Hidden among industrial buildings and sequestered by sections of highways, is a West Oakland food scene that, for better or worse, has remained untethered to influences from across the bay.

West Oakland is a community pockmarked by micro-neighborhoods. Its restaurateurs have basked in a sense of freedom afforded by customers loyal to homegrown businesses and real estate prices significantly lower than those in San Francisco, one of the last such frontiers in Oakland.

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Yet things are changing. Vacant lots are giving way to a burgeoning housing market. A new development is on the books for 2242 Magnolia St., right across the street from FuseBox.

FuseBox shuttered last month right before its lease ended. Chang said they wanted to renew the lease, but weren’t on the same page with the landlord. She chose not to recount specifics, but said that the lease jockeying, coupled with a dip in customers during winter months, led to a decision to walk away.

A mom-and-pop shop, FuseBox was buoyed by its community for years, but as the Changs pushed to expand and champion what seemed to be an uptick in the neighborhood’s popularity, they fell victim to the same growth they hoped to promote.

“We brought a lot of attention to this part of West Oakland, to Magnolia Street,” Chang said. “Certain businesses come into a neighborhood no one else seems interested in. You put your blood, sweat and tears into it, and then this happens.”

Despite being a single BART stop from the global food mecca that is the San Francisco Ferry Building, West Oakland is handcuffed by a unique geographical isolation. Industrial buildings in the Third Street area, from Union to Market Street, eat up a large swath of the sprawling neighborhood, negating any possible “downtown” environment. Even West Oakland’s BART stop teeters on the very edge of the city and doesn’t visually entice visitors from San Francisco to explore the area.

Since 2016, its most significant culinary openings have been a brewery, a coffee shop and a modest bakery, in stark contrast to many Bay Area neighborhoods, like Hayes Valley, where a gourmet rotisserie joint, a trendy Italian restaurant and a cocktail bar opened over a single month or so.

But that’s not to say West Oakland is a culinary wasteland; on the contrary, it remains uniquely diverse, with low real estate costs allowing small business owners into an industry that is often cost prohibitive.

On any given day, Hong Kong Fast Food on Adeline Street could have a steady stream of customers reveling in ham chow mein and mu shu pork. Less than 2 miles away on Mandela Parkway, Tanya Holland’s Brown Sugar Kitchen remains one of the most popular restaurants in all of Oakland, a soul food destination for construction workers and Golden State Warriors players alike.

Zella’s Soulful Kitchen, a stone’s throw from the BART station, even commands a crowd on a Wednesday afternoon. And a brisk 12-minute walk southeast, customers rush to 10th & Wood sandwich shop, hoping to catch the kitchen before it closes in the early afternoon.

The Changs started FuseBox with the help of a 2011 Kickstarter campaign, one of the first such ventures. The restaurant opened as a small 20-seat space at the O2 Artisans’ Aggregate compound, founded by master craftsman Paul Discoe. (Discoe is a partner in Soba Ichi, the restaurant from Berkeley’s Ippuku team that will replace FuseBox later this year.)

FuseBox was a quintessential family-run operation. It closed on days when the Changs’ daughter had soccer games. When it was open, Ellen was usually there talking to guests, with Sunhui bouncing in and out of the kitchen.

Locol Bakery, which opened two months ago in the shadow of Interstate 580 near the corner of Market and 35th, lifts its graffiti-covered gates at 8 a.m. each day, pours $1 black coffees for the next few hours, and sells chicken-sausage breakfast sandwiches to sleepy-eyed locals. The fast food outfit is only a few blocks from the more polished, affluent-looking Emeryville.

“This isn’t an easy place to describe. Each area is different,” said Daniel Patterson, a co-owner of the Locol chain, which also has locations in Oakland and Los Angeles.

The East Bay’s industrial alley. Harlem of the West. A food desert. No matter what restaurateurs find themselves calling West Oakland, the truth is the area has few, if any, tourist attractions, and a low walkability. Most of the neighborhood’s restaurants are buoyed by customers who know the neighborhood well, not destination diners in search of $200 dinners.

It’s a catch-22 of sorts. Neighborhoods like West Oakland may have low rent, but the foot traffic can be similarly low. And when — if — the neighborhood changes, so do the rents.

Brewer Adam Lamoreaux and chef James Syhabout can attest to those challenges. When Lamoreaux opened West Oakland’s Linden Street Brewery in 2009, it was the first production brewery in the city since 1959. The two partners spent the better part of the last decade trying to make their businesses — which included a brewery and adjacent restaurant, named the Dock — work in the neighborhood.

“It’s the desert out here, but you only have each other and the way you survive is to take care of each other,” said Syhabout. “It’s as simple as that.”

They finally shut down Linden Street and the Dock last fall. Now they are giving the same space a second try: Old Kan Beer Co. opened there earlier this year. While keeping an eye on rumors of a new Oakland Athletics stadium nearby, the pair has simplified their beer and food offerings in this second go-round, hoping to appeal more to locals.

“You better have a sense of tribe if you want to be out here in West Oakland,” Lamoreaux said.

FuseBox’s last day was both a garage sale and impromptu memorial service.

Employees like David Seo, a line cook, took home an assortment of kitchen items that the owners had tried to sell. Longtime customer Chris Plummer popped in and was given a bottle of sake by general manager Weyland Southon.

“What would I want West Oakland to be years from now? Not East San Francisco,” said Southon. “That’s what it’s being called these days.”

“But we can’t look at it like every white person is coming in and gentrifying the neighborhood. That’s not the case.”

According to Trulia listings data, East Bay housing costs are skyrocketing, up more than 70 percent since 2012. On average, a $388,000 home roughly five years ago now costs $659,000. Prices at the Station House condo complex in West Oakland can be upward of $800,000.

Southon has lived in Oakland for 30 years, 10 of those in West Oakland. He remembers the neighborhood before the Mandela Gateway Apartments and the Mandela Foods Cooperative became a boon to the community, and before Zella’s Soulful Kitchen opened and the Oakland/Emeryville border became so distinctive.

West Oakland’s blue collar mentality remains, evident in the crowds flocking to local delis and street-food vendors. Metalworkers, glassworkers, woodworkers and industrial artists are all part of the neighborhood’s foundation.

But as in much of the Bay Area, the time of independent mom-and-pop restaurants, sans outside investors or other locations, might be coming to an end.

“How does anyone survive in the industry now? It would be hard-pressed for someone who isn’t a trust-fund baby, or made their wealth in some other avenue,” FuseBox’s Chang said.

A few streets from FuseBox, a couple walked into Locol, pushing a baby in a stroller, and ordered coffees and an egg sandwich, which they broke into tiny pieces for the child. The husband, grabbing a fistful of napkins on the way out, suggested to his wife they visit FuseBox for lunch. Upon hearing that FuseBox was closed, he shook his head.

“I really don’t get this neighborhood,” he said as they exited the shop.

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips