Each Friday in this space food writer Sarah Henry asks a well-known, up-and-coming, or under-the-radar food aficionado about their favorite tastes in town, preferred food purveyors and other local culinary gems worth sharing. Meet Anand Chokkalingam, UC Berkeley professor by day and chocolatier by night. This cancer epidemiologist pursues his passion for high-end confections in […]
Alice Waters
Posted inBusiness, Nosh
Elmwood Cafe makes an immediate impact
It’s only day two at Elmwood Cafe, a newly opened French-style brasserie in the old Ozzie’s space on College, and the place is packed. Owner Michael Pearce says business has been great and he didn’t expect it. He shouldn’t be so surprised. Elmwood locals have been monitoring the careful restoration of the old soda fountain for months […]
Posted inNosh
A taste of justice
Think of agents for change in American eating habits, and Berkeley’s Alice Waters and Michael Pollan come immediately to mind. Indeed, eat-more-greens advocates can appear as white as Wonder Bread. On the menu at La Pena Cultural Center last night: some much-needed color in the conversation about good food matters. Visceral Feast, a work-in-progress performance […]
Posted inBusiness, Nosh
Pourquoi Chez Panisse?
Today we discover, through a story in The Atlantic, why Alice Waters named her restaurant Chez Panisse. We knew about the Marcel Pagnol connection (you only need to visit the restaurant’s website to be immersed in the mood of 1930s French film). Corby Kummer digs deeper and looks at the many associations the name Panisse has […]
Posted inNosh, Schools
Berkeley to Brooklyn: Edible Schoolyard takes root
Details have emerged of the latest Edible Schoolyard project — this time the Alice Waters effect has spread its tentacles all the way from the West Coast to Brooklyn, New York According to Inhabitat, a new $1.6 million garden and center will be built at PS. 216, an elementary school located in Brooklyn’s Gravesend neighborhood. […]
Posted inNosh
‘Flanagan made me choke on my chard’
Berkeley freelance writer Sarah Henry, who muses about food and family matters on her blog, Lettuce Eat Kale, was so hot under the collar after reading Caitlin Flanagan’s “Cultivating Failure” article in The Atlantic, she had to wait a week to cool off before responding. Henry volunteers at King Middle School’s Edible Schoolyard. Here’s her […]
Posted inNosh
Raging against the vegetables
As predicted, Caitlin Flanagan’s Atlantic article in which she slammed the concept of edible schoolyards as espoused by Alice Waters — and Flanagan grew up in Berkeley it turns out… the traitor! — has triggered a raft of rebuttals. Probably most amusing is the one written by Andrew Leonard in Salon yesterday: What a nightmare! Public school […]
Posted inNosh
Peko-Peko pop-up in North Berkeley on Monday (not Sunday)
Sylvan Mishima Brackett, the owner of Peko-Peko Japanese Catering and formerly Alice Waters’ right-hand man, will host a pop-up izakaya this Monday, January 18, from 5.30pm at the Guerilla Cafe in North Berkeley (hat-tip: SFoodie). SFoodie reports: With its shoebox size and wraparound counter, Guerrilla Cafe should be the perfect place to recreate that crowded, Sapporo’d-up izakaya […]
Posted inNosh
Berkeley’s Edible Schoolyard under attack
Alice Waters and students at King Middle School's Edible Schoolyard. An article which claims edible school gardens, such as Berkeley’s famous one at King Middle School, are “cheating our most vulnerable students”, is ruffling feathers, both on this site and more widely. “Cultivating Failure”, written by Caitlin Flanagan and published in the January/February issue of […]