Here’s a notion that hardly seems radical: longtime Berkeley resident Dr. Preston Maring thinks physicians should prescribe healthy eating along with dispensing drugs to their patients. Maring, Associate Physician-in-Chief at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, believes doctors should also walk the walk about the preventive health benefits of sound nutrition. He’s so committed […]
Monterey Market
Berkeley Bites: Minh Tsai, Hodo Soy Beanery
Minh Tsai: making impressive headway promoting a humble little legume. Minh Tsai is on a mission to make tofu the next hip artisanal food. He knows he has a ways to go to get many Americans to even taste tofu, but if anyone can make it cool to eat bean curd, this enthusiastic self-described tofu […]
Essence of Berkeley: Food shopping as worship
Berkeley's Farmers' Markets: outdoor tent revivalists? In case you missed it, a post on this site last week elicited an entertaining rumination by Berkeleysider EBGuy on Berkeley’s food stores and their role as our new cathedrals — or temples, or synagogues. More Berkeleysiders weighed in with their analogies. Here’s the full list (so far): Farmers’ Markets: […]
Berkeley’s food meccas: The new religion
Shopping at Berkeley Bowl: non-denominational? We couldn’t resist hoisting from the comments this reflection by EBGuy on food shopping as religion (prompted by today’s opening of Berkeley’s Trader Joe’s) : I have a theory about Berkeley.* With organized religion on the decline, we look to food to provide a shared communal experience. Grocery stores are our cathedrals. […]
A Berkeley blogger, a cocktail (or 2) and a wee-hours email exchange with Apple CEO Steve Jobs
Ryan Tate (left) may be feeling a little bashful about aspects of the “feisty” email exchange he had with Steve Jobs on Friday night and Saturday morning. But it’s unlikely he regrets it. For Tate, a Berkeley-based writer for tech gossip site Valleywag (part of the Gawker blogging empire) the cocktail-fueled online conversation constitutes a real coup. The […]
Berkeley Bites: The Bread Workshop’s Bill Briscoe
William (Bill) Briscoe has been in the food business for more than 30 years. He started as a dishwasher, went on to work as a short-order cook in a steakhouse, then did stints in five-star restaurants around the Bay Area and attended culinary school. In 1989, he decided to open a wholesale bakery serving mostly […]
Berkeley Bites: Mollie Katzen
Each Friday in this space food writer Sarah Henry will ask 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 with visitors and residents. Bestselling cookbook author Mollie Katzen kick-starts this new column. Mollie Katzen is perhaps best known for her […]