There is yet another new cafe that recently opened in the Grand/Lakeshore neighborhood of Oakland, and this one is not only worth a visit but a return trip, too. The first thing I heard about Joseph Dunbar's Kitchen 388 was that they were doing housemade pop-tarts, and since I do them for my business Marge, I had many friends writing me to go and check it out. Scope out the competition, so to speak. Then I heard they serve Four Barrel coffee, and I'm a big fan of Four Barrel and have a hard time finding it in the East Bay. Do note that they serve drip coffee and cafe au laits, but currently aren't doing espresso drinks. So if you have your heart set on a foamy latte, you'll have to keep traveling up the street.

Upon walking into Kitchen 388, you may feel like you're in your favorite college cafe. The interior is a little-bit-sterile with bright art on the walls. They've tried improving the ambiance by adding Strauss bottles filled with flowers and a nice bar for cream and sugar, but it still feels dated. But that's about where my criticism ends. The folks are warm and gracious and seem genuinely happy to be working there. The food is affordable and truly delicious. The menu isn't necessarily revolutionary or anything that you won't find at another great local cafe, but they're doing it really well.

For breakfast, we ordered the Baked Eggs, Salmon Tartine, and the Banana Nutella Pop-Tart. I'm not quite sure where you can go in town and get a lovely breakfast for $5.95 -- a few bucks more for a coffee. This was a delightful surprise. The Baked Eggs were simple but tasty with a little basil on top and ripe summer tomatoes on the side. The Salmon Tartine was fantastic -- I'll be back for this. Really great bread, a generous portion of salmon, a dollop of cream cheese, juicy tomatoes, onions and capers: hearty and delicious. And the pop-tarts that everyone's been talking about. What's the verdict?

They were good. I must say. The pastry is more soft than flaky but the amount of filling is perfect: they don't come off as too spare or too gloppy. I chatted with the pastry chef, Alicia Toyooka, and she explained that they're having a tough time keeping up with demand. She's currently doing three varieties: a strawberry/rhubarb, a pecan, and the banana nutella. Everything is housemade and seasonal, so when strawberries and rhubarb are out of season she'll start to look towards pears and apples for inspiration. Alicia noted that they don't have much in the way of large-scale bakery equipment at Kitchen 388 so she's literally been doing every batch of dough the old-fashioned way: no mixer, cutting the butter into the flour by hand each morning. I respect this. While her decision's born from necessity and lack of space/equipment, I choose to do my pie dough this way because I really do think you can tell a difference. And this is evident in Alicia's pastry, too.

While we didn't have lunch, they offer a nice selection of salads and sandwiches and other small sweets (slices of apple cake and cookies). They also sell housemade jams and pounds of Four Barrel coffee to take home. As far as what's in the cards next, it looks like extended hours and possibly some exciting evening pop-up dinners and other events. Kitchen 388 is currently open from 8-4 but they're revisiting this and want to get a feel for the neighborhood before they decide what they best move will be here. As for pop-up dinners, it sounds like this is a preliminary idea, but Oakland could use a little after-hours food buzz; bring it on, Kitchen 388. We're waiting.

Kitchen 388
388 Grand Avenue
Oakland, CA 94610
(510) 893-3005
Hours: 8 am-4 pm Tuesdays-Sundays (closed Mondays)
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Photo: Robb McDonough

It's a day that wine growers, wine makers and wine drinkers all look forward to. This year the wait for that day was longer than usual. Cool summer temperatures pushed back the beginning of harvest by nearly two weeks. I visited one of the first wineries in Napa Valley to start picking grapes this year, Mumm Napa Winery. Workers began in the cool, pre-dawn hours at nearby vineyards picking Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris grapes for sparkling wine.

About 9:30am the first trucks rolled in loaded with yellow bins filled with grapes. Once a vineyard starts picking grapes, it's really a flat-out process to get everything off the vines. At Mumm, it was expected that the first day of harvest would bring in more than 60 tons of grapes. Tomorrow, Mumm will ratchet that number up to 180 tons. Workers wore powder blue t-shirts that said "Endless Summer" on the back as a way to describe just how long vintners in both the Napa and Sonoma wine countries have been waiting for harvest to begin.

This year’s crop is light and late and that is because of a wet spring and a long, cool summer. I talked with Mumm’s head winemaker, Ludovic Dervin and he told me that the wet spring meant the crops were uneven, there were big grape clusters and small grape clusters. Also, because the vineyards were so wet, they had to be thinned out. The late summer pushed back harvest as grapes needed more time on the vine to ripen. The good news for consumers is that low yields usually mean high quality. The bad news is small wine crops can sometimes mean pricier wines. We won’t have the full picture until early November when the entire harvest in both Napa and Sonoma is over. Sparkling wine grapes are the first to get picked. In a few weeks grapes for white still wines will be harvested and then red wine grapes will be picked.

In wine regions around the world there is a lot of ceremony involved with harvest time. Mumm Napa is no different. In something out of Napoleon times, winemaker Dervin donned safety goggles and yielded a saber that he used to slice off the top of a magnum of sparkling wine. Dervin then sprayed the contents on a few bins of grapes for good luck. The ceremony, often called "The blessing of the grapes," also involved handing out splits of sparkling wine to all the Mumm workers who ceremoniously popped them in unison and began spraying one another. All this celebration is a way of hoping for good luck for the coming year.

Mumm Napa seems to be doing well. According to management, sales were up more than ten percent last year. In fact, despite the struggling economy, demand for California wines is once again on the rise. According to the San Francisco based Wine Institute, California produces ninety percent of U.S. wine exports. The industry is a huge player in the state's economy with a retail value of more than 18 billion dollars last year.

In the late summer, a baker’s fancy turns to thoughts of pie. Everywhere you look in the markets, you’re confronted with gorgeous fruit in season.

Naturally, this is the time of year to hold pie contests. The 5th Annual Mission Pie Contest pulled in 20 hopefuls on Sunday, and the people who showed up were as varied as the pies they brought to the competition.

Mission Pie co-owner Krystin Rubin preps the contenders. Can you tell which one will win Best in Show? Hint: it’s staring you right in the face!

After the judges got an eyeful of the complete pie (appearance was a key judging factor), Mission Pie co-owner Krystin Rubin cut them open. You’d think, as a professional, she’d cast a jaundiced eye over some of the sloppier entrants, but no. “Each one is just a delight to encounter. The amount of care that’s gone into each one of these... Really, it’s touching to me, how seriously all the contestants are taking this.”

While the judges tasted and took notes in the kitchen, the contenders and their supporters dove into the rest of the pies laid out in the front room.

Checking out the competition while the judges deliberate back in the kitchen.

Callie Arnold, a pre-school teacher currently from West Marin, made a chocolate cherry pie. She acknowledged preemptively that the recipe makes for a pie that’s “a little soupy,” but that’s exactly why she thinks it works. Arnold loves how the cherry juices run out and mix with the chocolate. Years of practice have made her confident of this pie’s charms, but she harbored doubts when I talked to her, right after she tasted the Shaker Lemon.

The Shaker Lemon.

Clothing designer Michelle Tannenbaum of San Francisco was also worried about the Shaker Lemon. She made a galette with plums, pluots, and Mission, Adriatic and Kadota figs. The filling came courtesy of Knoll Farms, the famous fig producer from Brentwood. OK, so I’m biased, because I did a story on them two years ago for NPR and I was blown away by their fruit. Tannenbaum was more than blown away. After years of arriving at the open of the Ferry Building Farmers' Market to get first crack at their fruit, she finally began selling for the Knolls at their stand. The habit is cheaper that way.

With 20 pies on the table, Judge Patricia Hewitt has got to take careful notes.

Back in the kitchen, the judging continued. Filmmaker Kyle Garrett recently started The 7 Squared Project, a documentary series highlighting non-profit and otherwise “purposeful” businesses in San Francisco. Mission Pie, with its mission driven approach to community building, is one of his subjects. Of course, I had to ask him about the Shaker Lemon. Garrett thought it “pretty spectacular,” even though he’s not a huge lemon fan. “It was kind of crisp and chewy at the same time. The flavor was not overpowering.“

Judge Kyle Garrett clears his palette with a sip of water.

While there were professional bakers on the judging panel, (Michelle Pusateri of Nana Joe's Granola and Mission Pie’s Sharon Litzky) Mission Pie’s co-owners Krystin Rubin and Karen Heisler like to make sure non-professionals are well represented, too. Each year, the previous year’s winner is invited to judge. Patricia Hewitt won the contest last year with a honey pie, made with honey from her own bee hive. “A honey mousse pie, really. With a very flaky crust.”

The Emperor Norton

Hewitt was immediately taken with the concept of the Emperor Norton, a chocolate nut concoction. “It’s incredibly sweet and nutty, and Emperor Norton probably was sweet and nutty, too. I’m really thrilled to see someone incorporating the history of San Francisco into a San Franciscan pie contest.”

There must be some way to find the metaphoric significance in the toughness of the crust as it relates to the character of the famous 19th century oddball, but I can’t think of it off-hand. Somebody had to hold the plate down, so Hewitt could make off with a bite of the Emperor Norton using her compostable fork. Still, she was smitten.

After 90 minutes, with the crowd in the front room buzzed with restless energy. They’d already fixed on their pick for People’s Choice. But the judges in the kitchen took their time, deliberating earnestly.

Everybody loved the flaky crust on the Shaker lemon, but only on top. The bottom was gummy, and in a pie contest, anything less than a dynamite crust will take you out of the running. The judges waxed lyrical about the crust on a lime blackberry Italian meringue that “revealed itself in layers.” Best Crust by a unanimous vote.

Emperor Norton walked away with Most Creative. But the crown for Best in Show went to something entirely different, an unassuming pie with none of the visual flash or dazzle of its competitors. It was, one judge said later, “a sleeper.”

When the group got to the Coffee Break Pie, they all murmured the word “love” in unison. Even though one judge worried the taste was so “classic,” there was a good chance this pie came straight from an old recipe book. As if that would be a problem. Executing a pie recipe properly is no small feat.

The judge needn’t have worried. Coffee Break Pie did not exist before Sunday.

Sarah Jones takes the crown to thunderous applause.

For the past two weeks, Sarah Jones of Dallas (and more recently Palo Alto) has been baking “non-stop.” She baked every night, and ate pie for breakfast, searching for the perfect recipe. Her colleagues in accounting at Apple have also been gamely gaining weight in support of her bid.

Jones found something close in Bon Appetit: a recipe for caramel coffee creme brulee. And then she found another, for a salty honey pie.

“So I basically took a salty honey recipe, substituted caramel that was infused with coffee for the honey and then did a Biscoff cream (creamed cookies, people!) and sea salt." She had been looking for Nutella in the market and came across the Biscoff instead...

“At the last minute, I decided to lighten it up with the Biscoff cream, and I think that helped cut the sweetness a little bit.”

“I was so afraid,” Jones said, “because everybody had fruit, and I was going to go fruit. And I just decided, you know, I’m going to go really rich.”

She must have been gauging the tenor of the room, because the People’s Choice was indeed fruity to the max: Ru Cymrot-Wu’s Olallieberry and Peach.

Ru Cymrot-Wu wins the People’s Choice award

Two awards for summer fruit. Two for rich and creamy. In all honesty, they were all of them poetry on a plate. In this kind of a contest, everybody wins.

Purple-Speckled Dragon-Tongue Romano Beans grown by Annabelle Lenderick at La Tercera Farm

Corn, tomatoes, beans, and peppers: the quartet of summer, born in the Americas. None of these need much fussing with, and all four go very well together, in any number of permutations. Steamed green beans with halved cherry tomatoes and silvered red onion, drizzled with olive oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Corn salsa with chopped tomatoes, lime, and cilantro, served with black beans on a corn tortilla. Roasted peppers mixed with grilled corn next to sliced flat-iron steak. Fresh shelling beans--cannellini, borlotti, cranberry--tossed with corn and herbs for a sweet summer succotash, far away from winter's bleak frozen-limas-and-canned-corn version. The seed-flecked juices of a fresh tomato salad soaking into an ear of plain boiled corn on the cob, with the insistent perfume of basil and perhaps a dab of garlicky mayonnaise somewhere close by.

My friend Jen McAllister used to write a charmingly delicious food blog, Prepare to Meet Your Bakerina, about her adventures, cooking and otherwise, in a bite-sized apartment in Astoria, Queens. By August, she and her husband, sunk in muggy late-summer torpor and farmers' market overload, were perfectly satisfied with eating what they'd dubbed The Cornbread Thing several nights running. It's a simple composition, but a winning one: a fresh corn relish/salsa, made of cooked corn, chopped tomato, a bit of sweet onion, lime juice, chili powder, salt, and olive oil, left to macerate overnight; a skillet-baked batch of cornbread; some Greek yogurt, plenty of cilantro. The cornbread is cut into wedges and split horizontally, then slathered with Greek yogurt, dolloped with corn relish, and ornamented with sprigs of cilantro. What more do you need?

Well, how about salmon? Local sockeye and king salmon is in its late-summery, coral-colored glory right now, and poaching a slab of fish is even easier than baking a pan of cornbread. I'm enamored of the "shallow poaching" method outlined in The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. No need for full submersion: fill a shallow saute pan with just enough liquid (half water, half white wine, or water with a splash of white-wine or champagne vinegar) to come half-way up your fish filets or steaks. Add a few sprigs of tarragon, parsley, thyme, whatever aromatic nice thing you have growing, plus a few thin slices of lemon or lime and a big pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, cut the heat to barely a simmer, and slip the fish into the liquid. Cook, without letting it boil, for about 3 to 4 minutes. Flip the fish over, and cook for another few minutes, until it's just cooked through, and remove. For a nearly instant sauce, reduce the poaching liquid by half, then whisk in some cubes of cold butter. Remove the lemon and herbs, and voila! Beurre blanc without tears.

Or you can skip the buttery action and simply lavish your poached salmon, warm or chilled, with a slightly tweaked version of Jen's corn relish, over a plateful of lightly steamed green beans or, even better, the wonderful purple-speckled dragon-tongue romano beans grown by Annabelle Lenderick at La Tercera Farm.

Recipe: Summer Corn Salsa

Summary: This easy salsa, adapted from a recipe on the blog Prepare to Meet Your Bakerina, makes a wonderful summer topping for poached or grilled fish.

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 5 minutes
Total time: 15 minutes
Yield: 4 cups

Ingredients
6 ears fresh corn, husked
2 tbsp pure chile powder
a pinch of ground cumin, optional
1 tbsp water
1/2 of a large sweet onion
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
1 large tomato
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
juice of 2 juicy limes
a handful of cilantro or basil leaves, stems removed

Instructions

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Drop in corn, bring back to a boil, then cover and turn off heat. Let stand for 4 minutes, then drain and let corn rest until cool enough to handle.

2. While corn is cooking, stir chile powder into lime juice, and let sit for a few minutes while you dice the tomato and onion. Cut corn off the cob and mix with chile, lime, tomatoes, onion, jalapeno, salt and olive oil. Taste for seasoning.

3. Salsa can be made several hours (or even a day) before serving. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Just before serving, add a small handful of roughly chopped cilantro or basil leaves.

The Edible Schoolyard kitchen classroom at Hunters Point. Photo courtesy of ESY HP.

Who hasn't heard of The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley? But many here may not know about another affiliated program in the Bay Area, The Edible Schoolyard at the San Francisco Boys and Girls Club in Hunters Point, which offers children in that food insecure community a chance to grow their own food, cook it, and eat it too.

The Hunters Point Willie Mays Clubhouse afterschool program is getting a little extra exposure and financial assistance in conjunction with the 40th birthday celebrations for Chez Panisse. Earlier this week, the Today Show aired a segment with Alice Waters and Edible Schoolyard supporter actor Jake Gyllenhaal that was filmed at the Hunters Point program.

Tomorrow, as part of the Eating for Education campaign to raise awareness about and money for school gardens, San Francisco restaurants Bar Agricole, Bar Jules, Contigo, Delfina, and Zuni -- along with coffee companies Blue Bottle and Four Barrel -- will donate a percentage of the day's profits to the Hunters Point school garden and cooking program serving some 250 mostly low-income children of color from elementary age through to high school. The Bayview-Hunters Point area of the city is known more for fast food than fresh food; only about five percent of food sold in the neighborhood is considered fresh.

Ace fundraiser and Chez alum Samin Nosrat is in charge of the Eating for Education effort, a nation-wide, one-day event (find a complete list of participants on the Eating for Education site.)

For many restauranteurs, participating was a no-brainer. "The Boys and Girls Club in Hunters Point is a model program and this is a cause that's important to us," said Brett Emerson of Contigo. "Showcasing for children in a fun and engaging way the fundamentals of nutrition, respect for those that grow our food and passion for eating is key."

Another Chez alum, Gilbert Pilgrim of Zuni, chimed in: "We believe that people will eat in a healthy manner if they start doing it while they are young. This is a worthy cause that deserves all our support."

For the Boys and Girls Club, the campaign is an opportunity to connect with chefs and reach others in the food movement who value edible education for youth, said Brittany Johnson, a spokesperson for the organization.

While Zuni is full for Saturday night, Contigo still has room for both reservations and walk-ins who want to eat well -- and support edible education at the same time.

Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Hello, sunshine! Foggy August is winding down, with sunnier September right around the corner, just in time for the kids to be back in school and the doldrums of summer’s cut-out-early-Fridays to slip away. So grab these last couple of weekends before Labor Day, sling your sandals and beach towels in the back of the car, and get out of the city in search of sunnier climes.

From Oakland or San Francisco, my vacation compass always points north. Yes, the delights of Pacifica, Pescadero, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo on down to Los Angeles are many, and I’d happily return for a second slice of olallieberry pie at Duarte’s, or another view of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s undulating kelp forest and huge, prehistoric-looking sunfish. But what always lures me to the back roads is the sea-tinged scent of eucalyptus and coastal scrub, and the small farms, quirky towns, and rolling sheep-dotted hills of West Marin. So, 101 North, what have you to offer for the casual daytripper?

For starters, get out of town early, before the bridges and highway are clogged with the rest of the vacationing hordes. A promise of really excellent doughnuts and a superior cappuccino is usually enough to rouse even the most sluggish of un-morning people. A decade or so ago, I was working on a round-up of doughnut shops in the Bay Area for a local magazine. Not a single chocolate-glazed was worth getting up for until my friend Liz, born and bred in Marin, turned me on to her favorite high school hangout, Donut Alley in Larkspur. (The exit was Paradise Drive, easy to remember, for what is paradise but a morning that starts with a perfect doughnut?) I went there and fell in love.

The same guy had been running the place for years. They opened at 6:30am and closed when they ran out of doughnuts, usually before noon. There were no maple-bacon or vegan plum-cardamom doughnuts, just good old old-fashioned old fashioneds, your buttermilk bars and apple fritters and cute, tender, just-sweet-enough cake doughnuts, chocolate-iced, cinnamon-sugared, or pink-sprinkled. Parents came in with their kids for a bag to go; old guys sat around a few Formica tables scattered with copies of the Marin I-J and drank paper cups of coffee from the help-yourself Bun-o-matic machine. And while a recent visit revealed the place to be a little spiffed up (the coffee is organic now, the tables dark wood, and a new blueberry doughnut, made with dried berries, is selling fast), the spirit and doughnuts are exactly the same. Polite kids still point and ask, “Can my little brother have that chocolate one, please?” while their baby sisters squeal for sprinkles and chocolate milk.

And while the drip coffee on offer is perfectly fine, you Sightglass-spoiled city folk probably need a more potent eye-opener. Head across the street to the marble counters of Emporio Rulli and order your Rome-worthy latte or cappuccino. Sip it at one of the sidewalk tables, or take it to go and stroll over to Dolliver Park, at the corner of Magnolia Ave and Madrone St. Sit under a redwood tree and breathe the green forest smells while you lick the sugar off your fingers.

Double back to 101, but not for long. It’s time to get onto the meandering Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It winds, stop and start, through the posh Marin towns, San Anselmo, Greenbrae, Ross, and Fairfax. Soon, though, the countryside opens up and the road slides under towering redwood trees and bark-shredded eucalyptus, swinging past the forested campgrounds of Samuel P. Taylor State Park, through the one-block town of Olema, epicenter of the 1906 earthquake, and into the (by comparison) bustling little town of Point Reyes Station. During the week in wintertime, Point Reyes Station is a very mellow place. On a sunny summer weekend, however, it’s up and lively, thronged with bicyclists and birders.

The Saturday morning Point Reyes Farmers' Market, in front of Toby’s Feed Barn and next to the town’s sweet community garden plots, has just a few farmers—Paradise Valley Produce, Fresh Run Farm, Wild Blue Farm—but they’re well stocked and doing a bang-up business in lettuce and kale, cukes and squash, bundles of herbs, freshly dug onions and potatoes, bright carrots and brighter bouquets. A glance through a wooden crate of new-crop Gravenstein apples from Paradise Valley reveals a couple of ringers: none other than the elusive, rarely seen Pink Pearls, a tart early apple whose cream-colored skin masks its fantastic, hot-pink flesh.

Stop by the Brickmaiden stall to pick up one of Celine Underwood's tangy sourdough loaves, baked in a wood-fired oven in a little unmarked cottage just across the street. It’s the same cottage where Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Pruiett of Tartine got their start in 1994, baking bread and pastries for small stores and farmers markets in the area under the name Bay Village Bread. Next to the bread stall is Wild West Ferments, offering handmade sauerkraut along with canning jars full of wonderfully fruity, lacto-fermented “sodas” in flavors like nectarine-vanilla and plum.

Osteria Stellina's GBD Grilled Cheese serves up three kinds of grilled cheese: a basic one with Valley Ford Estero Gold cheese on Stellina's own crusty bread; sharp cheddar with a griddled egg; and “The Bill from Bo,” Bill Niman’s slow-roasted brisket with Estero Gold. The Marshall Store, from across Tomales Bay, is serving up oysters to go, on the half shell or barbecued.

Not in the mood for oysters or cheese? Well, there’s always what might just be the best burger in West Marin, served right on the way out of town at Marin Sun Farms’ butcher shop and café. (Their beef jerky is perfect trail food, too.) Otherwise, fill out your picnic menu at Tomales Bay Foods, home of Cowgirl Creamery, and take your pick of perfect picnic spots. Families with children can head to the placid shoreline of Hearts Desire beach along Tomales Bay near Inverness. Too full of sunbathers and kayakers? Take the short, shady hike through the mossy, Hobbit-y trees to nearby Shell Beach, generally a little less populated. Or go exploring among the numerous ocean beaches, lagoons, and estuaries of the Point Reyes National Seashore itself.

On the way home, sand in your shoes, cell phones ignored, you can keep the beachy feeling going by snagging an outdoor table overlooking the marina at Sausalito’s Bar Bocce, ordering a pitcher of beer or a glass of white sangria while you wait for your crisp-crusted calamari pizza to arrive, dribbled with lemon oil, flecked with chiles. The best seat in the house isn’t actually in the restaurant; it’s the bench down on the beach, shaded by a big umbrella, where you can dig your toes into the sand and toast your very, very good fortune at having all this bounty in your backyard.

Margo True, the food editor for Sunset, will be demonstrating recipes from the magazine's latest cookbook,The One-Block Feast, at the Point Reyes Farmers' Market at 10am on Saturday, August 27.

Van, Evan and Sarah Rich. Photo: courtesy of Rich Family

Chefs Sarah and Evan Rich use their home kitchen to test out ideas for their pop-up Chefs' Night Off dinners at Radius.

With a dinner coming up on Monday, August 29, the menu is shaping up to be:
• 1st course: red beets, goat cheese, almonds, arugula
• 2nd course: squid, black olive vinaigrette, watermelon, crispy onions
• 3rd course: pork shoulder, black garlic, red cabbage
• 4th course: "peach cobbler"

Chefs’ Night Off is always priced at $60—excluding beverages, tax and gratuities.
Email: chefsnightoff@gmail.com to make your reservation and be sure to indicate the time you'd like to eat and the number in your party.

Chefs' Night Off kitchen team. Photo: courtesy Chefs' Night Off

The two chefs have a young baby, Van Robert Rich, born in March of this year. Sarah was previously a sous chef at Michael Mina, and Evan was most recently chef de cuisine for Daniel Patterson at Coi. He worked before that as chef de cuisine for Michael Tusk at Quince. These chefs met nine years ago at Bouley in NYC. Sarah was Evan's boss on the fish station. They dated for several years while working at various restaurants in New York, got married in late 2007 and moved to San Francisco in early 2008. Sarah Rich caught up with Bay Area Bites via email interview.

How did the pop-up dinners come about? What is it like working on this sort of dinner?
Evan and I were working on opening our own restaurant and we had something that fell through. One night Evan was hanging out with the former GM of Coi and he suggested the idea of doing pop-ups. We've both always loved the Radius space, and it's a beautiful restaurant. Our friend Max does the pastries there, so we talked to him about it. He introduced us to the owners, and the next thing we knew, we were all set!

Where do you do the prep work?
Radius is conveniently closed Sunday and Monday, so we're able to do all of the prep at the restaurant. The restaurant owners have been great to work with. Currently we have a schedule to do our pop-ups at Radius on the fourth Monday of every month, as we look to open a space of our own. We may also do a couple of other events with different concepts at other locations, more details soon!

How do you come up with menus for each event?
The structure of each dinner is a four-course menu with a few extra small courses included. We visit the various markets (the Marin Farmers' Market is our favorite) to get an idea of what's available and what tastes the best. Evan and I bounce ideas off of each other and then over the course of a week or two we'll test dishes and recipes at home, making the dishes for dinner to clarify and perfect our ideas. We also like to run our menu ideas by the kitchen team so everyone is involved and they feel a sense of ownership.

Chefs' Night Off July 11 Dinner - Nasturtium Namalaka, Peach, Blackberries and Almond Streusel. Photo: courtesy Chefs' Night Off

Where do you get your cooking ingredients?
Through our past jobs we've been able to develop strong relationships with the local farmers and purveyors. Our menus and cooking are influenced heavily by the great produce found at the local markets. We love to use Tomatero, Star Route, Full Belly and De Santis to name a few. It's easy to get inspired by what they grow.

Where do you live and where are you from?
We live in the Presidio, Baker Beach Apartments. We moved here from the Mission after we had our baby a few months ago. We love it and it has the best views in the city and so many great places to hike around. Evan is from New York/New Jersey and I grew up in Louisiana and Texas.

What are your favorite off-night food & drink spots?
Outerlands is one of our favorites, and they have killer bread and butter. Everything on their small menu is delicious. Brett [Cooper] is doing a great job with the food and Dave [Muller] has fantastic cocktails.

Nojo, because we've spent time in Japan visiting and working. We love those flavors and techniques. Greg Dunmore’s food represents Japanese cooking well, and it's a fun space.

15 Romolo, where we went a lot after long days of work at Coi. Burgers are great and so are the cocktails.

We don't really go out for just drinks since I got pregnant and had a baby.

What are your favorite local joints?
Ragazza, where the pizza's great and so is the service.
La Taqueria has the best tacos, and the carnitas doradas are ridiculously good.
The spicy crab is so good at PPQ.

Favorite date spots?
We can't really get too fancy now with the baby. Cotogna's great. Anything that Mike [Tusk] has on the menu will be perfect. Aziza is one of the best, and always goes above and beyond expectations. We always spend our anniversary at Manresa because it’s such a special and amazing place. We'll have to find a sitter this year.

What is your favorite meal to have with friends and/or family?
Sarah makes a pretty delicious fried chicken. Whatever we can make that you can eat with your hands is always fun with friends. Nopa's pork chop is a favorite meal, and Jai Yun is a great place to go with a big group of friends.

Guiltiest food pleasure?
Sarah: I can't say no to a bag of potato chips.
Evan: Mt. Tam spread on toasted bread. I could eat the whole wheel.

Alice Waters clutches garlic and talks up edible education while Levi's President and Chez Panisse fan Robert Hanson looks on.

All photos: Wendy Goodfriend

Unless you've been living in a cave the last week or two you likely know that a certain iconic restaurant in Berkeley is celebrating its 40th birthday this weekend.

Iconic owner of iconic eatery has been here, there, and everywhere in the past week or two. SEO-friendly translation: Alice Waters of Chez Panisse has chatted with former Chez chefs on KQED's Forum, dished on supping solo on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and got dirty with Hollywood heartthrob and Edible Schoolyard supporter Jake Gyllenhaal on the Today Show, where she was interviewed by Jenna Bush Hager — yes, that Jenna Bush — at The Edible Schoolyard at the San Francisco Boys and Girls Club in Hunters Point, one of several affiliates to the original Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley.

She's also been the subject of not one but two lengthy retrospectives in the San Francisco Chronicle and graced the pages of many glossies this month, with more major print media to come this weekend when the Chez Panisse 40th birthday celebrations kick off.

Today, however, Waters took to the streets of San Francisco -- in Maiden Lane off Union Square no less -- to serve lunch, sell T-shirts, and sign books.

On the menu: School lunch, of course, or Waters' vision of what school lunch should be. The boxed lunches were a fundraiser for the newly named nonprofit Edible Schoolyard Project, a national organization designed to integrate garden and kitchen education into grade-school curriculum. Suggested donation: $5 a pop for a box and 400 lunches sold out within an hour or so. In the mix: Smoked pulled chicken baguette (featuring Soul Food Farm chicken, Dirty Girl Farm shallot and Early Girl tomato, and Little City Gardens herbs and baby, frilly mustard greens) with harissa and aioli. The sandwich was accompanied by La Tercera cucumber pickles and radish, along with Knoll Farms figs, Lagier Ranches Bronx grapes, and Happy Quail Farms peppers. For veggies: Pounded lemon thyme pistou with iacopi butter bean mash, Dirty Girl tomatoes, pickled vegetables, and aforementioned frilly mustard greens. And to wash all those organic veggies down, a refreshing drink of Full Belly Farm yellow doll watermelon with anise hyssop and lime juice.

Got all that? There will be a quiz after lunch. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Chez chefs were all too busy prepping for the weekend galas to whip up lunch today, which was outsourced to Nicole Lobue's Lobue Events, a high-end catering company, in close consultation with Waters, of course.

Waters also teamed up with another local-gone-global icon, Levi's, to launch a limited-edition t-shirt collection (100 % organic cotton, natch) designed by Alice Waters (who 'fessed up to help from chef Sylvan Brackett on her tee) and four well-known creative types: musician David Byrne, filmmaker Sofia Coppola, author Dave Eggers and illustrator Maira Kalman. Alas, none of the luminaries were on hand this afternoon to model the $30 shirts, proceeds from the sale also support the Edible Schoolyard Project. Beginning today, the shirts are available in select Levi’s stores and online at levi.com. At lunch some 40 or so Ts were snapped up, Kalman's pie print proving as popular as Waters' apple images.

Waters addressed the crowd and the media asking: "What could be more universal than blue jeans and edible education?" To which there were no snappy rejoinders, since this is Waters' moment in the sun. Levi's honcho Robert Hanson told a story about his then-very-pregnant girlfriend insisting the couple keep a date at Chez Panisse, some years ago. That night, she gave birth to a baby girl, who's been an organic vegetarian eater ever since. Cue awww now.

It was all very lovely: Wheelbarrows full of freshly harvested produce, including ground cherries, squash, and aromatic herbs from the ESY garden, along with cute little booths. The communal tables sported linen table cloths and posies of fresh flowers. Waters sang the praises of freshly picked garlic the way she has famously waxed about a perfect peach and stressed the importance of educating all the nation's children about good food and the pleasures of the table.

The crowd was a mixed bag of die-hard Chez Panisse fans, supporters of Waters' school lunch and slow food agenda, self-described foodies -- and nearby workers who stumbled onto a good thing. Some in line said that the boxed lunch was the closest they'd ever get to Chez Panisse food, since the high-end restaurant is out of reach for many. Some had never heard of the Edible Schoolyard, offering proof that Waters' mission is far from over.

The local food legend, who signed copies of her new book 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering, shook hands with lunch-goers waiting in line to eat and promised the mellow crowd of 500 or so that anyone who missed out on a meal was invited to come eat at Chez Panisse. No word on who would foot the bill.

When asked if her offer was good, press rep David Prior, who was fairly confident that everyone who wanted a box lunch was accommodated, said: "I wouldn't be surprised. There's nothing Alice likes less than running out of food. She's all about feeding people."

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Chez Panisse's birthday kicks off with party to remember (Berkeleyside)

What do you get when you combine three former Arizmendi bakers with an uber-cool new food truck (housing its own oven)? Well, Vesta Flatbread, of course. Perhaps you've seen them Saturdays at the Grand Lake Farmers Market in Oakland; now Jenya Chernoff, Traci Prendergast and Aron Ford are taking to the streets with their seasonal flatbreads and housemade drinks. Jenya and Traci founded Vesta in 2009 and Aron officially jumped on board this summer. I share a commercial kitchen space with them in Richmond, and was immediately struck with their positive energy, excitement for their new project, and the fact that they prepare beautiful meals for each other while they're cooking in the kitchen (something so many of us neglect to do). So I wanted to chat with them and find out more about their business, the mobile food truck culture, and where they see themselves in the future.

Traci roasting peppers

1. Tell me a little about your business and how/why you decided to start it.
All three of us met while bakers/co-owners of Arizmendi Bakery in Emeryville. We love the tradition and community of artisan baking and knew we wanted to make our own bread, but we wanted to expand our skills and creativity and create a business we could put our personal stamp on. Our menu was the marriage of our desire to evoke an ancient region of the world with wanting to dream up something creative and delicious using minimal equipment to sell on the streets. We’d like to think we ended up with a product that has thousands of years of history while reflecting our own “modern” food sensibilities.

2. Do you think living in the Bay Area allows your business to flourish? If so, how so?
Absolutely. People here understand and appreciate our values towards supporting local farms, ranches and dairies, even if this means our products can't be dirt cheap. For us, feeding others is an act of love, and the exchange we have with customers is important. Bay area folks are willing to try new things and explore, they are curious and open-minded.

3. What have been the highlights of being a small business owner in the Bay Area thus far?
Becoming part of the vibrant street food and farmers market community. Since becoming mobile vendors we have been able to meet so many wonderful, dedicated and creative people from all aspects of the food business, talk to farmers about their production, learn about their work and challenges and have a much broader understanding of the processes that bring food to the table.

4. What challenges are you facing right now in terms of growth or vision?
Well, one big challenge is finding our own retail/kitchen space. We have been sharing commercial kitchens, and we are grateful that such places exist. It is extremely difficult to find a reasonably sized space in a neighborhood that can support a retail food business. Mostly this is because of the regulations on building & permit processes in California, which jack up the costs of buying/building to a level prohibitive for most food businesses.

5. What inspires you, day to day?
The farmers' market, the seasons, other chefs.

6. What are your goals for the future of Vesta?
Our long term dream is to have our own kitchen and retail space. Given we launched our new truck August 25th, we are mainly just excited to become part of the nomadic kitchen culture of street food, and start serving up flatbread sandwiches in the East Bay and San Francisco.

Vesta Flatbread
Find them: Saturdays from 9 am-2 pm at the Grand Lake Farmers Market, Oakland. And soon: out on the road in the truck!
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Nikki Henderson. Photo: People's Grocery

A new class at UC Berkeley is getting a lot of buzz. Edible Education: The Rise and Future of the Food Movement is all about food politics. In an unusual step, Cal is opening up the 13-week course to the general public. Well, the class was open to all. Three hundred free tickets for the first night were snatched up in less than fifteen minutes. Student enrollment filled up just as fast. Edible Education is being organized, and funded, by Alice Water’s Chez Pannise Foundation. Nikki Henderson, the executive director of People’s Grocery in Oakland, along with author and U.C. Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan, will co-teach the semester course.

Michael Pollan. Photo: Alia Malley

Think of the sustainable food movement as a dinner party. Edible Education will take a look at the guest list and topics of conversation. How do the slow food movement and food justice fit together? What does corporate food look like? The class will feature immigrant farm workers telling their own stories. Each week will include a guest lecturer.

Here’s the line-up:
• 8/30: The Global Food Movement, Founder Carlo Petrini with Corby Kummer
• 9/6: Building a Successful Movement, Peter Sellars
• 9/13: The Politics of Food, Marion Nestle, Ph.D., M.P.H.
• 9/20: Perspectives on Race, Place & Food, Alegria De La Cruz, Rebecca Flournoy, Yvonne Yen Liu
• 9/27: Nutrition, Health and Diet Related Disease, Patricia Crawford & Robert Lustig
• 10/4: Corporations & the Food Movement, Jack Sinclair, Jib Ellison, Michael Pollan
• 10/11: School Lunch and Edible Schoolyards, Ann Cooper
• 10/18: Global Economies of Food: GMOs, and Feeding the World, Raj Patel
• 10/25: Agriculture and Social Justice, Eric Schlosser, Greg Asbed & Lucas Benitez
• 11/1: What is an Edible Education? Alice Waters
• 11/8: Food and the Environment, Frances Moore Lappé & Gidon Eshel
• 11/22: Van Jones
• 11/29: Place Based Models of Change, Brahm Ahmadi, Hank Herrera

The class is every Tuesday from August 30th through November 29th, 6-7:30pm (doors open at 5:30pm) at the Wheeler Auditorium at UC Berkeley.

Tickets will be available, free of charge, six days before each class.

Bay Area Bites will provide coverage of the course.

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