This Monday marked the debut of the San Francisco episode of The Layover, where Anthony Bourdain showed some local love for San Francisco. He ate with La Cocina’s Caleb Zigas, Chefs Roland Passot, Danny Bowien and Chris Cosentino. Tony also explored the daytime drinking crowd at Toronado. Jeff Hollinger, barkeep at Comstock Saloon served up adult beverages and later joined Bourdain for more drinks. Bourdain ate at the Rice Paper Scissors pop-up with Oscar Villalon, my husband. We visited the Tonga Room with Bourdain and the crew after the Rock Paper Scissors feed fest/shoot. Tony had already celebrated at the Tonga Room earlier with Cosentino, and was happy to share more Scorpion Bowls. After an hour or more, two of the crew decided to take a dip in the Tonga Room pool. A hotel staffer was on hand with clean and dry towels and robes for the swimmers. We took a picture and smoke break outside after the swimming action.

Bay Area Bites caught up with Bourdain via email.

Bay Area Bites: What food-restaurant trends do you see for this year?

Bourdain: Trends? It's all about Sean Brock [a Southern Chef].

Bay Area Bites: For the San Francisco episode of The Layover... viewers seem to think you were pretty sauced.

Bourdain: SF? YES. I was at least that f*cked up.

Bay Area Bites: Who in the food world bugs you the most these days? St. Alice [Waters], or someone new?

Bourdain: Bugged by? No one. I am in a Zen-like state of peace and universal harmony with the world.

Not sure I fully believe him. His recent Twitter feed debates the merits of movie remakes, as well as telling local eater @GarySoup off via the following twitter exchange:

The Layover San Francisco

Chef Jacques Pépin demonstrates how to make haddock steaks in rice paper with a shallot and soy sauce. This video clip is a web-exclusive that was taped during the filming of Jacques' series Essential Pépin.

Jacques Pépin's new national TV series Essential Pépin begins airing October 15 on KQED. The series is based on his new cookbook Essential Pépin which is a collection of over 700 of Jacques' favorite recipes from his career that has spanned six decades.

The new Essential Pépin website just launched and you can view four complete episodes before the program premieres as well as view entire episodes one week before they air on TV. Over 75 recipes are available online, which include large color photos not available in the book. You can also connect with Jacques on Facebook and Twitter as well as view a behind-the-scenes slideshow from the taping of the series.

And then, they were not there. I still remember that first reaction. They were so huge. How could they just be gone? In 2001, I'd been living in San Francisco for eleven years, getting back to New York once a year, if that, for business or family. On that day, I did what so many of us did: made panicked phone calls to everyone I knew back East, my mother who could have been in the city that morning, my brother-in-law who flew American every other week for work, my friends who lived downtown. I sat with my best friend, who lived in the same Valencia Street apartment building as I did, holding her young daughter on my lap. My friend held her 4-day-old son in her arms, and wondered what sort of a world she had brought him into. At Citysearch, where I'd just started as the restaurants editor a few days before, we sat numbly at our computers, wondering what we could possibly write about.

Windows on the World in the North Tower was gone. The longtime destination restaurant was famed for its views and its wine list, for being the place where, as former Gourmet editor and New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl wrote in New York magazine, New Yorkers who could handle the sky-high prices rode the elevator up to the 107th floor to order "like a Master of the Universe: oysters heaped with pearls of caviar, whole lobes of foie gras in Sauternes, burnished ducks and butter-braised lobsters." During the 80s, my father frequently went there for wine tastings with some of the city's best wine writers and sommeliers, coming home star-struck and high on Burgundy and Bordeaux.

When the tower went down, dozens of staff working the morning shift lost their lives, including Heather Ho, the restaurant's new, and talented, 32-year-old pastry chef, a native of Hawaii who had been named a Chronicle Rising Star chef in 1999.

During my four-year stint as the restaurant critic for San Francisco magazine, I'd eaten her charming, witty versions of all-American desserts, like lemon icebox cake, while she was making a name for herself at Boulevard. The magazine named her the city's best pastry chef in 2000. She'd left Boulevard at the end of May, 2001 to start her new job in New York. As Amy Machnak, who replaced Ho at Boulevard, told the LA Times a year later,

"My first day was her last day. She was testing recipes, playing around with a new dessert. I thought: 'How strange that she is leaving and going to New York for this really great job, and she's still testing recipes. But I look back at it now and I understand that she was just that creative. I don't think her mind ever stopped."

A month after the attacks, benefits at Boulevard and the now-closed Aqua (where Ho had also worked) raised over $40,000 for the newly created Heather Ho Memorial Scholarship at the Culinary Institute of America, where she had studied.

San Francisco's chefs and restaurants weren't right in the dust-choked disaster zone as their New York city counterparts were. They couldn't struggle through blocked-off streets towards Ground Zero with pots of chili and hotel pans full of chicken to feed the firefighters, rescue workers, and volunteers working there day after day. But the restaurant industry is a tight-knit community. How many San Francisco chefs and line cooks, dishwashers, hosts, sommeliers and servers, had worked in New York City at some point in their careers, had friends and colleagues who were suddenly gone? Too many to count.

The flashy, crazy money of the first, late-90s dot-com boom--and the entitlement and ridiculous luxury that it precipitated-- was already vanishing by the end of the summer of 2001. But things changed faster after that day in the September. Despite the excess that anyone who worked in a SoMa start-up at that time may remember (the Industry Standard's weekly rooftop party, the splashy launch bashes, the sushi spreads and $1200 bottles of Screaming Eagle), it's hard not to look back at those pre-9/11 years as having a certain innocence, a certain invincibility, however undeserved, that we shared with New York City during those boom years.

Now, when bad times hit, it's the restaurants and chefs in the Bay Area who step up. Benefits held in San Francisco and beyond for victims of Katrina, of the tsunami, of the recent earthquake and subsequent devastation in Japan, and more have raised high-profile millions over the years. Smaller, more low-key but just as crucial fund-raisers happen every day, with chefs, food writers, bloggers, farmers, and restaurant owners spending their time and money to help out their communities. It's easy to feel a little cynical about the sanctimonious patriotism and packaging of this 10-year anniversary of 9/11. But a few days ago, I went out to Crissy Field to celebrate the 10th birthday of that boy born just a few days before the towers came down. It's his future we're shaping now, his community we're building. So today, on this day of remembrance, I'm going to cook and bring my chosen family here to eat together. And I'm going to thank everyone I know in the food industry, the most generous people I've ever met.

Original Broadcast on Forum: Thu, Aug 18, 2011 -- 10:00 AM

In 1971, Alice Waters and some friends opened a neighborhood bistro in Berkeley with the aim of serving meals with the food and atmosphere of a dinner party at home. Forty years later, the way the nation eats has been dramatically changed by Chez Panisse. As the restaurant marks its anniversary, Forum talks with local chefs and food writers about the impact Chez Panisse has had on the local and national food scene.

Host: Scott Shafer

Guests:
• Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse
• Charlie Hallowell, chef and owner of Pizzaiolo and Boot and Shoe Service in Oakland
• Michael Bauer, executive food and wine editor and restaurant critic for The San Francisco Chronicle and member of the James Beard Foundation Restaurant Awards Committee
• Russell Moore, chef and owner of Camino Restaurant in Oakland

Related Stories, Books, Audio:
• Alice Waters Serves Lunch, Launches Levi's T-Shirts for Edible Education -- BAB
• Edible Education 101: Rock Stars of Food Movement Teach UC Berkeley Class -- BAB
• Chez Panisse’s birthday kicks off with party to remember -- Sarah Henry at Berkeleyside
• Book: 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering by Alice Waters
• Chez Panisse Foundation
• Chez Panisse 40th Anniversary Events -- Chez Panisse Foundation
• Chez Panisse at Forty -- David Lebovitz
• The Real Triumph of Alice Waters -- John Birdsall at Gilt Taste
• Edible Education 101: The Rise and Future of the Food Movement -- Chez Panisse Foundation
• Jenna Bush, Alice Waters, Jake Gyllenhaal, and the Edible Schoolyard --Today Show
• Chez Panisse staff and fans celebrate 40 years of Alice’s restaurant -- The Washington Post
• The Edible Schoolyard (ESY) @edibleschoolyrd
• Alice Waters: Edible Education -- short film by Lisa Eisner + interview @NOWNESS

A lot of celebrity-chef star power was on display last week at SF Chefs 2011. But on Sunday morning, when a lot of event-goers were still sleeping off the effects of Saturday night's tasting-tent cocktails, Joyce Goldstein, Cecilia Chiang, and Nancy Oakes, three of the city's true pioneer chefs, were chatting in front of a small but attentive audience, discussing the challenges, achievements, and changes happening then and now in San Francisco's restaurant scene.

Some background, for you newcomers: Nancy Oakes is the executive chef of Boulevard, the brasserie-style New American restaurant at the foot of Mission Street that's 18 years old and still garnering awards and a swarm of reservations every night. Before that, she was the chef/owner of L'Avenue, an acclaimed 50-seat bistro. She also heads the team at Prospect in Soma, which opened last year to rave reviews.

Cecilia Chiang, now in her 90s, brought the fiery flavors of Hunan and Szechuan cuisine to a city dominated by Cantonese cooking. She opened the 300-seat Mandarin in Ghirardelli Square in 1968, making it a destination restaurant with sophisticated service and decor. The Mandarin set a standard for high-end, authentic Chinese cooking, and Chiang ran the restaurant until 1991. She later became a consultant for Betelnut on Union Square; her son Phillip went on to found P.F. Chang's.

Joyce Goldstein's Square One restaurant, in Jackson Square, demonstrated that there was a lot more to real Mediterranean food than spaghetti and dolmas. Goldstein, a cooking teacher and former Cafe at Chez Panisse chef who had lived and traveled extensively all around the Mediterranean, brought the vibrant, sunny flavors of these countries back to California. Square One, which she opened in 1984, offered dishes inspired by everything from Spanish tapas to Turkish mezze to Moroccan tagines. It helped shape the Mediterranean focus of California cuisine that continues today. Goldstein closed the restaurant in 1997, but has continued as a popular cookbook author, teacher, and consultant.

Like many successful women who have weathered the ups and downs of a demanding profession, they get a little tired of being classified as "women chefs." However, this profession is still one that's dominated by men, and it was much more so back in the 1960s, when all three were starting out. But it helped to be in San Francisco. Said Joyce, "The Bay Area was always progressive. Banks here would lend women money. There were a lot of women entrepreneurs, women running businesses in the city." Now, she says, there are a lot of women in the wine business, women not just working as pastry chefs but running their own bakeries, manufacturing their own jams and confections, running businesses rather than just cooking at home for fun.

Chiang had a different experience, trying to break into what was then a very insular, Cantonese-dominated Chinese food world. Said Chiang, "I was a woman, and restaurants weren't a women's business. I can't speak Cantonese, and then 90% of the Chinese-restaurant population spoke Cantonese. I would speak Mandarin to them, and they'd laugh at me, be very insulting, treat me like a foreigner. I couldn't get credit at any of the produce, fish, or meat markets in Chinatown; I had to pay cash for everything. The Americans were so kind, they accepted me, but not the Chinese, because I was a woman."

Now, said Nancy, women in the business are competing on a level playing field, especially here in the Bay Area, where there's more diversity, and kitchens are less dominated by the European boys' club common in New York restaurants. So, why do male chefs still get the lion's share of press and notoriety?

"Well, besides Gabrielle Hamilton, who keeps her end up being outrageous, most women chefs don't feel they have to be potty-mouthed in the school of [Anthony] Bourdain and [David] Chang, traveling in packs and dropping f-bombs. Women do this because we like the work, not to be a celebrity."

Between the three of them, they've seen a lot of trends come and go. Foraging, for example, is nothing new. Back in Chez Panisse's early years, Nancy remembered Alice Waters and pastry chef Lindsey Shere constantly picking through the Berkeley backyards of their friends and neighbors, making poundcakes scented with rose geranium leaves, plucking nasturtium blossoms and purslane for salads. "I keep learning," noted Nancy. "I'm not a chemical-food or foam advocate, but when you've got a bunch of 23-year-olds in the kitchen who are excited about this kind of thing, well, I go to Le Sanctuaire, we get out the gels and the foams and see what works, what will really be worth eating, what will stand the test of time. I think you need 100 years to really create a cuisine. How long has it been for California cuisine, 30, 40 years? We're still finding out what will last."

"When I was first starting out, I needed a lot of ingredients that the Cantonese don't use. No one carried them; I had to get everything shipped in from Taiwan. Now, you can get anything in Asian markets, things from all over," said Cecilia. She's less impressed with the quality of Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area now. "The cooks aren't professionally trained, they don't have passion. It's just a business." As a restaurant-owning friend pointed out to her, a restaurant can make so much more money off hard liquor and entertainment, like karaoke, there's little incentive to invest in high-quality ingredients or top-notch chefs.

"There's been so much progression in Mediterranean food. It's much more about specific cuisines now," noted Joyce. Restaurants don't just serve Italian food, they serve Roman, Sicilian, or Sardinian food. And the quality of up-and-coming cooks is higher, too. "Everyone's going to cooking schools, doing stages...they don't always have the palate or the passion, but they do have the skills."

What do they miss? The California-meets-Chinese cuisine of the late Barbara Tropp, for one, whose China Moon Cafe has never been equaled. "She was a scholar, extremely meticulous, doing Chinese cooking with California ingredients. No else has picked up on that, to the degree that she was doing," said Joyce.

And where do they go now? Commonwealth, said Nancy. "I like the great spirit there, the service, the wine list where I never recognize anything but always find something interesting, the fact that 10% of the cost of the tasting menu goes to charity." Goldstein agreed. Normally suspicious of tech-y modernist cuisine, she said, "I was pleasantly surprised! Jason Fox understands texture, he understands flavor, and they understand hospitality. I feel the same about Nopa. I bring people there from out of town. Yes, it's boisterous, but the food is solid and grounded, and I love the wine list. Perbacco, too, because I always learn something. And because I like to see the chef actually in the restaurant, in the farmers' market." Gary Danko, says Cecilia. It's very consistent, and the prices haven't changed. She likes Benu, too, and Prospect.

"It's very hard to stay viable, and stay relevant," Nancy admitted. "It's an art, and it's a business."

Part 2: The Food... (Part 1: The Story)
Having a cafe was nobody's dream, but it sustained us in our other
endeavors.

The Brick Hut was a place for us all to create a space in the world
where we could be our complete selves.

The food was the community, the edible fare was our way of bringing it
all together, with love.

Brick Hut 1: 1975-1983 "Women Invented Cheese"
In the beginning, it wasn't all about the food. For us, owning our work place was about opportunity, self-determination, sanctuary. Every person did every job.

The Brick Hut was our anchor, as well as an anchor for our community.

Brick Hut 1: Something Moving album cover with menu

The menu was small, painted by Peggy Mitchell of the band BeBe K'Roche, on a board attached to the hood above the stove. It is featured on the cover of Mary Watkins' album, Something Moving which includes the song Brick Hut.
Listen to Brick Hut:

The food was simple. Comfort food: Eggs, waffles and pancakes, hash browns, toast, bacon, ham and sausage links, one kind of cheese -- cheddar. A bottomless cup of coffee was 70 cents and customers could help themselves while waiting to be seated. And, bless them, wait they did.

In fact, waiting for a seat became a good time to meet old friends or make new ones, hold lively discussions or maybe just flirt with somebody.

Our specialty signature item was a spiced whole wheat batter for our delicious waffles and pancakes. Pure maple syrup was extra.

Our food evolved along with the business and the times. Debi Thow wanted to make muffins. She brought in a recipe from Gourmet magazine that we modified over time and the famous Brick Hut blueberry muffin was born. Amey Shaw showed us how to make a gorgeous Hollandaise sauce and brunch exploded in a bevy of Hollandaise dishes.

Hash browns became home fries and we saw our options were limited only by our imaginations.

People had ideas, we experimented.

We created omelets and named them for inspirational women: Sister Marion for a marathon-running nun; Ruth Reid for an early 20th Century lesbian poet and activist; Seven Sisters for the Berkeley feminist construction collective and the Mendocino omelet for the herb blend we ordered from a woman owned business.

What's in a Ruth Reid Omelet?
• Avocado
• Green chili
• Jack cheese
• Sour cream

Hut 2: 1983-1995 "Pancakes, Eggs and Fun"
When we expanded to a new location, the menu expanded too. More space meant the ability to offer more fresh foods: salads, fruit bowls, better breakfast meats, artisanal sausages, higher quality meat and poultry.

Seasonal fresh fruits topped the waffles and pancakes.

The Tofu Saute with fresh sautéed vegetables was a vegetarian favorite.

We made soups, improved our chili, made salsas, offered a beautiful variety of baked goods, some house-made, some from Berkeley's Nabolom Bakery.

We installed an espresso machine to round out our epic breakfast experience. There was still a line down the street.

We played with our food. We joked that we cooked 50 items 500 ways.

One day, I thought it would be fun to offer something completely new: eggs scrambled with pesto. It was an immediate sensation and was copied by several other cafes in the area, as well as a few in other parts of the country, thanks to customers who had moved away and talked their local eatery into trying it out.

Occasionally, the brunch board offered one special: the Mystery Omelet. I think I started that just to avoid having to make a million of my least favorite omelets (the Ruth Reid-- too many moving parts, too many substitutions!)

We just asked if the customer was vegetarian or not and proceeded to create a whatever omelet on the fly—no two alike all day.

Kids loved our Mickey Mouse pancakes and it wasn’t unusual to see a server carrying around a baby so mom could eat unencumbered.

People came in for breakfast during the times of the Iran-Contra hearings or when Anita Hill was testifying at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and ended up joining people at other tables for discussion and, eventually, lunch.

If a customer asked for something different, we did our best to make it happen.

Tofu Saute
• Cut medium/firm tofu into 1/2" thick triangles
• Cut, blanch and shock: carrot, broccoli, zucchini, set aside
• In heated sauté pan, add: Chopped garlic and ginger
• Add tofu
• Add tamari or soy,
• Add sliced onions and mushrooms (shiitakes are best for this)
• Add vegetables, a little salt and black pepper
• Cover to finish
• Drizzle a little sesame oil to flavor
• Top with toasted sesame seeds, maybe some chopped scallion
• Serve on rice or with home fries and toast

Brick Hut 3 kitchen chaos: Sharon, Rami, Monica, Luana, Kaja. Photo by Ace Morgan

Hut 3: 1995-1997 "Girl Town"
Once again we moved and our menu expanded into dinners. We served pastas, using old family recipes, pizzas, using a cornmeal crust by none other than Sophia Loren. We offered fresh fish, grilled veggies. We made our desserts in house or supplemented them with items, like our sorbet, from local businesses. We served wine and beer (featuring St. Supery, a woman-run winery and Lost Coast Ales, by Master Brewer Barbara Groom).

We bought a fryer and made French fries, chicken wings, and anything that we could make up that we thought our customers would like.

There really was something for everyone.

Still, there was a line down the street, but mostly on weekends.
People were surprised when we closed our doors forever, believing that that line happened all week.

I am grateful for all of the folks who came through those doors, to work or to eat. Every one of them created a part of the Brick Hut.

To this day, we hear from old customers that they really miss us and that they wish there was a Brick Hut. My old friend and business partner, Sharon Davenport usually replies, "There was a Brick Hut."

Join the Remembering The Brick Hut Cafe group on Facebook. Share your memories, thoughts and photos.

Sophia Loren inspired pizza dough
• 5c. warm water
• 8T active dry yeast
• pinch sugar
• mix lightly to dissolve yeast

gently stir in:

• 1.5 c. sweet olive oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• freshly chopped herb blend (or just rosemary)
• 2T chopped garlic (can also be roasted)
• 8c. pizza flour
• 2c. corn flour (medium grind)
• mix thoroughly, cover, let rise
• punch down dough, divide in 1/2
• cover and let rise again
• after second rise, divide into 12-15 11 oz. dough balls
• stretch, form crust, sprinkle coarse corn meal on pizza pan,
  add whatever toppings you like
• bake at 450 degrees for 6-8 minutes

Part 1: The Story... (Part 2: The Food)
For nearly 22 years, from 1975 to 1997, The Brick Hut Café was a popular destination for the LGBT community in the East Bay and beyond. It was for most of its life a lesbian-feminist owned and operated community café. I was one of the founding members.

BRICK HUT 1
In February of 1975, the Brick Hut Café Collective was a worker-owned, feminist collective located at 3017 Adeline Street in Berkeley, CA across the street from the Berkeley Flea Market. The original members of the collective were Cheryl Jones, Claudia Hartley, Helen McKinley, Karen Ripley, Marshall Berzon (left in 1977 to open the Homemade Café), Randi Hepner, Sharon Davenport, and Wendy Welsh. By 1976, the collective included Joan Antonuccio, Cynthia La Mana, and Teresa Chandler.

The first Brick Hut was small: three booths and nine counter seats. We welcomed everyone who was an ally in our common cause of social justice and inclusion. The weekend crowds spilled out into the street even after we built a backyard patio where we served a limited menu of blueberry muffins, coffee, and tea.

We were a haven for lesbians and gay men, an information center for LGBT activists, an anchor for a diverse community that included working girls, bad-boys, suburban queens, transmen and transwomen. We were the Dyke Diner: the Lesbian Luncheonette: the Chick Hut: the Brick Hug. When AIDS hit a group of customers affectionately named the Shattuck Street Fairies (SSF) we became a refuge and an information outlet for AIDS awareness. Sometimes we were the last stop: as when Ron, one of the SSF housemates, was lovingly carried in on the arms of his friends for his last Brick Hut meal.

The Brick Hut Cafe contingent at the 1984 San Francisco Pride parade. Enjoy Life...Eat Out More Often!

We always closed on what was then called Gay Day and we closed to attend political demonstrations and rallies. We left a sign on the door, JOIN US AT the parade, rally, or demonstration. We supported through contributions of food and energy to anti-nuclear demonstrations, anti-war rallies, and the feminist causes of Inez Garcia, Norma Jean Croy, Joan Little, and Yvonne Wanrow. We closed and attended the vigil for the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. We closed to protest the Dan White verdict.

We worked to maintain the Brick Hut as a viable business in spite of threats and intimidations. We invited all our customers to cross the demoralizing barriers of class, race, and gender differences, and join us at the community table. We had our share of broken windows, vandalism, and public harassment. In one instance, we placed a poster in our window announcing we were boycotting Florida orange juice because of the Anita Bryant Campaign to repeal the anti-gay discrimination law in Dade County and our windows were broken.

These were politically active times for lesbians. “We are the women that men have warned us about” (Robin Morgan, 1970, Goodbye to All That (pdf)).

There were other women-owned and operated collectives and businesses:
• The Olivia Records collective located around the corner from the Hut. The Brick Hut song with words by Pat Parker and music by Mary Watkins was part of Mary Watkins first album with Olivia, Something Moving, which featured the enormous talents of Vicki Randle and Linda Tillery. We fed some of these musicians and cultural activists and were sometimes repaid with a song. Customers still remember the day Linda T. spontaneously sang a cappella for the masses. The women of BeBe K'Roche, an all woman electric rock band worked at the Brick Hut from time to time.
  Listen to Brick Hut:

• Seven Sisters Construction, a feminist collective, would help us with carpentry projects -- sometimes in exchange for breakfast.
• A Woman’s Place Bookstore and the Women's Press Collective were sources for books, publishing, and networking with artists and writers like Judy Grahn, Wendy Cadden, Willyce Kim, and Pat Parker to name only a few of our customers and allies.
• There were the bars: Ollie's Bar, the Bacchanal, and the Jubilee and across the street from Mama Bear's Bookstore, Thursday nights at the White Horse.

There was a brief appearance of the Night Hut, with Chef Amy Shaw making her culinary debut cooking and serving dinner.

Between 1976 and 1983, Brick Hut collective members Karen, Helen, Randi, Cheryl, Teresa, and Wendy left to pursue other careers and interests as cultural activists, healers, and educators. Marie Della Camera joined the collective around 1983.

BRICK HUT 2
In 1983, with the financial help of the Cheese Board Collective, and the efforts of customers and friends, the Brick Hut moved to a new location at 3222 Adeline Street. Seven Sisters Construction, a feminist collective helped remodel the new space. The Brick Hut became a community gathering spot for local merchants, Berkeley City Council members, writers, musicians, and artists. We also continued to support feminist and queer causes and activities like the Lyon-Martin Clinic, Queer Nation, and East Bay Act Up. KPFA Radio broadcasted their International Women’s Day program directly from the Brick Hut. With our larger wall space, we featured community artists' work. Amana Johnson, Grace Harwood, Barbara Sandidge, Kyos Featherdancing, Cathy Cade, and Wendy Cadden were some of the artists who filled our walls. Once a year, we featured the work of the children of Berkwood-Hedge School to benefit their program.

In subsequent years, Cynthia, Claudia, and Marie left the collective to pursue other careers. At the second location, the Brick Hut was robbed and vandalized over 17 times in eleven years. With the ownership of the Hut left to Joan and Sharon and the neighborhood falling to the ravages of crack, we initiated plans to move the Hut to a safer location.

BRICK HUT 3
In 1995, the Brick Hut moved to a new, expanded location at 2512 San Pablo Avenue. The new space was constructed primarily by O’Malley and Latimer Construction (formerly members of Seven Sisters) and included a performance, meeting, and gallery space. We also opened for dinner. Our first salon featured writer Dorothy Allison and singer/songwriter Alix Dobkin hosted a regular open mike night. Women artists once again filled our walls: Franna Lusson, Mariella de la Paz, and Grace Harwood to name a few. We wanted the new, larger Brick Hut to be an attractive and active space for our community. Other women-owned businesses opened on the same block: Good Vibrations, West Berkeley Women's Books, and It's Her Business. Collectively we were known as Girl Town.

In 1996, the Brick Hut fell into serious financial difficulties; we filed for Chapter 11 status. In 1997, we filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closed our doors for the last time at 2pm on March 24, 1997. We had a big, crowded, raucous party.

At the Brick Hut, I believe we celebrated difference. We were visibly different, we forefronted difference, we encouraged difference, we hosted difference. We did not try to assimilate, disappear into conformity, or become mainstream. We did not build The Brick Hut Cafe so we could have jobs, although that was good. We did not build it to have careers, or support career-moves, although that was a possibility. We did not build it only to make money for ourselves, although we wanted to maintain a viable business that supported our friends, our fellow workers, our causes, and ourselves. We built it to create the possibility of a workplace and a community where no one's politics or cultural affiliations were left at the front door. We built the Hut to celebrate difference, to celebrate YOU. It was a home for a while and we still mourn its passing. Thanks to everyone who contributed to and supported the Brick Hut (1975-1997).

Join the Remembering The Brick Hut Cafe group on Facebook. Share your memories, thoughts and photos.

Joan Antonuccio and Sharon Davenport remembering The Brick Hut Cafe. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Such sly sleight-of-hand may have pleased Stein, who loved to upend even the simplest of words, and the most basic of readers' expectations, until they were stretched out, turned around, repeated ad infinitum to become something utterly new, intentionally teetering between poetry and profundity, banality and babble.

Then again, Stein and her lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas, loved a good dinner, as any reader of The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook would know. With their taste for both solid American home cooking and (to contemporary eyes) unimaginably elaborate French cuisine bourgeoise, the ladies might have found it hard to get through 2 hours of clamorous jazz and spoken word on the wee buffet provided by Bar Bambino. On a side table were deviled eggs, slivers of frittata, and tiny olive-and-mozzarella crostini, followed at intermission by one-bite polenta-kumquat cakelets and matchbook-sized wedges of Tcho chocolate cake.

Unless, of course, Alice had slipped a couple of sticky pieces of her cookbook's infamous Hashish Fudge into her purse. That's right, fudge, not brownies, and not the tourist-trap chocolate kind, either, but a much more Moroccan-minded mixture of dates, figs, almonds, and spices, plus a dusting of enough cannabis sativa to provoke "euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected."

However, as the surrounding exhibit revealed, Stein and Toklas had a high tolerance for eccentricity, their own and those of the many genius Bohemians they cultivated and whose work they collected. Dinner, therefore, is organized around the idea of a dinner party populated by an odd lot of history's eccentrics, half known (Virginia Woolf, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Hart Crane, Salvador Dali, Stein herself), half lost to footnotes, if that.

These quirky folk were too preoccupied by art, higher math, the invention of anti-gravity boots, the location of Shakespeare's bones, and more to give any thought to a menu; instead their imagined monologues, rants, and overlapping conversations were spoken and played by San Francisco writer Jesse Nathan (voice) and artist/musician Chris Janzen (guitar), with Tyler Cravines (drums) and Curtis Buettner (saxophone).

What's it like, this guest-by-guest performance in 14 parts? As if an all-guy free-jazz combo had hooked up with the poetry editor of McSweeney’s, poured a round of Red Bulls for a few choice members of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, then set 'em loose (outnumbered two-and-a-half to one by a bunch of crazy dudes) at a Saturday-night free-for-all in the basement of Viracocha. Sometimes, like Stein's work, the effect was ravishing (especially the lyrical saxophone solos); other times, also much like Stein's work, a little of looping, loud, repetitive, and nearly-unintelligible business can go a long way. There's a reason this kind of stuff is usually performed in close proximity to a willing bartender.

So, actually, it wasn't a bad thing when, three-quarters of the way through the show, Nathan's microphone suddenly went dead. ("The kitchen has just blown up!" he joked). As a team of stylish museum staffers scrambled to find a replacement, Nathan and Janzen took the chance to do an informal Q&A with audience members. The criteria for this imaginary party's guest list? First off, remarked Janzen, potential guests "had to be dead." Then, they had to have walked that fine line between genius and madness. Some changed the language of art, music, literature, or dance forever; others had great potential or massive contemporary popularity, but were overtaken and sunk by their own obsessions. Drug addicts, provocateurs, two suicides by drowning, a mathematician who refused to bathe: hardly a cozy group to gather around the table, but certainly stimulating subjects for art.

By the time the microphone was restored, we knew a lot more about what was going on onstage. Or perhaps the coffee and chocolate had kicked in; whichever it was, it finally seemed like the kind of party at which Stein, Toklas and her own gleefully idiosyncratic cohorts would have felt right at home.

On Mon., June 6th at 10AM, KQED's Forum with Michael Krasny discusses The Life and Work of Gertrude Stein with Janet Bishop, curator of painting and sculpture at SF MOMA, and Wanda M. Corn, guest curator and Robert and Ruth Halperin professor emerita in art history at the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco.