Juice Bar Collective in Berkeley. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

As any just-opened food truck can tell you, it's not so hard to get customers (and press) when you're the hot new thing on the block. Pull up to the curb, put the word out on Twitter, start serving your Japanese curry, Korean tacos, grilled cheese sandwiches or escargot-on-a-stick, and for a while at least, novelty will be your cash register's best friend.

But how do you stay in business for three decades making smoothies, soup, and sandwiches? How do you keep the same faces happy on both sides of the counter, for decades on end? Swerving from our usual pursuit of the new, we decided to check in with Berkeley's Juice Bar Collective, still in full swing in its original location, 35 years and counting. Here's what we learned, courtesy of Krissa Schwartz, a four-year collective member and now part-time worker:

Location, Location, Location

If you're going to start a small-scale, high-volume food business, plunk it down in a friendly neighborhood with lots of foot traffic and a bunch of compatible businesses. Not that the Juice Bar's founders knew in 1976 that they were setting up shop in what would come to be known as the Gourmet Ghetto. But a few like-minded tastemakers were already in place. The Cheeseboard (another collective, started in 1967) was around the corner. Alice Waters had opened Chez Panisse nearby in 1971. Alfred Peet was roasting coffee beans and serving espresso in his first cafe just half a block away, at the corner of Walnut and Vine.

Juice Bar Collective members at work. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

Keep Your Ideals High, Your Workers Happy...

The Juice Bar has been a worker-owned collective since its inception. While none of the original founders are still involved, two collective members have been working there for over 25 years, others for 20. Most of the newer members have been remained there anywhere from 3 to 6 years.

Job responsibilities rotate, so eventually each member takes a turn doing all the jobs needed to keep the business running, from doing the ordering and payroll to working the cash register and washing dishes. Mandatory monthly meetings are run on a one-member, one-vote system. In return, collective members share an equal hourly wage and receive full health, vision, and dental benefits, plus 4 weeks' paid vacation.

Juice Bar Collective menu. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

...Your Menu Short

When the Juice Bar started, it offered just two things: juice and soup. The menu of made-from-scratch dishes has expanded over the years, but fresh-squeezed juices and homemade soup remain, along with a brief roster of smoothies. No room for a freezer means no frozen yogurt or sorbet in the smoothies--meaning these smoothies are pure fruit and juice with a little milk or soymilk added, not sugar-laden milkshakes in health-food disguise. The rest of the menu? A half-dozen sandwich varieties, a few veggie salads, a handful of hot dishes. Almost everything is made from scratch, mostly vegetarian and vegan, although there are tuna and turkey sandwiches, plus a much-loved turkey shepherd's pie served in the fall and winter.

Black-bean-and-polenta casserole with salsa, soup and a smoothie. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

Times Change, and So Should Your Casseroles

For all their much-vaunted progressiveness, Berkeleyites feel strongly that some good things should stay that way, forever. Regulars still ask, longingly, for the soybean casserole, even though it was dropped from the menu nearly a decade ago in favor of more up-to-date offerings like pizza, lasagna, and a black-bean-and-polenta casserole blanketed in a choice of melted cheese or salsa. In a town of endless potlucks, these hot dishes, sold by the tray, have proved very popular for casual catering. What bring-your-own-dinner wouldn't be improved by a panful of no-fuss, ready-to-heat lasagna or vegan polenta?

However, the brown-rice bowl, lavished with peanut sauce and topped with a rotating choice of Asian-inspired salads, remains, and that delicious peanut sauce is now also sold in tubs to go.

And soybean lovers can still enjoy chocolate-tofu pie (melted chocolate whipped into silken tofu, poured into a graham-cracker crust) and a baked garlic-and-ginger tofu sandwich.

Buy (or Barter) Local

It takes a lot of fruits and vegetables to make all those soups and smoothies. The Juice Bar gets its organic produce from the distributor Veritable Vegetable, which started in San Francisco in 1974. Asian ingredients come from Yin Hop in Oakland's Chinatown, except for tofu, which is made locally by Hodo Soy Beanery and picked up at the Thursday farmers' market on Shattuck Ave. Sonoma's Alvarado Street Bakery, a worker cooperative started in 1981, makes their sliced sandwich bread, while baguettes from the Cheeseboard are bartered for orange juice.

And Keep the Neighbors Happy

Casual trade happens up and down the street between the Juice Bar and other food businesses. Nearby merchants and workers often get a small (and usually reciprocal) courtesy discount.

Any other secrets they've learned over 35 years in business? Enthusiasm is great, but experience pays off, especially when you're hiring a crew to work elbow-to-elbow in a tiny space (something every food truck has learned the hard way). Keep your regulars happy, but don't be afraid to mix up the menu a little to keep things fresh. Make your food organic, comforting, and healthy, like what your customers would eat at home, if vegetables chopped themselves. And perfume your kitchen with the smell of melting chocolate and baking muffins whenever possible.

Organic Blueberry Muffins. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

Ruth Reichl is one of the most influential names in food. Her storied career includes stints at the Los Angeles Times as a restaurant critic and food editor, as well as the restaurant critic for the New York Times. She is also the author of five bestselling books, the recipient of six James Beard Awards, and spent 10 years as the Editor-in-chief of the now defunct Gourmet magazine.

But as any resilient woman will tell you, when one door closes, a few other doors open. She’s now an editor-at-large for the mega-publisher, Random House, is currently writing three new books, and on April 6th, will make her debut as one of the new judges on Top Chef Masters.

She was kind enough to carve out some time to chat with me while on a recent trip to Palo Alto for a speaking engagement. I asked her about how life has changed since the closing of Gourmet magazine, how she feels about food bloggers, and what she really thinks about Ruth Bourdain.

ELAINE: What was life like after Gourmet magazine shut its doors?
RUTH: At first I thought, “Oh my God, I’ll never have another job!” and I immediately made a deal to write three books, which I’m working on, and that’s great. I’m finishing my first fiction novel, and I promised to write a cookbook and then a memoir about my time at Gourmet and its closing.

But then about eight months after the magazine closed, I was literally getting a job offer a day. The most interesting is one I can’t talk about. Let’s just say it’ll be the food magazine of my dreams. I’m very lucky. (NOTE: We know now that Ms. Reichl will be running the Gilt Groupe’s “Gilt Taste” website.)

ELAINE: And you’re going to be on Top Chef Masters! What made you want to take that offer?

RUTH: I just thought it would be fun! I was kind of curious about how reality shows worked and it seemed like a learning experience. But I had already agreed to be a fellow at Dartmouth, so I’m not in every single episode.

ELAINE: What was the experience like?

RUTH: Top Chef Masters was such a surprise. They could not have been more passionate and respectful of the chefs, judges, guests and I loved every minute of it. And they take it all very seriously. I thought the judges would surely have to lean on the producers to make the decisions about who gets cut, and the producer probably would’ve liked a different outcome in some cases, but I never heard it from them.

And Curtis Stone (the new host) is so good looking, you’d think he had to be an idiot. But he’s so smart and has a heart of gold. He’s honestly one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. He insisted on cooking for the entire crew a multi-course meal after the show wrapped. He’s totally for real. I was so sorry when it was all over. It felt like family. You really get to know everyone. It’s very intimate.

ELAINE: What are your thoughts on the new Gourmet Live app for the iPad?

RUTH: …I’m not going to say. It is what it is.

ELAINE: What do you think about the new generation of food bloggers? Are they changing the landscape of food writing in general?

RUTH: A lot of them are really, really good. I think it’s changed for restaurant critiquing in particular. You can read 30 reviews and make up your mind yourself. A professional restaurant critic’s word shouldn’t matter that much. People should bring their own intelligence to it. What real criticism should do is give you a better way to appreciate food and give you the tools you need to enhance your experience, good or bad. And food bloggers have put the burden back on the professionals to be good educators and good writers, and maybe even be a little bit more humble about their own opinions.

ELAINE: You’re fairly active on Twitter. Why do you use it?

RUTH: I just don’t have time to keep up with so many blogs. But if someone I follow on Twitter tells me to read something on a blog, I will! I love the social and political aspects. There are people I don’t see much but I keep up with them on Twitter. And as a writer, I feel like there’s a voice that I didn’t know I had using Twitter. There’s a real discipline to putting something into 140 characters. I’m trying to actually make a word picture in 140 characters and it’s been really fun for me. It turns out to be a very natural voice for me.

ELAINE: What do you think of Ruth Bourdain getting nominated for a James Beard Award this year for Humor?

RUTH: I think it’s great! I agree with Tony Bourdain! If we can’t have fun with food, what are we gonna have fun with? I hope he/she wins so they’ll have to get up and accept the award!

But I actually think it’s a “he,” and I don’t think it’s any of the people that have been talked about. I think all the theories about who this person is are all wrong.

ELAINE: As a former Bay Area resident, what do you miss about the area?
RUTH: At the moment, if you go to the farmers market in New York there’s not much. In the Bay Area you’re spoiled with fresh produce year round. I really miss that. And there’s an incredible energy with farmers and food producers here. There’s a great artisan food community here that you don’t get anywhere else.

Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday: whatever you call it, food and religion come together today into one last pre-Lenten blowout. Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, marks the beginning of Lent, the 40-day countdown to Easter that was, traditionally, a time of great austerity at table.

As Patience Gray points out in her book Honey from a Weed, about the culinary and cultural traditions she experienced throughout the Mediterranean, the Church's command of six weeks of spare diet--lentils and beans instead of meat, nothing rich or fried or sweet--was as much practical as spiritual. Depending on the cycle of the lunar calendar, Lent stretches across the cusp of late winter and early spring, the time when the larder, and the fields, would be at their most bare. Only dried beans from last autumn's harvest would still be on hand, and wild greens would be sprouting on the hillsides, encouraged by winter's rains and the slowly lengthening days giving a few minutes' more light before sunset each night.

But the sheep, goats, or cows would still be skinny from winter fodder, not yet producing milk, preserving their strength for giving birth to their lambs, kids, and calves later in the spring. The indulgences of Christmas and the New Year would be long past, and on a small subsistence farm, in a wind-scoured, stony mountain village, there would be little to harvest or sell at this season. And so there, conveniently, is the command for privation, making the stark meals of slow-cooked beans and boiled weeds into a commendable form of spiritual discipline.

Nothing succeeds like contrast, however, and so before the cold water and hard cheese of Lent came the glorious blowout of Carnival, a celebration of carne, meat, and all the accompanying carnal pleasures of the flesh. The pantry was stripped of whatever remaining delights it might still hold, like lard, for frying sweet dumplings, doughnuts, beignets, or pancakes; sugar for sweets like King Cake; and alcohol, stirring into any number of mixed punches.

Misrule was the rule of the day; masks hid everyday identities and lords swapped places with laborers. Parades, games, races, and balls turned the days before Lent into a dizzying holiday, culminating in one last day of feasting and festivity. In Louisiana, the traditions had the same French and Spanish Catholic and Caribbean roots, twisted through Creole and Cajun traditions, but the city and the country celebrated very differently. Costumes could be multi-thousand dollar gowns dripping with crystal beading, huge feathered regalias or old flour sacks dyed and fringed. You might parade into town after an all-day horseback ride or pull up in a stretch limo.

These days, outside of the South, if Mardi Gras is celebrated at all, it's mostly seen as an excuse to go out drinking on a Tuesday night, at bars blasting Clifton Chenier from speakers draped in strings of beads and festooned in fleur-de-lys. While there are venerable British, Irish, German, and Scandinavian pre-Lenten traditions (like the English Shrove Tuesday pancake races, run by women flipping pancakes in skillets), New Orleans' style is typically the one on display.

But who wouldn't enjoy an excuse to dig into crawfish etouffee, shrimp remoulade, gumbo or jambalaya? Bloggers from the Bay Area are getting into the mood with tips for fixing their favorite N'Awlins dishes.

Even if you're not a subscriber to the email newsletter Tuesday Recipe, you can still find cookbook author and television host Tori Ritchie's spectacular crab gumbo on the Tuesday Recipe website, a great source for straightforward, workable recipes that give punchy flavor payoffs for not too much work in the kitchen. And while a typical Louisiana gumbo would be made with blue crabs, our plump West Coast Dungeness work just fine. Ritchie also has recipes for big easy jambalaya and Louisiana-style barbecued shrimp.

Over at Parties That Cook, Bibby and her crew suggest Mini Shrimp Po'Boys with Bacon Mayo. Or, even better, a trip to Brenda's French Soul Food, the Tenderloin's beignet wonderland, now serving dinner.

You can also find beignets, barbecued shrimp n' grits, and fried oyster po'boys on the menu today at Brown Sugar Kitchen, serving breakfast and lunch in West Oakland. Uptown, Pican is planning a fancy Mardi Gras bash, with a live zydeco band, food and cocktails.

Longing for a King Cake? You can find them at La Farine in Oakland's Dimond district, as Susan Mernit reports over on Oakland Local. Seems the manager of that branch of the popular French bakery read some locals' plea for authentic King Cake on a neighborhood listserve, and decided to put his bakers on the job. Here's hoping this becomes a yearly tradition. (Sold out at 9:00am, call 510-531-7750 to inquire about more cakes available later today).

Time will tell how history views the current President and First Lady's legacy on the food front.

Though it's probably fair to say that the family now calling the White House home have never had their eating habits, food policy, or culinary preferences more thoroughly documented and photographed as Barack and Michelle Obama. For that coverage we have the prolific Eddie Gehman Kohan, the voice behind the self-explanatory blog Obama Foodorama, to thank.

Of course, for every pundit singing the praises of Obama's anti-obesity Let's Move campaign, the White House garden, and Sam Kass in the kitchen, there's a critic lamenting the Administration's rulings on genetically engineered salmon and alfalfa, worrisome stance on importing processed poultry products from China, a country not know for its stellar food safety record, or its ties to big biz players like global retailer Wal-Mart over the cultivation of small, local farmers.

And despite their healthy food stance, the Prez's favorite foods appear to be pizza, beer, and ice cream.

But since President's Day is about honoring leaders from history, we'll focus on the palate preferences and food initiatives of presidents past and offer a week's worth of food facts for today's holiday:

1. Founding Father's Food Challenge: By the time he was president George Washington (1789-1797) had lost most of his teeth and could only manage to eat soft foods, despite wearing hand-crafted dentures made from animal and human teeth. Washington also had a slave chef, Hercules, who has been described as immaculate, impeccable and a bit of a dandy. One wonders if he made apple sauce for the chomping challenged Washington, known to be a big lover of that fall fruit.

2. The Roots of a Holiday Food Tradition: Abraham Lincoln's (1861-1865) longest-running food legacy may well be the presidential pardon of a Thanksgiving turkey, a tradition that began when Lincoln spared a bird that had become the beloved pet of one of his sons.

3. Obesity Problem Nothing New: William Taft (1909-1913), who was a little too fond of rich, fatty food, has been the U.S.'s largest president to date, weighing in at a whopping 300 to 332 pounds. He got so fat he got stuck in the White House bathtub.

4. Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays: In 1917, Woodrow Wilson (1913-1917) urged all Americans to observe Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays to conserve food at home and help feed the troops fighting abroad during World War I. In recent years, the Meatless Monday campaign has been resurrected as a global health and environment initiative.

5. Victory Gardens: A response to the Great Depression and World War II when food was scarce, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945) and his wife Eleanor encouraged people to grow their own food and preserve excess harvest crops for the lean winter months. Since history is destined to repeat itself, the Victory Garden concept has made a comeback in recent years. See a theme emerging here?

6. Veggie Bashing: At a news conference in 1990 George Herbert Walker Bush (1989-1997) was famously quoted saying: "I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli," clearly traumatized after being forced fed the nutrient dense green as a child. Needless to say, some folks in the produce lobby got a little steamed by this anti-veg outburst.

7. The Pleasures of the Table: Former movie star Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), delivering his Farewell Address from the Oval Office, pronounced “all great change in America begins at the dinner table” in the daily conversations between parent and child. That's the kind of sentiment likely to garner strong bipartisan support during any administration.

Resources for presidential political history buffs with a culinary interest who want to learn more:

Radio: Hercules and Hemings: Presidents' Slave Chefs (NPR) by the Bay Area's Kitchen Sisters focuses on some of the African-American cooks who have served in the White House, including the enslaved chefs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Who knew that Sally Hemings, a Jefferson slave alleged to have had a relationship with the president, had a chef brother James Hemings? Also a Jefferson slave, James Hemings studied French culinary techniques and assumed the role of chef de cuisine in Jefferson's kitchen on the Champs-Elysees when he was minister to France.

Blog: The History Chef! by Suzy Evans, a lawyer in Newport Beach who holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and is working on a book about presidents' favorite foods. Her blog, which goes by the domain name lincolnslunch.blogspot.com, includes fascinating food factoids from the archives, like this one: Ronald Reagan asked for his favorite comfort food -- mac&cheese -- while recuperating from injuries sustained during an assassination attempt.

Book: All The Presidents' Pastries: Twenty Five Years in the White House: A Memoir by Roland Mesnier with Christian Malard (Flammarion, $24.95) dishes up White House dirt along with over-the-top desserts from the French pastry chef who served five presidents from Jimmy Carter to Bush junior during his 25 year tenure cooking for the country's top commander-in-chiefs.

Blog: Obama Foodorama: There's no food news related to POTUS and FLOTUS (that's Barack and Michelle) to minute to report on this site, which includes policy analysis, events, speeches, videos, recipes, menus, edible ephemera, and lots of food shots too. Eddie Gehman Kohan serves up side dishes of food news from the USDA and The Hill in a blog cataloged by the Library of Congress.

Cookbook: Capitol Hill Cooks: Recipes from the White House, Congress and All of the Past Presidents by Linda Bauer (Taylor, $26.95), a collection of dishes from appetizers to desserts from two centuries worth of policy wonks. Profits from the sales of the book benefit Homes for Our Troops, an organization that helps injured veterans build or adapt their homes for handicapped access.

From top left to right: Douglas Monsalud and wife Kimberly Stevens, Yigit Pura, Will Werner and girlfriend Sarah Logan, Richie Nakano.

It's no secret chefs don't get much time off--certainly not on holidays. And Valentine's Day is a biggie. Folks make reservations well in advance and snatch up flowers and confections to bring home to their loved ones. After chatting with some of my favorite local chefs, it became clear that Valentine's Day really is just another day and there are many occasions to sit down, toast one another, and prepare a special meal. I asked three simple questions to get to the heart of what a romantic day looks like in their world. Here's what I discovered.

Douglas Monsalud: Kitchenette SF
So Valentine’s Day. Or let’s just say, on a typical romantically-minded evening, tell us about what you and your partner like to cook/eat together at home?
We LOVE to make food that takes a while to cook so that we can hang out, talk while we cook, and drink good wine ; ) With that in mind, we have cooked everything from bouillabaisse to pozole, porchetta to pot roast. You know...simple, rustic, one-pot meals that are comfortable and really make you feel like you are home.

Favorite dessert?
Wow, favorite dessert is a tough one. I like desserts that are lighter and fruity...like the goats milk yoghurt panna cotta with blood orange compote that we've served at Heart Wine Bar. Similarly, I have always loved creme brulee and a nice, flaky crostata with a scoop of ice cream always gets my attention.

If you weren’t eating at home, where are a few of your favorite romantic spots in the Bay Area and why?
Aziza and Gitane ooze romance. They have great food and the atmosphere is at once exotic and warm. Also, I always think getting a dozen oysters from the Marshall Store up on Tomales Bay with a bottle of something bubbly and eating them on a bench overlooking the water is as sexy as it gets.

William Werner: Tell Tale Preserve Co.
So Valentine’s Day. Or let’s just say, on a typical romantically-minded evening, tell us about what you and your partner like to cook/eat together at home?
We don't get to spend a lot of time together as of late-- so usually a romantic dinner would consist of something simple, to spend more time together than in the kitchen, more than likely, champagne, oysters with lemon, market greens, a risotto of mushrooms and nettles, and of course chocolate (Valrhona feves straight from the bag).

Favorite dessert?
Of the moment: kishu mandarins.

If you weren’t eating at home, where are a few of your favorite romantic spots in the Bay Area and why?
Coi, for getting dressed and a luxurious, intimate evening of thoughtful food. Burgers and beer in the back corner booth at Bar Tartine for dressing down and hanging out.

Richie Nakano: Hapa Ramen
So Valentine’s Day. Or let’s just say, on a typical romantically-minded evening, tell us about what you and your partner like to cook/eat together at home?
When we're eating at home we keep it pretty simple: farro with roasted chicken, or an easy pasta. We also get treats from Fatted Calf: charcuterie, cheese, olives. We have a 9 month old son, so there's not a lot of quiet romantic evenings these days, but we do like to unwind with a bottle of kruner or falanghina.

Favorite dessert?
Anything from Humphrey Slocombe, or we'll get something from Tell Tale Preserve Co. and save it for that evening. That stuff is sinful.

If you weren’t eating at home, where are a few of your favorite romantic spots in the Bay Area and why?
Aziza always comes to mind, it's such a beautiful setting in there, and the food is really elegant. La Ciccia is really intimate also, but the sexiest place in town is the Flour & Water dough room. If you can snag a seat at a dinner in there...

Yigit Pura: Executive Pastry Chef, Taste Catering; Winner of Bravo's Top Chef Just Desserts
So Valentine’s Day. Maybe, like a lot of folks, you see it as any other day—but let’s just say, on a typical romantically-minded evening, tell us about what you and a date like to cook/eat together?
I think any day is a good day to be romantic. I would cook what I know they love and tickles their soft spot, even if it goes against my grain as a chef. I find just showing you paid attention will always get you brownie points.

Favorite dessert?
As cliché as it sounds, you can’t go wrong with chocolate. And I know there are myths around it but I still love a great chocolate soufflé. Be it a professional or home chef, it still gets people excited. Take it another step forward and make a really lovely salted caramel ice cream, and put a small scoop straight in the middle. The contrast between the hot and cold is always very sexy!

If you weren’t eating at home, where are a few of your favorite romantic spots in the Bay Area and why?
Lately I’m in LOVE with Barbacco. Modern and really beautiful ambiance, great service, and just really tasty bites, and very reasonably priced. Last time I ate there everything was so great, I am already looking forward to the next time.

Jessica Boncutter: Bar Jules
A typical romantically-minded meal?
That would have to be beef fillet roasted medium rare with salt roasted potatoes, baby carrots and horseradish cream.

Favorite Dessert?
Definitely finish it off with a chocolate pot de creme and a little Serge Gainsbourg on the record player!

If you weren’t eating at home, where are a few of your favorite romantic spots in the Bay Area and why?
Romantic places in the San Francisco Bay Area are upstairs at Chez Panisse for lunch or Manka's in Inverness for the night or Tosca for a drink or of course Bar Jules is so romantic. Chez Panisse lunch during the week feels like you are playing hooky from work with a lover. Manka's, well you just have to stay there one night to experience it. Tosca is a classic always feels special no matter who you are with.

Chef and restaurateur Rene Verdon has died at his home in San Francisco. He was the chef for President John F. Kennedy, and, along with Julia Child, helped popularize French cooking in the United States. Verdon wrote five cookbooks and his San Francisco restaurant, Le Trianon, set high standards for French food.

Host Cy Musiker talks with chef Roland Passot, owner of La Folie about the mark Rene Verdon made on the American culinary scene.

Related Links:
• Rene Verdon's obituary in the SF Chronicle
• NYTimes: René Verdon, French Chef for the Kennedys, Dies at 86

Oh, you modern Americans, what is wrong with you? Why do you recoil, as if from a snake, from the very muttered hint of mincemeat? Pie may be sneaking back into the spotlight, weary of being upstaged by all those pink cupcakes beehived with frosting, but still, you could look far and wide here and find nary a scrap of mince on our menus.

Once, mincemeat was our heritage, our honor guard, the leading light of American pie fillings. It was exalted at holiday time but consumed with gusto year-round, at Automats and church suppers, carried on Formica trays through cafeterias and paraded on gold-rimmed china in the dining rooms of downtown hotels.

The history was, of course, a British one, but the legacy of the dense, sweet-spiced, citrusy-raisiny-almondy filling stretches back at least a handful of centuries, when the line between sweet and savory was a much more porous one. Originally, mincemeat was made with both beef and beef fat, added to a rich mixture of dried fruits, spices, candied citrus peels, and almonds, preserved with a hefty dose of spirits. Over the years, the meat receded, although the fat (typically suet, the particularly pure fat taken from around the kidneys) remained, to give an unmistakable richness to the mixture.

You may think you'd hate it—prunes? suet?—but not so. This holiday season I passed around many of these tarts, filled with Delia Smith's unbeatable recipe for Homemade Christmas Mincemeat. Served up small and warm, in the late, lowering afternoon with a cup of steaming tea or after dinner with a glass of port, naught but lard-and-butter crust crumbs came back on the plate. (A word of advice, though: halve Delia's recipe, and you'll still have more than enough mincemeat to feed everyone you know.)

But now that the indulgence of the holidays has passed, mincemeat might be a tougher sell. Enter Black Tart, a lovely winter dessert based on a 17th-century recipe for "black tart stuff," which the eminent British food writer Elizabeth David praises in An Omelette and a Glass of Wine as "rich and dark without the cloying and heavy qualities of mincemeat." She also recommends it as having "a certain originality which provides a small surprise at the end of the meal."

Leafing through cookbooks heaped from shelves to floor, I can trace the roots of my own Black Tart to several recipes: David's 1969 recipe, itself a modern interpretation of Robert May's recipe from The Accomplisht Cook (1660); the Harvest Tart from the The Silver Palate Cookbook (1982); and the Winter Fruit Tart from the Bay Wolf Restaurant Cookbook (2001).

Mostly, though, it came from messing around with the memories of all these things in a friend's kitchen on a raw, gray afternoon, when we both wanted something sweet to eat without having to leave the house.

What was on hand in the winter pantry? Dried fruit and nuts, candied fruit peel left over from holiday baking, and plenty of liquor, likewise left over from holiday parties. Thus, Black Tart, a lazy-day sort of dessert that will warm the kitchen and perfume the house with a deep medieval scent of winter at bay--a whiff of whiskey, a breath of ginger and cinnamon, a Mediterranean sparkle of fresh tangerine.

The dried fruits aren't poached so much as steeped. After a slow warming, they sit on the back of the stove for an hour or so, soaking up the wine and spices, swelling up soft and plump as they absorb nearly all the liquid.

A cookie-like tart dough, a little sweeter and richer than regular pie crust, works particularly well here. To make it, sift together two and a half cups of flour, a quarter cup sugar, and a half-teaspoon salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in 12 tablespoons (one and a half sticks, 6 oz) of chilled butter, until mixture looks sandy and flaky, like dry oatmeal. Then, instead of the usual ice water, moisten the flour with two egg yolks, one teaspoon vanilla, and three to four teaspoons of water to form a soft dough. Chill for several hours while the filling is cooking and cooling.

Black Tart
This tastes best on the day it's made, but will last for several days if well wrapped. The recipe can also be used to made small individual-sized tarts. For the prettiest crust on small tarts, brush tart crust with milk and sprinkle with sugar before baking.

Ingredients
1 large apple, peeled, cored, and diced
1 cup dried apricots, chopped
1 cup pitted prunes, chopped
1/2 cup raisins
2-3 tbsp candied orange peel
1 cup red wine OR 1/2 cup port and 1/2 cup water
1/4 cup whiskey or brandy
1/8 tsp EACH cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg, and ginger
Big pinch of freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar, or to taste
Zest and juice of 1 tangerine
1/2 cup toasted walnuts or almonds, chopped
Dough for two-crust tart (see above)
Whipped cream for serving

Preparation
1. In a heavy-bottomed pot, mix all filling ingredients except for walnuts. Warm over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and let fruit absorb the rest of the liquid for an hour or so.

2. Divide the tart dough into two rounds and roll out. Line an 8-inch or 9-inch tart pan with first round.

3. Stir walnuts into filling. Cut remaining dough into 1-inch wide strips. Lay strips in a criss-cross lattice pattern to cover most of the filling. Cover entire tart with foil or waxed paper and chill in the fridge for an hour or so.

4. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Unwrap tart and bake until crust in golden brown and filling is bubbling, 30-35 minutes. Cool on a rack. Serve with whipped cream.

Refugee Camp Restaurant, 1906. Photo credit: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

Christmas in San Francisco, and what's on the menu? Sweetbreads. Squab. Canvasback duck. Cardoons, flageolet beans, porcini mushrooms. A choice of German or California asparagus.

And let us not forget the oysters, lots and lots of oysters, or the sand dabs, frogs' legs, and Sacramento River salmon.

Such would have been your choices on December 25, 1910 at the Palace Hotel on Market Street, just a few years after the City's most devastating earthquake. At the Fairmont Hotel, on an ordinary evening in May 1908, the evening's menu was almost as elegant: East Coast blue point oysters, filet of striped bass, new potatoes, sweetbreads and squab, French peas, salad, ice cream, fancy cakes, and cafe noir.

Anyone thinking that a California cuisine didn't exist until Wolfgang Puck put smoked salmon on a pizza (or Alice dropped goat cheese on a salad) should head over to the San Francisco Main Library and get a mouth-watering education at San Francisco Eats, a delectably entertaining exhibit of historic menus, photographs, and other restaurant ephemera (matchboxes! matchbooks!) on display now through March 20, 2011.

Curated by Sheila Himmel, a longtime restaurant critic with the San Jose Mercury News, in conjunction with Lisa Vestal, the library's head curator, the exhibit pulled most of its items from the library's own San Francisco History and Historical Photograph Collections, with additional materials from restauranteur Pat Kuleto, the Cliff House, and the Alice Statler Library at City College, among others.

Being a former restaurant critic myself, I would have loved to have learned more about how the City's restaurant scene developed over the past century. Alas for restaurant geeks and city-history buffs, the commentary is limited to a paragraph or two on cards below each display case, along with a general introduction on the wall. (However, there is a great quote from Alice B. Toklas about the mad gustatory delights she and Gertrude enjoyed while dining out in the City.)

Still, there are small gems to be had: how lower Polk Street was known as "Polkstrasse" during the early half of the 20th century, thanks to its concentration of German restaurants and beer halls, or how pig's feet and lamb kidneys were common items, and how you could find both, along with Grape Nuts cereal, codfish in cream, and green tea, on the breakfast menu of the Clift Hotel, circa 1915.

Not all the menus are dated, but the bulk of them seem to date from the 1940s through the 60s, leading to much nostalgia on the part of the crowd on the exhibit's opening day. Blum's, the Magic Pan, Alfred's Steakhouse, Ernie's, Le Club, Le Trianon: you could see the years of shined shoes, hats and gloves, lipstick and martinis unspooling in memory.

Menus were big back then, tall and imposing. Open one and it covered your plate. A tassel might be involved, and a foreign language, probably French. A fancy night out meant this thing called Continental Cuisine, mixed up from a little French, a little Italian, maybe a dash of Spanish. Turtle soup, wine sauces, flaming desserts. Even restaurants that weren't exclusively French, like Masa's, often wrote their menus in French, connoting serious gastronomy (and perhaps, justifying their prices with a touch of Parisian glamor).

But what the exhibit shows most definitely is that San Francisco has always been an eating town, with something for everyone. There were chop-suey joints and elegant Chinese banquet halls, grab-and-go taquerias and gringo-ized Mexican places with singing senoritas, posh hotels and tiki lounges (sometimes in the same place), the Old Poodle Dog and the Koffee Kup.

It's interesting, of course, to compare prices, especially among the few contemporary menus; in 1997, an order of shaking beef (bo lu lac) at the Slanted Door cost $10.50; in 2010, it's $32.

Some places remain the same, even after decades of dishing up. Tadich's, Sears, the Cinderella Bakery, Zuni, even the Hayes Street Grill. Other places define a moment, then fade away.

During my decade as a critic, I probably ate in hundreds of restaurants all around the Bay Area. Only a few now-gone places still glow in recollection, the spots that made you feel like you were smack-dab in the exciting middle of things. Do I miss the actual place, or who we all were there, at that vibration in time? Still, it was easy to agree with chef and Bay Cafe host Joey Altman, during in a short panel discussion moderated by Himmel.

Asked about San Francisco restaurant trends then and now, Altman pointed out, a little wistfully, that the City still has nothing to equal Stars in its splashy, 1980s, Jeremiah-Tower heyday, when Altman was a young chef in the kitchen.

"Stars was incredibly relevant for the dining scene then. There's no one 'holding court' anymore like Jeremiah did. My friends and I, we'll still say, 'I wish there was a Stars to go to.' "

The San Francisco Eats exhibit is on display at the San Francisco Main Library in the Jewett Gallery on the Lower Level and in the Skylight Gallery on the Sixth Floor through March 20, 2011.

Trader Vics Restaurant, circa 1950. Photo credit: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

I’ve always loved beef stroganoff. When I was a kid, my mom would make large pots of the stuff and I would happily eat leftovers for days. As an Italian kid, it was exciting to eat a dish whose name ended with an "f" instead of an "i." Stroganoff! Plus there was my mad obsession wondering what happened to the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia. I was convinced, in a way that only young girls can be, that she had eluded execution and was living an undercover life somewhere. Taking small bites of beef mixed with egg noodles and sour cream, I would daydream about the life I imagined she had after escaping the terrible fate of her Tsar father and family, murdered by Bolsheviks. Did she marry a farmer and everyone but her husband was ignorant to her true royal identity? Was she living in Paris under an assumed name? The list of possibilities was endless and oh so very romantic to a young girl wishing to escape her own reality of a stucco house in North County San Diego.

But the beef stroganoff of my youth was vastly different than anything they served in Russia when Anastasia was alive. After all, my Neapolitan mother who had been raised in the Bronx hadn't even heard of the dish before she was at least 30. Like many Americans, the recipe for my first taste of this dish came from the back of a Campbell's soup can. Mixed with button mushrooms, sliced onions and sour cream, the mix of savory beef flavors and the velvety texture of the sauce both tingled and soothed my taste buds. Say what you will about Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, I loved every bite.

After awhile I forgot about this dish. I didn't eat a lot of beef in my adult years until I became pregnant (at which point I craved it constantly). But when my daughters were young, I remembered how much I loved this stew when I was a girl and so wanted to share it with them. Using Campbell's soup was out of the question, however. As much as I loved that dish as a kid, I knew there had to be a more authentic way to make it that also contained less sodium. I read somewhere along the way that a traditional stroganoff uses mustard. Although they probably used mustard seed back in pre-Soviet Russia, I started adding a teaspoon of Dijon to my dish instead, and was happy with the nice little kick it gave to the sauce. I then opted to use both dried and fresh mushrooms in place of the cream of mushroom soup. Dried porcinis are my favorite, but any dried mushroom steeped in water will infuse the dish with a deep and subtle earthy complexity needed to round out the flavors. And, although some recipes use heavy cream for the sauce, I've stuck with sour cream because I love the tangy flavor in the rich gravy.

Beef stroganoff has become one of my daughters' favorite stews -- like mother like daughters, I suppose. Last week, both my girls devoured every morsel in front of them and one even licked the plate clean -- I'm not exaggerating. As I watched them eat, I began to wonder if they knew of Anastasia's story or if they'd even care about it as much as I did when I was their age. But how could they not? The fated end of the Russian Tsar and his family combined with a hearty beef stew is an irresistible match and bound to capture their imagination. Maybe next time I'll have to share a little Russian history over dinner.

Beef Stroganoff

Makes: Enough for 6-8 people

Ingredients:
2 1/2 lbs beef chuck or tenderloin cut into strips or 1-inch chunks
1/4 cup flour
2 large white or yellow onions roughly sliced
1 cup dried porcini mushrooms
2 cups sliced mushrooms (I used a mix of brown and shitake, but you can use whatever you’d like)
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup Cognac or sweet wine (like Madeira)
1 tsp Dijon mustard
3-4 cups beef broth
2 tsp dried thyme or 1 Tbsp fresh thyme
1 tsp paprika
Salt and Pepper to taste
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup sour cream
Freshly chopped parsley for garnish
Cooked wide egg noodles

Preparation:
1. Place dried mushrooms in a bowl and cover with boiling water (enough to just cover the mushrooms). Let sit for at least 10 minutes.

2. Sprinkle salt, pepper and 1 tsp thyme on uncooked meat. Sprinkle with flour to lightly and evenly coat each piece.

3. In a large dutch oven, heat 1 Tbsp oil on medium high. When oil is hot, place half the meat in the bottom of the pan, being sure not to crowd the bottom (crowding will make the beef steam instead of sear, and you want each piece to brown to seal in the juices).

4. Sear meat on all sides without cooking through and then remove from the pan. Add another 1 Tbsp vegetable oil and repeat with the remainder of the meat.

5. Remove all the meat from the dutch oven and add in the last tablespoon of oil. Sauté the onions for five minutes.

6. Roughly chop the now hydrated porcini mushrooms and add to the onions. Reserve the mushroom water. Add the cognac or Madeira wine, Dijon mustard, paprika, the remaining 1 tsp thyme, Worcestershire sauce and a bit of the mushroom water if needed. Sauté for another five minutes.

7. Add the meat to the onion and mushroom mixture and then mix in the remainder of the mushroom water, 3 cups of beef stock and some freshly ground pepper. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the pan to deglaze the caramelized goodness.

8. Bring the pot to a slow boil and then reduce heat to simmer. Cover pot and simmer for one hour.

9. After an hour, check stew and add the last cup of beef stock if the stew seems too dry. Add in the fresh mushrooms.

10. Simmer for another 30-60 minutes (the longer the better).

11. Cook noodles in salted water according to package directions.

12. Mix about 2 Tbsp flour with enough water to make a slurry and add to the stew. Simmer to thicken the sauce to make a glossy gravy.

13. Remove some of the gravy from the pot and add it to a bowl along with the sour cream. Whisk together and then add it to the larger pot and mix in.

14. Set noodles on plates and then ladle on the stew. Serve with chopped parsley.

John, Paul, George & Ringo, a "super-sandwich" at Heimerhaus Deli in Redwood City

From tangerine trees and marmalade skies to yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye, the lyrical language of the Beatles is laden with talk of food. In a humorous study called "Eat the Beatles!" conducted earlier this year, Beatles super-fan and humorist Martin Lewis discovered that the Fab Four "actually recorded more overt references to tea than drugs!"

In its heyday, the Beatles were extraordinary hawkers of food products. Mitch McGeary, proprietor of the RareBeatles.com website, lists a number of treats that the group endorsed by name and sometimes image. It would seem that the boys were quite fond of carbohydrates, lending their credibility to products like cereal, potato chips, crackers, bread, and cookies. Junk food giant Nabisco even named a package of fudge sandwich cookies Ringos.

Cafés and eateries with Beatles themes exist across Europe, and even the Bay Area has a piece of the action. At Heimerhaus (601 Main St. at Veterans Blvd., Redwood City), "John, Paul, George, Ringo' is a popular "super-sandwich," a creation that actually looks like three sandwiches stuck together with the aid of corned beef, roast beef, turkey, Swiss and American cheeses, cucumber, cranberry sauce, pickle, coleslaw, mayonnaise, and mustard on rye. It's a feat of construction that is both intimidating and fun to eat. Never mind the avowed vegetarianism of three-quarters of the group.

In San Francisco, another deli, the Sunset District's Yellow Submarine (503 Irving at 6th Ave., San Francisco) doesn’t have any themed menu items but instead honors the group with colorful décor inspired by the famous Beatles cartoon. Across Golden Gate Park in the Richmond District, the Japanese restaurant Halu (312 8th Ave. at Clement, San Francisco) serves sushi and yakitori in a funky room covered with Beatles posters, toys, and other memorabilia, a drum set with the band logo towering in the loft above.

Beatles memorabilia galore at Halu, a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco

Across town, Connecticut Yankee (100 Connecticut at 17th St., San Francisco) makes a showy New York strip steak covered in crushed black pepper, flambéed in brandy, and crowned with green peppercorn sauce: Sgt. Pepper's Beef. The leader of the Lonely Hearts Club Band also features on a flat bread pizza at Blue Light (1979 Union at Buchanan, San Francisco) with bell peppers, pepper Jack cheese, and pepperoni.

This can all be washed down with a Blue Meanie (strawberry, blueberry, banana, and apple juice) or Strawberry Fields (strawberry, banana, and apple juice) smoothie at Rockin Java (1821 Haight at Stanyan, San Francisco).Strawberry Fields, a reference to the Beatles' 1967 song, is quite popular as a beverage name in San Francisco; it also pops up as a vodka cocktail at The Tipsy Pig (2231 Chestnut at Scott, San Francisco), a fruity green tea at Crown and Crumpet (900 North Point at Larkin, San Francisco), and, again, as a smoothie at Blue Danube (306 Clement at 4th Ave., San Francisco).

The legacy of the Beatles is long, vast, and occasionally delicious.