Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco tape the sixth episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED.
Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area’s sixth episode of Season 8 airs on Thursday May 16 at 7:30pm on KQED 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website provides restaurant information not specified on the show and you are free to share your opinions on the restaurants featured. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will continue to share wine (and spirits) tips with each episode.

The sixth episode of Season 8 features these restaurants: Hunan Home’s Restaurant (San Francisco), Radius Restaurant and Café (San Francisco) and Guerilla Café (Berkeley).

Fun in the greenroom after taping the sixth episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED. Lyrics Born autographs Leslie’s foot. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Watch Leslie Sbrocco share her Wine Tips about Santa Barbara County Wines:

View more Wine Tips at Check, Please! Bay Area.

SHED exterior facade

What would a locavore’s paradise in wine country look like? For a certain type of well-heeled agrarian, a whole lot like SHED, Healdsburg’s 21st-century grange, grocery, farm store, cafe, bar and event space.

Healdsburg SHED exterior

At first glance, it looks like the prettiest airplane hanger you’ve ever been in, with its huge, boxy shape and garage-style doors, all metal and glass. Grab the handle of that spade doubling as a door handle, step inside, and the enormous space resolves itself into a luxuriously uncrowded farm-to-table playground.

But first, grab a cappuccino from the coffee bar front and center, because everything looks rosier with a foam heart in hand. Admire the spotless white marble counters, the equally pristine bunches of frilly lettuce, the baskets of fresh-from-the-farm eggs, ecru to aqua.

Tall, pale wooden shelves display crayon-bright Japanese coffee pots and Spanish earthenware casseroles. On a wide slab of salvaged sycamore dubbed the “story table,” massive flower arrangements worthy of a Dutch still life spill their blossoms over an educational display of German-made alternative beehives.

Bee Table at SHED

Afternoon sunshine lights up the Dutch and English gardening tools hanging on the walls, glowing across the copper jam pots and hand-carved wooden tortilla presses. It all feels like a Kinfolk magazine spread come to life and tastefully available for purchase. That soft-as-ricotta, brown-as-molasses yarn? Spun from gentle black sheep. The house-fermented cider vinegar? Tap it from the barrel, if you’ve remembered to bring your own bottle. Nothing is made of plastic; nothing has a plug.

Vinegar barrels at SHED

This is not make-do, duct-tape DIY; everything here, from the beakers of fruit shrubs (sweet-tart, vinegar-based drinks, infused with fresh fruit and fizzed with soda water) and bright-magenta beet kvass at the fermentation bar to the galvanized buckets of peonies and the baskets loaded with chocolate-brown loaves of bread the size of watermelons has been curated with an eye for beauty, taste, and usefulness.

Take butter, for example, so necessary with those huge loaves from M.H. Bread and Butter. (Baker Nathan Yanko used to work with bread star Chad Robertson at Tartine in the Mission, so his loaves are as close as the wine country gets to Robertson’s cult-status levains.) Some half-dozen types of butter–cow, goat, sea salted and packed into ceramic crocks–reside in the dairy case. But is that too easy for you? Then pick up a bottle of organic cream, a hand-cranked German butter-making jar, and a couple of wooden butter paddles for shaping the result into decorative pats. What else could you have to do?

Duck into the cleaning nook nearby and you’ll find all the necessaries for fulfilling those downstairs Downton Abbey fantasies: plumy ostrich-feather dusters with 40-inch handles, perfect for polishing chandeliers; crooked hand-carved broomsticks, possibly too witchy to pass muster with Mrs. Hughes but absolutely Quidditch-ready; wooden scrub brushes of which even Mr. Carson would approve, with nary an electric toaster in sight.

SHED co-owner Cindy Daniel

SHED is the vision of owners Doug and Cindy Daniel, who created it as a celebration of Sonoma’s agricultural heritage, as a place where all kinds of crops are grown and products made, not just the wine that puts in on the map. The Daniels provide much of the vegetables, flowers, fruit, and eggs on display from their own 16 acres in the Dry Creek Valley, which they’ve dubbed HomeFarm, where 11 acres are under mixed organic and biodynamic cultivation, and the other 5 as native riparian habitat. They have Rhone-varietal grapes growing for wine, French olive trees for oil, chickens, sheep, bees, heirloom-variety orchards, including curiosities like medlars, jujubes, and pineapple guavas, plus a market garden for vegetables and cut flowers. “It’s a patchwork of things that are all related,” says Cindy, much like the store she and her husband have created.

Mill at SHED

She’s particularly proud of the milling room, where small batches of locally grown, mostly heirloom strains of wheat and other grains are ground into flour every few days. (Most of the flour is sold in the shop; a portion of it goes to M.H. Butter for use in their breads.) The shop is also a pick-up point for grainshare subscribers to the Mendocino Grain Project, a CSA for locally grown grains, including wheat, oats, rye, and barley. Inspired by Native Seeds’ week-long Seed School workshop, Cindy found herself ever more interested in promoting Sonoma’s foodshed and encouraging self-sufficiency in the face of evolving climate change and energy crises. “There used to be a grain mill in Healdsburg,” she notes, glad to be reviving one of the area’s agricultural traditions, even if just on a home cook’s scale.

Larder at SHED

Nearby, the cool larder is “a room that talks about process,” as Cindy says, where customers can peer through the glass wall at wooden shelves filled with pickles and krauts fermenting, and cheeses and cured meats aging.

Hearth at SHED

It could hardly be a true 21st-century kitchen without a live fire burning somewhere, and so, of course, flames flicker in the hearth behind the open kitchen where chef Niki Ford oversees a daily-changing menu of eclectic breakfast and lunch fare. The heavy lifting of the kitchen gets done upstairs, in an additional production space off the main event room. The designer of Boulette’s Larder in the Ferry Building consulted, and it shows: the spacious, pristine kitchen is lavished with All-Clad saucepans hanging from racks above the counters, while tall woven baskets bristle with whisks as long as shinbones and massive stock pots steam on the stove.

Production Kitchen at SHED

In the morning, locals and visitors alike can perch at one of the blond-wood tables in the open cafe area, waiting for bowls of fiber-rich hot porridge slow-cooked overnight to reach a texture described by Ford as “between gruel and chewy grains,” lavished with butter, sea salt, and damson plum jam. Those that haven’t yet foresworn gluten can treat themselves to a “toast service” of thick slabs of Yanko’s bread, toasted with butter, jam by local “jamstress” Elissa Rubin-Mahon, and housemade chocolate-hazelnut spread, or dig into “Doug’s poached eggs” over toast with oregano, sea salt, and a drizzle of HomeFarm balsamic vinegar and olive oil. A Persian breakfast, inspired by the cooking of an Iranian friend of Ford’s, is a mix-and-match assortment of feta cheese, walnuts, sour cherry jam, herbs, and more of that great bread.

Fermentation Bar at SHED

Coming in at the civilized, city-brunch hour of 1pm, we’re sorry to have missed the 11am cutoff for Ford’s heirloom-grain waffles with quince jam and maple syrup. Instead, glasses of blueberry shrub in hand, we plunge straight into the savory side, with a briny bowl of clams bathed in cilantro and cream. A previous menu offered flatbread topped with nettles, cardoons, preserved lemon and local Highway 1 cheese, but today’s offering is as straightforward as any 5 year old could desire: a pizza with tomato sauce and cheese, on a pleasantly puffy-chewy crust. At the fermentation bar–which pours not only both wine and beer on tap but kefir, kombucha, kvass, and cider–we catch up with Ellen Cavalli and Scott Heath of Tilted Shed Ciderworks, who are lunching with their young son. The bar serves their ciders, and also ferments some of it into cider vinegar, using it as a base for the shrubs and offering it in bulk from a barrel on the other side of the store.

Ford, who shares a Chez Panisse pedigree (and friendship) with Suzanne Drexhange of Bartavelle, also shares a fondness for hand-carved boards laid out with savory deliciousness. Around us, many diners are nibbling the ploughman’s lunch, generous slabs of Fiscalini cheddar from Modesto, rye bread, apples, pickled onions, and chutney, or munching their way through the salads on the mezze plate, served with housemade crackers, feta, and olives. Nettle soup is greener than grass, bold as fresh money. “We want to make a lot of room for grains, legumes, vegetables, roots,” says Ford. “There’s a lot of sophistication in making vegetables.” It’s all part of an appreciation for “what we have in our hands, being thoughtful about the ingredients,” an attitude that Ford hopes the cooks will learn to share even during busy moments on the line, all deepened by the relationships they’re building with the farmers and gardeners supplying the kitchen.

The Daniels have plans for frequent events upstairs; already, they’ve hosted Deborah Madison in conversation with local food writer and author Michele Anna Jordan about Madison’s new book, Vegetable Literacy; sponsored a showing of Queen of the Sun, a documentary about the global bee crisis; and hosted a three-course, family-style Sunday Supper featuring the produce and farmers from Bernier Farms. On May 18, bring your knives and brush up on your Knife Skills with Rian Rinn. On May 26, there will be an all-American family-style Sunday Supper out on the patio with live music. And on June 8, butcher Rinn will be hosting Hog It Up, a hog butchery demo & pop-up dinner with chefs Ian Mullen and Jason Smith of Mullen & Smith.

Information:
Healdsburg SHED
Address: Map
25 North St
Healdsburg, CA 95448
Phone: (707) 431-7433
Hours: Mon-Sun 7am-7pm
Facebook: Healdsburg SHED
Twitter: @healdsburgshed

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco tape the fifth episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED.
Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area’s fifth episode of Season 8 airs on Thursday May 9 at 7:30pm on KQED 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website provides restaurant information not specified on the show and you are free to share your opinions on the restaurants featured. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will continue to share wine (and spirits) tips with each episode.

The fifth episode of Season 8 features these restaurants: Bocanova (Oakland), Willi’s Wine Bar (Santa Rosa) and The Rotunda of Neiman Marcus (San Francisco).

Watch Leslie Sbrocco share her Wine Tips about Wines of Washington State:

View more Wine Tips at Check, Please! Bay Area.

A worker harvests cabernet sauvignon grapes at a vineyard near Bordeaux, France, in September. Photo: Caroline Blumberg/EPA/Landov

Post by Alastair Bland, The Salt at NPR Food (5/8/13)

Bordeauxs and Burgundys haven’t changed much since the days when famous wine-lover Thomas Jefferson kept the cellars of his Parisian home well-stocked with both wines.

But now, some worry that the regional rules and traditions that have defined top winemaking regions like Champagne, Burgundy and Chianti for centuries could melt away as climate change takes effect.

The main concern is that grape varieties that have brought renown and reputation to certain appellations — the syrah grapes of the French Rhone Valley, or the cabernet sauvignon of Bordeaux — may no longer thrive in those places several decades from now. Some people say there is little reason to fear, but others are already thinking ahead about which grape varieties will work best in their regions under forecast temperature changes. And it’s possible that old wine standards and definitions, revered like religion for ages, could be rewritten as winemakers adapt to a warmer future.

“As grape-growing suitability moves northward, I believe the winemaking regulations of Europe could break down quickly,” says Lee Hannah, a University of California, Santa Barbara-based climate specialist with Conservation International. He co-authored a recent study in the journal Science forecasting how climate change might reshape the global winemaking map.

Already, climate change is creating new winners among Europe’s winemakers. In southern England, warmer temperatures are credited with setting off a sparkling wine boom. In Germany, where Riesling and Gewurztraminer have long been superstars, new grape varieties are beginning to thrive, says German viticulturist Hans Reiner Schultz, a professor at Hochschule Geisenheim University.

“The pinot noir we’re growing is now fit to challenge the French,” Schultz says.

Meanwhile, winemakers in other parts of the continent are feeling the heat, and there is increasing discussion about changing the rules to allow them to introduce grape varieties that are currently prohibited but likely to thrive under future climate conditions.

And grape growers, who must look ahead decades to when their vines will be in prime production, may soon be planting new varieties of vines known to produce fruit better in warmer, drier climates. Experimental government vineyards are already doing this.

“Changing grapevine varieties is absolutely an option, not in a short term, but by 2050 to 2070,” Kees Van Leeuwen, of the Agricultural University of Bordeaux, tells The Salt. “We are currently experimenting in our research center [the Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin] how later-ripening varieties behave in the Bordeaux climate.”

Late-ripening varieties are considered the best candidates for helping regions adapt to climate change. That’s because, in general, the later that grapes ripen, the better their sugar-acid balance — an important component in winemaking.

When grapes ripen especially early — as they do in warm years — they may fail to develop the acidity necessary for making good wine. This means that many grapes that currently ripen in the optimal harvest time of September might, in a warmer future, become relatively useless to some winemakers who use them today.

Leeuwen says changing French laws on regional grape use won’t be easy, and could take as long as 15 years.

Other regulations are already breaking down – such as laws forbidding irrigation. The practice is considered taboo by many, and some wine critics feel it can result in watery-tasting wines.

But in exceptionally hot and dry conditions, watering vines can help increase the yield of fruit. And in 2006, the French government decided to do away with its prohibition on irrigating. Anti-irrigation laws have also been loosened in parts of Spain, says Schultz.

“When they changed the rule [in France], it was like a second French Revolution, because many people were very, very opposed to this,” Schultz says. Now, he adds, “there is no more talk of prohibiting irrigation.”

That rule change comes at a cost, says Leeuwen. He says irrigation can increase the soil’s salinity level, which can be harmful to grapes. In Bordeaux and other fine wine regions, where the richness of the dirt is credited for the quality of the wine, the consequences of irrigation could be dire. Leeuwen says salinity buildup in some southern Australian vineyards is causing winemakers to abandon them.

But Michel Chapoutier, a winemaker in the Rhone Valley, has more confidence in the future. He thinks current regulations already give winemakers all the leeway they need to use different grape varieties to adapt to climate change. A Bordeaux will still be a Bordeaux, he argues, without a change in rules or a compromise in quality — winemakers will merely have to adjust their blend ratios.

“Bordeaux [winemakers] will lower their amount of merlot and will raise their amount of petit verdot, while the Southern Rhone will lower their amount of syrah and raise their amounts of grenache and mourvedre,” Chapoutier says.

Lamberto Frescobaldi, of his family’s winery in Tuscany, says he believes old traditions should not be allowed to hinder winemakers from adapting to climate change — even if it means permitting new grapes in their wines. But he doubts that Tuscan winemakers will ever let sangiovese, the main variety of the region, slip to the wayside.

Schultz, too, expects that historically dominant wine regions will do everything they can to avoid giving up the grapes that have defined them for centuries.

“Burgundy without a pinot noir or chardonnay,” he says, “would not be the Burgundy we know.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco tape the third episode of Season 8 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED.
Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area’s third episode of Season 8 airs on Thursday April 25 at 7:30pm on KQED 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website provides restaurant information not specified on the show and you are free to share your opinions on the restaurants featured. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will continue to share wine (and spirits) tips with each episode.

The third episode of Season 8 features these restaurants: Maverick (San Francisco), Izakaya Yuzuki (San Francisco) and Souk Savanh (Oakland).

Watch Leslie Sbrocco share her Wine & Spirits Tips about Sake:

View more Wine Tips at Check, Please! Bay Area.

Ernest Hemingway once said, “A man does not exist until he is drunk. Photo: AP

Post by Lydia Zuraw, The Salt at NPR Food (4/18/13)

Sure, we all know alcohol has fueled plenty a writing session. William Faulkner — who once said, “civilization begins with distillation” — was known to have kept a bottle by his side while he typed away throughout his writing career.

But for centuries, writers relied on alcohol to keep the words flowing in a far less boozy form than the Burroughs and Hemingways of literary history: the wine ink pen.

Wine, it turns out, was a key ingredient in many recipes for iron gall ink — for all you non-ink nerds, that was the writing ink used by most of the Western world from the Middle Ages all the way up to the 19th century.

“Anyone anywhere near famous will have something in iron gall ink,” says Elmer Eusman, head of the conservation division at the Library of Congress.

A 1297 copy of history’s great political document the Magna Carta was penned in the stuff. Van Gogh drew with it, Da Vinci jotted notes with it, and Bach composed with it.

“The practice of adding wine into historic inks was quite widespread,” says chemist Matija Strlic, a senior lecturer at University College London who has worked with historic parchments and inks.

The chemistry involved can get pretty wonky, but basically, the wine was believed to make the coloring agents in ink more stable. Wine was also considered a purer solvent than water. And iron gall inks were prized because they were so indelible.

So why did these inks fall out of favor? Sadly, they didn’t play nice with the newfangled steel pens of the 19th century, says Abigail Quandt, head of book and paper conservation at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The inks corroded the writing implements, so different formulations had to be developed.

Which conservators would probably say is a good thing. The inks weren’t just corroding pens, but also the paper on which historic documents were written. In some of Rembrandt’s drawings, for example, the ink has made the paper fragile and brittle, Eusman says.

Still, the wine ink tradition is not completely dead.

Recently, Spanish winery Casa Mariol unwittingly revived it when it decided to send pens filled with a cabernet sauvignon-based ink to potential clients as part of a new marketing scheme.

“You cheer with wine after an agreement and, with our wine pen, you can even sign the agreement with the wine,” Miguel Angel Vaquer — who runs the family business with his siblings — tells The Salt in an email. He didn’t mention whether the pens had drummed up wine sales, but he did say that people around the world have been asking about buying their wine ink pens.

It’s not clear how long interest will last, if recent history is any guide. Brian Goulet says he used to stock wine inks from a German company for his Goulet Pen Co. but doesn’t anymore. Apparently, they didn’t sell very well.

“As fountain pen inks, they performed OK,” he says. “It was more the novelty of the fact they smelled like the wine they were made from that appealed to people.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

A pregnant woman holds a glass of wine.
Photo: iStockphoto.com

According to a new study published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, there doesn’t seem to be any measurable risk.

The study found that drinking up to two alcoholic beverages per week during pregnancy is not linked to developmental problems in children. But even the study’s authors caution that abstaining from alcohol is still best for mothers-to-be.

The research was done at the University College London, using data collected as part of the Millennium Cohort Study. The researchers looked at about 10,000 children born in the U.K. between 2000 and 2001. When the children were 7 years old, they were given math, reading and spatial skills tests. And parents completed questionnaires about the children’s emotional and social development.

The researchers found that children born to women who consumed a little alcohol during pregnancy had higher test scores on some tests compared with children of nondrinkers. But the researchers conclude that most of these differences were too small to be statistically significant.

“While we have followed these children for the first seven years of their lives, further research is needed to detect whether any adverse effects of low levels of alcohol consumption in pregnancy emerge later in childhood,” professor Yvonne Kelly, of the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies (ICLS) at University College London, and co-author of the study, said in a statement released by the journal.

The Department of Health in the U.K. recommends that pregnant women avoid alcohol altogether. But if moms-to-be do choose to drink, the government’s advice is “to not have more than one to two units of alcohol once or twice a week, and not to get drunk,” according to this U.K. government site. Under the British government’s definition, a small 4-ounce glass of wine is about one-and-a-half units.

Experts on fetal alcohol syndrome in the U.S. aren’t so convinced by the new findings. “Failure to see an effect doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, or that drinking in pregnancy is safe,” says Dr. Robert Sokol, director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development at Wayne State University, in an email to The Salt. He explains that the ability to detect effects of low levels of alcohol exposure depends largely on what’s measured.

Another shortcoming of the study is that people tend to under-report alcohol consumption when they’re questioned about it, says Dr. David Garry of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University. And in this study, women weren’t asked to recall how much alcohol they drank until their child was 9 months old, so memories may not have been so clear. It’s “not a convincing study,” says Garry.

“If a woman has had some drinks in pregnancy, I would reassure her that the [child's] development is likely to be normal,” writes Garry in an email to The Salt. But overall, he says, drinking does pose a risk and should be avoided during pregnancy.

Robert Sokol agrees. “It’s still the case that it’s safest not to drink during pregnancy,” Sokol says.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Red Wine. Photo: Getty Images

Are you easily intimidated by snobby sommeliers? Flummoxed by phone-book-thick restaurant wine lists? Help is on the way. KQED’s Forum convenes a panel of Bay Area wine connoisseurs to talk about how to pour and taste wine, and how to select the perfect bottle at a store or restaurant.

Host: Scott Shafer

Guests:

• Debbie Zachareas, owner/partner of Ferry Plaza Wine and Oxbow Wine Merchant
• Doug Tomlinson, CEO of Vino Volo airport wine bars and shops (serving SFO), headquartered in San Francisco
• Jon Bonne, wine editor for The San Francisco Chronicle

More info:
• Wine Tips from Leslie Sbrocco (Check Please! Bay Area)

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco taping the 100th episode of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED.
Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area’s 100th episode kicks off Season 8 on Thursday April 11 at 7:30pm on KQED 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website provides restaurant information not specified on the show and you are free to share your opinions on the restaurants featured. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will continue to share wine tips with each episode.

The first episode of Season 8 features these San Francisco restaurants: Angkor Borei, Indigo Restaurant and Farallon.

Watch Leslie Sbrocco share her Wine Tips about California Wine Regions:

View more Wine Tips at Check, Please! Bay Area.

But there are plenty of Deaf Bay Area food lovers who aren’t chefs, and I recently took a dozen of them–software developers, college professors, actors and retired folk–on an only-in-sign-language tasting tour of Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto through Edible Excursions.

I’ve been leading Edible Excursions tours of San Francisco Japantown for the general public since last summer, and recently added ASL–only tours for members of the local Deaf community. (Because ASL is a separate language, with its own grammar, one can’t speak English and simultaneously sign ASL.) Since the Berkeley culinary romp was my third ASL tour, I knew from experience that I would be breaking a rule of politeness in Deaf culture and added the following warning during my intro speech in front of Shattuck Avenue’s Cheese Board.

Due to our tightly planned schedule tasting tidbits at nine places in three hours, I explained that I was going to have to rush the group from one spot to another. In Deaf Culture, despite the advances of email, video phones and texting, face-to-face communication in expressive ASL often has top priority and thus it is considered rude to interrupt signed conversations. In the interest of maximal food appreciation, however, the Deaf foodies replied to my rudeness tip-off with amenable nods.

Saul’s deli delights, photo courtesy Alyce Reynolds

With that, we headed to Saul’s Deli, where a table was already set with glasses for what proved to be our first guessing game of the day. I told the group that this straw-colored soda was house-made, as was common in the heyday of New York delis in the early 20th century, when this flavor was touted for its health benefits. What is it? Ginger and vanilla were the first guesses. I shook my head no. Finally, a member of the group with a sensitive palate guessed correctly: celery seed soda.

Then, we were joined by Saul’s owner Peter Levitt and over succulent house-smoked pastrami sandwiches, he explained Saul’s mission to serve  locally made deli fare, as opposed to the former practice of flying in deli foods from New York.

Imperial Tea Court, photo courtesy Alyce Reynolds

Next, we ambled over to the Epicurious Garden complex and entered the regal Imperial Tea Court for a lecture on the history of tea with seven kinds to sniff and one to taste.

Chocolate heaven at Alegio, photo courtesy Ken Arcia

The most popular stop on the tour–not surprisingly–introduced the group to “the best chocolate in the world,” accordingly to Alegio’s co-owner Robbin Everson, which grows only on Sao Tome, a tiny island off the coast of West Africa. The series of nibbles of bars from 100% to 73 1/2% cacao was revelatory and sublime. Thanks to Everson’s expertise, the guests delighted in having all their questions answered. Two of the most surprising discoveries: Hershey’s bars contain only 10% cacao and there is no caffeine in chocolate–instead a stimulating compound called theobromine produces a different set of effects on the body.

On our way out of Epicurious Garden, we made a quick stop at Soop for some warming Thai Red lentil soup and I explained that owner Marc Kelly serves Swedish yellow split pea soup every Thursday to honor his Swedish mom’s national tradition.

Monica Roccino of Local Butcher, photo courtesy Ken Arcia

After a short walk down Shattuck Avenue, the group assembled in a large semi-circle (with sign language, everyone needs to be able to see) in front of The Local Butcher Shop. While they munched on the sandwich of the day, pork with onion, cabbage and BBQ sauce, I interpreted a fascinating lecture about whole animal butchery from co-owner Monica Roccino, after which she entertained questions. “What’s the most exotic meat you carry?” one person asked. Perhaps the questioner was hoping to find ostrich or reindeer on the menu. But Roccino explained that she and husband Adam’s commitment to local ranchers means that they only use animals raised within 150 miles, so the most exotic meat she could come up with was squab (pigeon).

Cheese Board pizza slices quickly disappear, photo courtesy Kim Aronson

In front of the Cheese Board Pizza Collective, I told the group how this worker-owned collective was inspired by an Israeli kibbutz, while they scarfed down the flavor of the day: zucchini, onions, mozzarella, feta cheese, and basil pesto.

After a shot of caffeine and history at the original Peet’s Coffee which started the gourmet coffee movement back in 1966, the group was more than ready to mellow out across the street at Vintage Wine, where owner Peter Eastlake described the three wines the group was about to sample from Healdsburg’s Preston Winery. But as I began interpreting in ASL, I had a momentary brain-freeze as I realized that common terms in the wine world, such as: “full-bodied,” “thick, round texture,” and “floral notes” were not the kind of phrases that usually come up in my daily courtroom interpreting. Thankfully, several Deaf guests were clearly wine connoisseurs and knew exactly what Peter was talking about. Reverence for the grape, it seems, transcends language.

And with a parting sweet scoop of gelato from Lush back in Epicurious Garden, the Deaf tour guests reflected on the satisfying aspects of the day: one enjoyed learning the history of many places she has frequented throughout her years as a foodie, another appreciated “discovering these awesome hidden gems in Berkeley and the stories behind them and learning about them in ASL,” and a third was so overcome with the delights of the day, he admitted, “I’m sign-less!”

Related Information:
Edible Excursions’ Gourmet Ghetto tours Thursdays and Saturdays  (stops may vary).