As a Korean-American, I'm naturally partial to the spicy, sinus-clearing cuisine of my heritage. Luckily, Telegraph Avenue in Oakland -- a mini-Koreatown -- is only a few minutes away from where I live in West Oakland. I'm able to get a fix pretty quickly when I'm missing my mom's home cooking.

But there's a new Korean restaurant located beyond the borders of Temescal, Be Bop, that's recently opened its doors in the past 2 weeks in Berkeley's Elmwood neighborhood. The name seems to be a jazz-pun that riffs off of the name of a popular traditional Korean dish, bibimbap, which means "mixed rice." The menu lists 17 variations of the dish, including "dol sot bibimbap," where rice and other ingredients are piled into a heated, stone bowl. (I should mention here that this is one of my all-time favorite Korean comfort food dishes to eat, so I'm pretty thrilled at the prospect of there being 17 options to choose from.) Then you slather on as much "kochujang," a spicy chili sauce, that you can humanly handle and mix it all together with your spoon. Then dig in; this hot and hearty bowl brimming with food will keep you sweating and gulping down big glasses of water for the duration of your meal.

My husband and I both ordered the "bulgogi dol sot bibimbap" (barbecued beef), and I was able to order mine with mixed-grain brown and black bean rice instead of the typical short-grain white rice. You could also add other non-traditional ingredients such as quinoa, walnuts, fruit and more. (Not sure how Mom would feel about these modern flourishes, but I'm willing to try these additions the next time around.)

We were served a variety of appetizers including two fine soups (one pumpkin, one radish), pickled vegetables and of course, kimchi. This pungent pickled cabbage dish is a must for any Korean table. Surprisingly, the restaurant only serves a milder incarnation: "baek kimchi," or white kimchi.

Korean restaurants usually cover the entire table with dozens of banchan, or small complimentary side dishes to accompany your meal, but Be Bop only offered several plates. But with our order of jeon, an assortment of fried delicacies, we wouldn't have had room for much more besides our main courses.

Our servers carefully set down the hot and sizzling stone bowls on our table (the bowls are placed on a thick wooden plates to protect the table from getting burnt). We were a little disappointed that the dishes were not served with the usual topping of a sunny side up fried egg, the yolk of which is cooked by the heat of the ingredients and the dol sot. Still, the dishes were delicious. The vegetables were fresh and well-cooked (each ingredient should be individually sauteed). And the housemade sesame dressing ("dul-kkae" sauce) was excellent. A complimentary sugary red bean gelatin dessert was served following our filling meal.

The restaurant's interior is a brightly-lit, newly renovated space that's best for groups of two or four. Everything on the menu is $15 or less. Be Bop also promises that there's more changes to come with their menu in the next few months, and that they'll be adding on more entrees. And they're still awaiting their liquor license, so no alcohol is being served yet.

Be Bop
Address: map
2975 College Ave
(between Ashby Ave & Webster St)
Berkeley, CA 94705
Phone: (510) 848-8081
Lunch: Mon-Sat 11am - 3pm
Dinner: Mon-Sat 5pm - 10pm, Sun 5pm - 11pm

Brick Hut 3: Kwan and Rami. Photo by Ace Morgan

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.
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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

Sharon Davenport and Joan Antonuccio at The Brick Hut Cafe (3). Photo: Ace Morgan

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.
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• 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

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

Can vegans, vegetarians and carnivores really share a foodie-worthy meal at the same table? They certainly can at Gather in Berkeley. And that's just the way Esquire Magazine's 2010 Chef of the Year, and Gather's Executive Chef, Sean Baker, likes it.

"We want to show the same enthusiasm for every dietary preference, whether it's lactose intolerance, gluten-free, or veganism. We want to make sure they all get to have the same experience."

Chef Baker may be a classically trained chef who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu, but he's always been personally interested in being meat-free, even becoming vegan for a time, before he went to culinary school. Now with his fiancee being vegan, he's even more personally invested in making dishes everyone can enjoy.

"It's frustrating," he says. "We eat out a lot and sometimes she can't have the same experience that I can. Veganism is not an eating style that is embraced by a lot of culinary folks." Fortunately, Chef Baker says that thinking of a 50/50 vegan/meat menu comes to him quite naturally these days. Must be from his previous stints at Millennium Restaurant, San Francisco’s premier high-end vegan restaurant, and Gabriella Café in Santa Cruz, where he oversaw a meat-heavy menu that sometimes offered offal options.

Sean Baker. Photo: Andrew Weeks Photography

Chef Baker says, "I read obsessively, eat out obsessively, and I cook obsessively. I love what I do. It's never a struggle to come up with menus that appeal to everyone."

But that doesn't mean it requires less work.

He says, "Vegan food is much more labor intensive in the kitchen, but you can do a lot of great culinary techniques when preparing it. We spend hours and hours doing vegetable stocks. We smoke our tomatoes and caramelize our onions until they can't be caramelized anymore. We blanch our cardoons and then sous vide them for six hours until they come out perfect. We're always messing around with things to improve the flavor of food and improve our craft."

Chef Baker believes in offering comfort food in unpretentious surroundings that are not only beautiful, but eco-friendly. For example, they filter all of the water in the restaurant themselves, used recycled pickle barrels to create the back bar and cabinetry in the open kitchen, and even re-used old leather belts to make the seat cushions in the banquettes.

But this is no tree-hugging, alfalfa-loving hippy eatery. The menu here is inventive, surprising, and worthy of a four-star chef.

On a recent visit for brunch with some friends, we had the Egg Sandwich with bacon and mushrooms; the Acme Walnut French Toast with blood orange confit, cranberries and walnut sauce; and the Burrata with chicories, walnuts, anchovy and bruschetta.

We loved the Egg Sandwich with its fresh torpedo Acme roll, smoky salty bacon and those fabulous braised Portobello mushrooms! Apparently they’d been cooked with red onions, smoked chopped tomatoes, their own veggie stock and something they call "tomato condiment" which is like a housemade ketchup. It’s the basis for many dishes and the Chef was nice enough to offer up the recipe below.

We also ordered two pizzas for the table, including the vegan Spicy Tomato with capers, olives, cashew garlic puree and herbs; and the Farm Egg Pizza with bacon and caramelized onions.

The vegan Spicy Tomato pie was the highlight of our entire meal, and I say that surprisingly because we were a table of hearty meat-eaters. We were skeptical that any vegan dish could satisfy, let alone surprise us, the way this pizza did. The flavor combination of the salty capers and olives with the zesty sauce and creamy nut puree made for a winning combination. And texturally, the crust on both pizzas was stellar. It was thin and crispy on the bottom, and the dough around the edges was soft and tender, like the perfect breadstick.

Each and every dish was fresh, bright and alive with flavor, thanks to all the produce from the folks at Lindencroft Farms. And it's not just high quality ingredients we tasted, it's the obvious care in preparation.

"I don't want the vegetarians to know they're eating vegetarian food. I want you to feel like you're eating something that tastes like steak," says Chef Baker. "My goal when cooking is for people to try a whole new array of flavors every time they come in and make it fun for everyone at the table."

Recipe: Tomato Condiment

By Sean Baker

Summary: Tomato Condiment is like a housemade ketchup

Yield: 9 quarts (scale down accordingly)

Ingredients

• 12 qts red onion (1/4 inch dice)
• 3 qts apple cider vinegar
• 6 cups tomato paste
• 5 cups Sucanat (or natural cane sugar)
• 2 Tbsp. dried thyme
• 3 Tbsp. ground black pepper
• 1 Tbsp. ground clove
• 2 Tbsp. ground allspice
• 1 Tbsp. ground allspicecayenne
• 6 oz pure olive oil
• 1.5 cups Tamari/Dark Soy Sauce
• 3 qts Water

Instructions

1. Caramelize the onions and then fry the tomato paste. Add all other ingredients and reduce to slightly looser than ketchup consistency.
2. You can use this as a basis for braising vegetables and meats or as a condiment.

Gather Restaurant
Address: Map
2200 Oxford Street
Berkeley, CA 94704
Phone: 510-809-0400
Hours: Dinner 5pm-10pm, Weekday Lunch 11:30am-2pm, Weekend Brunch 10am-2:30pm
Twitter: @GatherBerkeley
Facebook: Gather

Vanessa Barrington (Twitter: @veebee22) is a food writer and cookbook author based in the Temescal District in Oakland. She is the author of the recently published D.I.Y. Delicious (Twitter: @DIYDelicious): Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food From Scratch (Chronicle Books, Fall 2010) and co-authored Heirloom Beans with Steve Sando (Chronicle Books, 2008). She works as a consultant with HavenB Media on food, agriculture, and environmental issues. She also blogs about food policy and healthy cooking for EcoSalon.com, Civil Eats.com, and most recently, OaklandLocal.com. For recipes and current food writing go to vanessabarrington.com. Barrington was born in Salt Lake City, and said she “moved to Santa Rosa when I was 4. (and) spent most of my life in the Bay Area and Sonoma County.”

FOOD SHOPPING

“East Bay Farmers’ Markets: I base all of my food shopping around the farmers’ markets and supplement from there. I love The Grand Lake Farmers’ Market for its urban Oakland feeling and the mix of vendors. Also the Temescal Market. It’s close to my house, it’s on Sunday. and it’s fun to watch all the kids. Love Tomatero Farm, Catalan Farm, Blossom Bluff, Scream Sorbet, and Massa Organics for brown rice. In the summer I tend toward the Berkeley Saturday market. First stops are always River Dog Farm, La Tercera Farm, and Morrell’s Bread.”

“Market Hall in Rockridge —it’s less crowded than some of the more popular grocery stores, a short bike ride from my house, and I can get everything I need there. The produce store has local organic selections, for when I don’t make it to the farmers’ market, and a nice selection of heirloom beans.

The new Marin Sun Farms butchers rock my world. They are real pros (and they know where the meat is from). I wasn’t eating much meat at all until they opened because I’m kind of a stickler about local, small-scale, humane meat. Now I’m often in there picking up some goat chops, or a pork shoulder for braising. Favorite things are the duck crépinettes and the porchetta sandwich that they make on weekends. It has thinly sliced fennel, spicy arugula and they build the sandwich so almost every bite has a crispy bit of pork skin. At The Pasta Shop, I like to check the top of the pasta counter for day-old ravioli. It’s the best deal in town. And their new cheese counter is great.”

“Rainbow Grocery is one thing I miss about living in SF. They have the best bulk section on the planet for dried heirloom beans (including Rancho Gordo) and grains, as well as teas, olive oil, maple syrup, etc. Gordon, their cheesemonger, has turned the cheese counter into one of the best anywhere, and the produce buyers go to great lengths to offer as much local and organic produce as possible, while still maintaining a good selection.”

“For Asian groceries, the New May Wah store on Clement is wonderful. They have everything you need for Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Korean cooking adventures.”

EATING AND DRINKING

Barrington said that, “This changes all the time, depending on my mood and who I’m dining/drinking with.

Currently I like CommonWealth on Telegraph. You can go in at night and get a really nice beer and some Shepherd’s Pie or a pressed sandwich. During the day, you can order coffee and an excellent scone with Devonshire cream and jam. It’s comfortable and friendly. Just a great place to hang out.

Saul’s is great because they serve wonderful deli food but they source local and humanely raised meats, introduce seasonality into the mix (especially in their specials) and they even make their own sodas!”

MOM AND POP SPOTS, WITH A LATIN AMERICAN BENT

“I haven’t found my favorite mom and pop restaurant in Oakland yet. Still looking. And all of these are Latin American, but they are all I can think of.

I like El Trebol on 24th in The Mission because it literally is mom and pop and their kitchen is a literal hole in the wall and they are sweet and have been there for years. It’s really cheap and good—especially the pupusas, refried beans, plantains, and crema.

I love Pastores on Mission—the food there is special and the owner, Irma, is a graduate of La Cocina. The last time I was there, she was in the kitchen cooking everything to order—I haven’t been in forever though, so I’m not sure if it’s still the same. I remember the chilaquiles and the chicken enchiladas with tomatilla salsa fondly. To my knowledge, there’s no pop, just mom.

La Borinquena —family owned Mex-icatessen in Oakland on 7th Street. I go there for tortillas, tamales, and Mexican groceries. Family owned since 1944.“

DATE NIGHT

“Hibiscus: Great atmosphere. Comfortable but romantic. Hand-blown glass chandeliers. Order the spicy crab and grits or the fried chicken. Great cocktails.

Camino: Another restaurant that just feels really good, comfortable, and spacious. Love their brunch, especially the baked eggs, sausage and roasted duck fat potatoes, the crab prix fixe on Monday nights during Dungeness season can’t be beat. Their menu is small but everything on it is always perfect. It’s great for double dates because you can order almost everything on the menu and share. Also delicious cocktails!”

GUILTIEST PLEASURE

“Kozy Shack chocolate and tapioca puddings. Yep, even the staunchest advocate of home cooking buys store-bought pudding. Sometimes you just need pudding and you don’t want to make it. There’s no fake stuff in here and it doesn’t taste like chemicals so it passes muster with me.”

Hungry for more? Try Barrington’s recipes for grainy prepared mustard and a mustard-bourbon glazed pork roast. Find out what it’s like to D.I.Y., Vanessa Barrington style.

Vanessa Barrington’s Mustard and Bourbon–Glazed Pork Roast
Recipe credit: Vanessa Barrington, D.I.Y. Delicious, Chronicle Books, 2010

Here’s an uncomplicated, crowd-pleasing way to cook an inexpensive cut of meat. This recipe utilizes your Grainy Prepared Mustard and pairs well with a variety of different side dishes. It also yields versatile leftovers that you can use for Pulled Pork Canapés with Fig-Rosemary Jam in sandwiches, on pizza, or stuffed into Corn Tortillas with Simple Tomato Salsa or Avocado-Tomatillo Salsa.

Time Required: about 25 minutes active; 3 hours passive (excluding mustard preparation)
Yield: 6-8 Servings

One 4-pound boneless pork shoulder roast (ask your butcher to roll and tie it)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup bourbon
3 tablespoons any version Grainy Prepared Mustard (see recipe below)

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Season the roast all over with salt and pepper.

In a heavy, dry cast-iron skillet over medium-high to high heat, brown the roast all over. Start with the fat side down, and turn with tongs until the roast is a deep caramel brown all over, 10 to 15 minutes. The fat from the roast should render, providing plenty of oil to brown the roast. (If the roast is very lean and you feel you need oil, use a tablespoon or so of refined vegetable oil suitable for high-heat cooking.)

Remove the roast to a plate and let the pan cool slightly. Pour off the excess fat and wipe out any burned bits. While the pan cools, in a small bowl, whisk together the sugar, bourbon, and mustard.

Return the roast to the pan and pour half of the glaze over it, turning the roast to coat it completely and using your hands to distribute the glaze evenly. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and roast for 2 hours, turning and basting every half hour with the remaining glaze.

Remove the foil and increase the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Continue to roast uncovered, until the glaze reduces and the pork is glossy brown and thickly coated with glaze, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Let the roast rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

---

Vanessa Barrington’s Grainy Prepared Mustard
Recipe credit: Vanessa Barrington, D.I.Y. Delicious, Chronicle Books, 2010

Homemade mustard has so much more flavor than store-bought and has many uses in the kitchen. Whisk it with bourbon to make a glaze for pork or with maple syrup to caramelize root vegetables, stir it into vinaigrette, or simply spread it on sandwiches.

Mustard is simple to make, economical, and easy to vary to your taste. A word of warning: Your homemade mustard will always be quite a bit spicier than store-bought. You can control this somewhat by varying the ratio of brown to yellow seeds (brown are more pungent). You can also add sugar, honey, maple sugar, or other sweeteners to temper the spice. You won’t need to use much in a recipe or on a sandwich to get a big mustard flavor and the mustard will mellow with time in the refrigerator.

Time Required: about 10 minutes active; 24 hours passive
Yield: Makes 1 cup

3/4 cup liquid (mixture of vinegar and wine, beer, or some other alcohol; see Note)
1/2 cup mustard seeds (brown or yellow)
About 1 tablespoon finely chopped aromatics like onions, garlic, or shallots
About 1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs (optional)
About 1 tablespoon (sugar, honey, or maple syrup; optional)
Salt

Put the liquids, mustard seeds, aromatics, herbs, and sweeteners in a nonreactive (ceramic or pottery) bowl and soak overnight in the refrigerator.

In a blender or food processor, blend the mustard to the desired consistency. Depending on your equipment and inclination, this can take up to 5 minutes. Don’t expect your mustard to be as smooth as factory-made mustard. Add salt to taste as you blend. Transfer to jars and seal. Will keep, refrigerated, up to 3 months.

Note: If you don’t wish to use alcohol, replace the alcohol portion of the liquid with water. Mustards made solely with vinegar can be overwhelmingly vinegary.

Who guards the culinary heritage of a culture? Where does authenticity reside, and who decides what it is? Can traditional foods change with the times, and if they do, are they still traditional? Can handmade salami made from grass-fed beef still call up memories of Grandma's Saturday-morning scrambled eggs and salami? In this age of massive multinational conglomerates, does brand loyalty mean anything anymore?

What's better-- the Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray tonic in the bottle you remember Grandpa drinking, now with high-fructose corn syrup included, or homemade celery soda infused with real celery seed, with less sugar and no packaging? How much do we pay-- in food miles, in feedlots, in calories-- for nostalgia?

All these questions, and more, were in the air at the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay in early February, as an overflow crowd squeezed into the main auditorium for a panel discussion on "Referendum on The Deli Menu" (Can the Jewish Deli be sustainable?) sponsored by Saul's. Saul's, for those of you born without cravings for matzoh ball soup, is Berkeley's big, busy, much-loved Jewish deli. But ever since Karen Adelman and her husband Peter Levitt bought the deli in 1995, they've had what they call "a stealthy, secret mission" operating alongside their dedication to borscht and blintzes, corned beef and chicken in a pot. Their secret? A desire to pull the deli in line with contemporary attitudes about food and consumption, rather than letting it ossify like gefilte fish left too long in the fridge.

To this end, towering sandwiches were slimmed down, no longer stacked with jaw-defying stacks of meat. Meats became sustainably ranched, grass-fed when possible. Vegetables started to come from local farms. Corn-syruped drinks were out; housemade sodas were in. Most recently, salami was dropped from the menu; Hebrew National, the only widely available brand of all-beef salami, is now owned by giant Con Agra.

This being Berkeley, you'd think pasture-raised chicken soup would earn nothing but mazel tovs. But not everyone, it seemed, wanted consciousness-raising alongside their blintzes and brisket. There was pushback from some customers, and an overall question: How much could a deli change and still be a deli?

Hence the referendum, featuring Karen and Paul in conversation with Saul's regular and local superstar Michael Pollan; green-business maven Gil Friend, City Slickers Farms founder (and self-described "pastrami addict" Willow Rosenthal, the whole moderated by Evan Kleinman, host of KRCW's Good Food.

Having heard the phrase "2 Jews, 3 opinions" tossed around by my opinionated, argue-for-the-sake-of-it relatives all my life, I was ready for some Talmudic-level conflict, some heated words exchanged in the interest of radical change vs. How Bubbe Did It.

Alas, though, everyone on the panel agreed on nearly everything. Nostalgia is no excuse for a lack of conscience; if you care about eating locally, organically, sustainably and/or humanely at home, why should a Jewish deli give you a free pass to wallow in feedlot beef or syrupy soda?

Said Peter, "We started with not wanting to sell meat we wouldn't eat. We want to drag the deli out of the museum, let it breathe with the seasons for a change." Right now, his challenge is corned beef: the grass-fed beef from local Marin Sun Farms, delicious as it is, isn't holding up to the 2- to 3-week brining process. It's been coming out dry and crumbly, probably due to being more muscled and less fatty that typical feedlot beef.

And then there's the menu problem: Saul's, like most delis, has a huge menu. There's the everyday menu, an equally long, but more international, seasonally-inspired specials menu, and then the "secret" menu of the more hard-core, Old World items--flanken, kishkes, things made with schmaltz and braised in gravy. Peter would like to see the menu shortened and made more manageable (and cost-effective); if that means no cold beet borscht in winter, so be it.

Says Karen, "I think we should be leading, not just reacting. We're hungry for meaning and community, along with comfort food. We need to connect with our future as well as our past. I promise, no one will leave hungry!"

Of course, even in Berkeley, there's room to toe more than one party line. If this were New York City, or Los Angeles, where deli culture, while battered, is still alive, one deli's decision to nix the salami would hardly generate SRO crowds at the 92nd St Y. But delis are few in the Bay Area, and so Saul's clientele takes any changes personally . But if there are Hebrew National fans and lox diehards out there, they're keeping quiet; the crowd claps and nods along with just about everything Pollan, Rosenthal, and Friend present, even recoiling a little in genteel horror at brightly colored slides of jaw-defying pastrami sandwiches teetering higher than Lady Gaga's heels. Those massive sandwiches, long the symbol of post-war abundance, a meaty slap in the face to immigrant privation, are no longer sustainable; as Peter points out, there's no way to provide that much meat, particularly if it's good, humanely raised meat, at a price regular customers can bear. "Those huge sandwiches are killing the deli. You can't make money selling 12 oz of meat for $10 or $15. At a steakhouse, you'd pay $30 or $40 for that much meat, and you'd buy a bottle of wine." Instead, Karen and Peter want to offer their customers alternatives that taste good, with a little patient explanation to help it along. Already, the menu emphasizes smoked trout (farmed) over overfished salmon, and more and more Mediterranean inspired salads and vegetable dishes to go along with the potato pancakes and cheesecake.

Pollan, for one, sees the democratization of the food movement as a very good thing. "Getting sustainable food into delis, taquerias, cheaper places, that's great because it makes it more accessible to everyone." Agrees Friend, "We vote with our dollars every day."

If the deli is our secular synagogue, as Pollan muses, clearly this one is reform, maybe even reconstructionist. So fizz up an egg cream or raise a glass of borscht, and toast the new deli.

VIDEO CLIP OF EVENT:

Photos provided by Saul's

Related Posts:
Saul's got SOLE: The Jewish deli in Berkeley evolves
by Marc R. aka Mental Masala at The Ethicurean

Referendum on the Deli Menu at Saul's Restaurant and Delicatessen: What is Tradition?
by Vanessa Barrington at Civil Eats

If you're reading David Sax's recent book, Save the Deli, or follow his blog or moan, as many do, about the general state of the Jewish delicatessen, then you know that it's a pivotal time in this most hallowed bastion of comfort food.

For years, locavores and vegetarians, calorie-counting suburbanites and couscous-loving Sephardim and even heeb-hopping hipsters have been bringing their own favorite dishes to the Jewish table. You might not know this upon stepping into a deli, where piles of salty, fatty meat and schmaltz in the chopped liver and never-ending free pickles every day of the year define good eating. It's supposed to be a carefree zone where all the generations and sects can enjoy some chicken soup in relative peace.

Leave it to Karen Adelman and Peter Levitt in Berkeley to begin shaking up this world a bit. As the owners and hands-on managers of Saul's, these two widely read, passionately opinionated individuals are working hard to keep Jewish delis vibrant, relevant and delicious far into the 21st century. From adding Mediterranean mezzes to offering locally grown, locally made pickles, they're crafting a new sensibility for an old institution.

A multicultural, sustainable deli might seem like a quixotic pursuit, as many would argue that we should leave well enough alone. Any real and authentic Jewish deli doesn't need to concern itself with all this modern fancifying. But if you're a deli owner and you see your customers coming into your dining room less and less often -– how many pastrami sandwiches does one person eat these days? -- you realize that things need to change to keep going.

Of course, ideals do have a way of bumping up against reality. Let's take the last thing on the menu, that list of drinks at the end of the page. Such a minor thing, no?

Well, as it turns out, simple it most definitely is not.

For diners, drinks are usually just an afterthought. For green-minded business owners, though, the environmental costs of transporting flavored water, the impact of corn syrup and artificial sweeteners in our communities, and the waste of thousands upon thousands of empty cans and glass cannot be ignored. If you're somewhat concerned, you might just put out a recycling bin and offer a few cents off on coffee poured into insulated mugs. If you're a little more committed, you might try sourcing local sodas.

But if you're Karen and Peter, you have a much, much longer road to travel. You begin by studying the history of sodas and the science of bubbles. Along the way, you learn about the monopolistic technologies of multinational food corporations. You connect the dots between individual soda jerks, creative spirit and community values. You daydream down a short detour, one that takes you past designs for a working seltzer tap at each and every booth. You decide to compromise, backtracking to install a central seltzer dispenser. You call up a beer tap specialist to design a brand-new beverage system for you. You track down stronger fittings that can hold up to the pressure of C02. You convince colleagues that going back in time 60 years to revive obsolete tastes and technology will be a good thing for the business. You train special "seltzer baristas" to use the finicky machine with its nonstandard formulations. You develop recipe after recipe from scratch. (Cream Soda #8, you think, seems especially promising.) Then, years later, you launch your own house-made seltzers and, in a moment of unrestrained ambition, you decide to stop selling bottled, commercial sodas entirely. Even Dr. Brown's. Yes, even the Black Cherry and Cel-Ray.

And it's still not done. Now, you smile politely at your customers' dismay when they can no longer grab a can of soda with their take-out lunch and nod synpathetically at those most earnest of drinkers, the Diet Coke loyalists. You accept losing thousands of dollars in beverage sales. At the same time, you account for higher food costs because your drink bases, made from real fruit, are good for only four hours. You create and hope that your customers will enjoy the special syrups that taste slightly different day to day in flavors that come and go with the seasons.

You stand back and imagine a dining room full of people sipping sodas made by friends and neighbors from fresh fruit and whole spices.

You win some -- these sodas are phenomenal and you're proud and ecstatic, if a bit exhausted. They more than make up for past battles lost. There's still that ongoing campaign to source enough briskets from grass-fed cattle to feed your hungry customers. And let's not forget the recent Pickle Squirmish, when you tried charging for kosher dills -- in a deli! -- and took a fatal stab at explaining the seasonality of cucumbers.

Yes, one step at a time, one step at a time.

For now, you're happy to offer a taste of history: the sweet satisfaction and elusive effervescence of real seltzer flavored with homemade syrups.

Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye and the Heart of the Jewish Delicatessen
By David Sax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009)
Sax's campaign to save the deli, as one mom-and-pop sandwich shop after another closes, brings him to the Bay Area this week. Stop by and meet him at Saul's this Saturday afternoon or at Book Passage on Monday at the Ferry Building. Listen to him read from his new book and then ask him for yourself: which city makes the best pastrami and why do we have to drink egg creams so fast and, yes, that most important question, what is the future of the Jewish delicatessen?

Saturday, October 24, 2009
4:00 pm
Saul's Restaurant and Deli
1475 Shattuck Ave Berkeley, CA 94709
(510) 848-3354
Map

Monday, October 26, 2009
6:00 pm
Book Passage
1 Ferry Building, #42
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 835-1020
Map

The documentary film, Chez Schwartz, enjoyed a quiet if savory U.S. premier at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center earlier this week. It has yet to be picked up for wider distribution, but keep an eye out for it. Or, if you can't wait, order a DVD and see for yourself why this little "Charcuterie Hebraique" is the place to eat in Montréal.

Garry Beitel, a Montréal-based documentary filmmaker, recorded the day-to-day rhythms of Schwartz's Deli over the course of an entire year. He managed to whittle his footage down to a poetic study of its workers. As one season melts into another, Beitel teases out the stories of the diverse men — from the dishwasher in the back of the house to the waiters in the front, from the general manager down to the gentlemanly panhandlers. They each describe their unique role in the extended family anchored by this tiny, 75-year-old restaurant. Through their stories, we see how years slip into decades and how one long-lived business adapts to a changing world.

Unusual in a film about ethnic food, there's an "overcast" feel throughout the documentary. In the end we wonder what happens to individuals such as newly promoted Alex or sweet, ailing Ryan. (Anyone interested in degrees of separation and ground-breaking animation should watch this award-winning short about Ryan.) The power of Chez Schwartz lies in Beitel's understated directing, Marc Gadoury's intimate camera, André Boisvert's amazingly natural sound, Robert Marcel Lepage's music and — ultimately — the simple, direct oral history of the workers themselves.

At the head of the line, hungry pilgrims can catch glimpses of smoked meat, freshly sliced by hand and ready to go at the sandwich counter. Joao (Johnny) Gonçalves, meat cutter, prepares some without the usual bright yellow mustard.

I remember the first time I bit into smoked meat at Schwartz's. Everyone does. In the film, two women gasp in rapture while sharing their first sandwich right there at the counter, and another diner is struck speechless while remembering his own first taste as a teenager. It may seem strange, perhaps even laughable to the uninitiated. But like any religion, only the converted truly understand.

During my year of exile in Vermont, I drove across the border every month to eat in Montréal. While dinner restaurants varied — rilettes at l'Express with my own jar of cornichons or maybe noodles in Chinatown — I always started with an early lunch at Schwartz's.

The neighborhood surrounding the deli draws immigrants from around the world. Historically the heart of Montréal's Jewish community, the road on which the deli sits has also been the symbolic division between the city's east and west streets, its French and English languages.

After five years as the busboy, Alexandre "007" Lebel gets promoted to waiter. To help with the stress of a fast-paced deli, he composes poems on clean paper place mats during precious down time.

If you arrive at 3895 Boulevard St. Laurent anywhere near the middle of the day, you'll stand in line on the sidewalk with a couple of dozen other meat lovers, separated by mere glass from stacks and stacks of brisket still warm from the massive steamer. You'll be able to smell the smoky, salt-tinged meat and listen to the same order over and over again in two different languages: a "medium" with fries, cole slaw, fresh pickle and black cherry soda. Around 400 to 500 other diners a day will order a steak from Peter at the grill; it arrives accompanied by a slice of calf liver and two diminutive sausages. The grill is a relic of the past: open flame right in the dining room, arm's length from innocent diners.

Grill man Peter Christianis (left) has been searing steaks and calf livers at the same station for 40 years, while waiter Mike Nelli has been a member of the Chez Schwartz family going on 7 years now.

Upstairs in the marinating bins and inside the smoker in the back are where the magic happens. The very secret recipe results in über-meat that's juicy and tender, savory and smoky, fatty and flavorful. It's not quite pastrami (there's a dry rather than wet cure) and it's way beyond corned beef (behold that spice-flocked, smoke-lacquered exterior). So everyone just calls it for what it is: smoked meat.

Frank Silva, general manager, knows the business inside and out. He's hefted and sliced so many briskets during his twenty years at the deli that his arm is starting to give out.

Schwartz's sandwiches have no need to rise to Carnegie heights nor does the owner, Hy Diamond, feel pressure to expand the menu beyond one type of meat sandwich, a steak and a few sides. As Peter Levitt and Karen Adelman, co-owners of Saul's Deli in Berkeley know well, this is a rare and precious thing.

After the film's screening on Thursday night, the two moderated an enlightening discussion about the future of Jewish delicatessens in the U.S. How does a meat-centered restaurant survive in a health-conscious, politically aware, option-filled world? How does Saul's modest amount of Niman Ranch beef compete with super-stacked, industrially raised pastrami from tourist-driven, New York delis? And how does a younger generation begin transforming a cuisine frozen in time into a meaningful, relevant, profitable business?

It's not about the size: Saul's uses "clean meat" from Niman Ranch in its pastrami sandwiches.

Anyone who hangs around chefs knows that, generally, they survive on the razor's edge of profit margins and see the cloud behind every silver lining. Peter and Karen were refreshingly honest about the challenges of running the deli, from the need to cater to the economics of not smoking your own meat to the impossibility of guaranteeing a kosher establishment. (People want milk with their coffee, after all, and don't even think about getting rid of the Reuben!)

They named their own favorite delis: Langer's in LA, Katz's in NYC, and Manny's in Chicago all made the short list. Most intriguing, though, were hints of a possible "Jewish bistro" in their future. The two hope to reinterpret and reinvent the vernacular of Jewish food with dishes from around the world using local, seasonal, organic ingredients.

For the time being, I'll continue enjoying my favorites at Saul's. From personal experience, I can vouch for the chopped liver (on both rye and matzo with plenty of mustard), the chicken soup and the pastrami sandwich. I also enjoyed more than my fair share of half-sour pickles and, of course, a bottle of Cel-Ray to wash everything down.

SAUL'S RESTAURANT & DELICATESSEN
1475 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94709
(510) 848-3354

If you love produce as much as I do you know that living in the East Bay is better than living in San Francisco. I realize I could start a riot here, but I've lived in 3 out of four directions of the peninsula, in various neighborhoods and cities, and no matter where I was, no matter if I was in possession of a drivers license or not, I made it to Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market, and/ or the Berkeley Farmers' Markets, because there was more to see, smell, taste, touch and procure in these markets.

And until I moved to North Berkeley myself, I was a tried and true Berkeley Bowl Trooper, from the old school-- back when it started in the old bowling alley. I still love to get there when I have my list in Excel spreadsheet form and the time is early enough before rush hour clogs the insane parking lot and creates lines worse than LA traffic.

But now I have been seduced by Monterey Market. I used to laugh at its size, comparable to Rainbow Grocery but tiny compared to Berkeley Bowl. But then. But then I found its buried treasure. One day two summers ago I stopped by for a few things and bought an entire flat of the best boysenberries I have ever seen, smelled or tasted! I went home and ate about four baskets, made pie with a few more and froze the rest. Returning just a day or two later I found that I had bought something which would not be back again until the following year... Sad...but also something to look forward to.

You can go to the same place day after day, year after year, and find everything ok, get what you need for the price you like and shrug shoulders at the prospect of change.

Until. Until one day you pick the best looking toad you can find for toad soup and when you get through checkout you realize your bag is exploding with a Prince and your car has been moved closer to the horizon, where a pretty sunset awaits you.

A few days ago is a perfect example. I needed some citrus and butter and cranberries. I like to stock up on cranberries before they disappear so I can whip up a batch of my favorite walnut-cranberry-orange bread, which I love to toast and smother with butter. (It really can be whipped up-- it's a one bowl and wooden spoon recipe!)

I'm in love with citrus and I always look at what's going on. Scratch and sniff is the best way to learn about new citrus. Both blossom and skin will tell you what unique flavor and perfume are awaiting you. While scanning high bins of yellow and green and orange globes my eyes did a double-take on a gnarly looking fruit.

YUZU! Fresh, California grown Yuzu were staring at me. Like a collector at a yard sale discovering a priceless chair, I monitored my breathing and tried not to look around frantically. I bit my tongue when I wanted to jump up and down and yell, "Hey?! Do you see what I see?! Look! It's fresh Yuzu, here, in Berkeley, California, yours for the having!! Can you believe such a thing? It's so wonderful!!!!!"

But instead I kept walking and went back nonchalantly, looking puzzled on the outside and then hunkered in and bought at least 5 pounds.

Yuzu is a fruit I only saw one of once, while living in Napa. A famous chef I knew had smuggled one in from a recent trip to Japan. Like Bergamot, it's an ugly mottled fruit, but it's exquisite perfume and flavor lives in every molecule of its being.

Monterey Market is a cold market, mostly outside and seemingly unkempt. But it's a facade, truly, because you never know what you will find there. Bill Fujimoto buys small and large shipments directly from farmers single and corporate. The back room, unseen by the average consumer, is a carefully organized chaos of fruit and vegetable back-stock/ cases, available to restaurants, chefs and caterers who want to buy direct and avoid (or amend as the case may be) produce companies or farmers' markets.

And if I haven't sold you yet, I beg of you to rent or buy Eat At Bill's, a lovingly made documentary about Monterey Market and its beloved workers. Watch it just to see the massive pumpkins, which get brought in on elephant transport trucks and the joy so many people share about cherry season, and one particular cherry in particular.

When we talk about shopping and eating local we often overlook our markets with rooftops. But Monterey Market, Berkeley Bowl, The Food Mill, Rainbow Grocery, Bi Rite market, Farmer Joe's and so many more in the Bay Area are all about shopping locally. These businesses are still independent, many of them family and/or co-operatively owned. If you can't get to the farmers' market, find your CSA box lacking this week or next month, or just want to see that there are a dozen kinds of sweet potatoes, countless citrus varietals, far out and funky shaped mushrooms, head over to a new market for countless fruit and veggie adventures. They await you in one corner of the bay or the other...