When the mission of a restaurant is to feed and nourish, starting with the staff just makes good sense. In The Family Meal, author and El Bulli chef Ferran Adrià describes how they actually call their staff meal “family meal: “we believe that if we eat well, we cook well,” he said. And as simple as that may sound, it’s really at the heart of it all.

It could look something like this: proper wine glasses, real silverware and white napkins. But it could also look like sandwiches and skillet cake. Staff meals, a common ritual and routine at restaurants around the country, vary dramatically. Not all small businesses can afford to serve their staff the same food that diners eat that evening, and yet, they want to feed them well. In this time of giving, how do small food businesses create meaning in an affordable shared meal that’s often prepared in the midst of kitchen chaos?

On one end of the spectrum are staff meals at Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse. Things are different here. Holly Peterson, a café cook at the restaurant, says it didn’t take long for her to figure that out. She’s been at the restaurant for a little over two years, much of which was spent at the garde manger station where she planned, cooked, and enjoyed hundreds of staff meals. At 8 p.m., the cooks from the downstairs restaurant all sit down together and taste each other’s food with a glass of wine that compliments the meal.

Down the road a bit in West Berkeley sits Dafna Kory’s bustling INNA Jam kitchen. Like many small business owners in the beginning, Kory began working solo in the kitchen. There were busy days filled with long hours. But when she started hiring, Kory no longer felt right about subsiding solely on energy bars. “Having real meals didn’t start until I had real people working for me,” she said. “There’s a paradox that I don’t accept of being hungry and working in a kitchen. I wasn’t going to see that happen.” INNA Jam is different in that they make a condiment, so there isn’t extra produce or leftover meats, fish, or pasta in the walk-in. In this way, Kory has to actively plan for each meal. This planning has taken on many iterations in the last year, and it’s constantly evolving based on the seasons, the production schedule, and the extent to which she can find family and loved ones to contribute.

Across the bridge in San Francisco, Anna Derivi-Castellanos of Three Babes Bakeshop can relate to this kind of planning. They too are unique in that they’re producing a single product: pie. And they work long night shifts, so it’s important to have some savory options in the kitchen to keep everyone’s energy and blood sugar up. Derivi-Castellanos laments, “I wish that I had more time to plan our staff meal, but usually I try to keep it simple, and loop it in with part of our production. If we're making something that day that could be considered dinner, (a savory or pot pie, for example) then I'll make more of it.”

But it doesn’t always work out seamlessly. Derivi-Castellanos will often find herself making a special trip to her local co-op to pick up ingredients for the nightly meal. She’ll often end up grabbing some pre-made salads and raw ingredients—making a concerted effort to keep the meal simple but interesting. And affordable. Most of all, “it's important to me to cater to who's on our staff that evening," she says.

The key is really to find “a balance between the time you have and the quality of food that’s important to you and the variation you’re going to need," Kory says. When boyfriend Jesse Clark—who often prepares the meals—needs to focus more on his work, a member of the INNA kitchen will step up to maintain the sandwich station they’ve been doing or chip in with other seasonal ideas. The ultimate goal: “standard home-cooked high quality square meals.”

“Staff meals have taught me how eating well during the work day really makes a huge difference -- for our energy, moral, and good mood all around. Also, feeding the staff is a chance for me to show my respect and appreciation for all their hard work and dedication," Kory says. So while Chez Panisse, Three Babes Bakeshop and INNA Jam all approach their meals differently, they’re all making a conscious important decision. They’re making a statement about the kind of business they want to run and the small things they can do throughout the day not just to feed their staff, but also to nourish. Gracefully.

Inna Jam Skillet Cake. Photo: Dafna Kory

Jesse's INNA Jam Kitchen Skillet Cake
This skillet cake is made year-round in the INNA kitchen, rotating whatever fruit is in season at the time, from stone fruit to figs to plums to apples to berries. Buttermilk isn’t often on hand in the kitchen and yogurt works just as well—use whatever you have. The cake is simple to put together and showcases the best of the harvest. And, it’s nice to snack on throughout the day, too. Not just during staff meal.

Adapted from: Epicurious.com

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour

Serves: 8

Ingredients:
For topping
1/2 stick butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 pound or so of fresh, seasonal fruit- enough to cover the pan.
(Apricots, plums, figs are halved, apples are sliced, berries used whole)
Raw sliced almonds, optional

For cake
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk or yogurt

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Arrange the racks so that one is in the middle of the oven (for the cake) and another rack is below it. On the lower rack place a baking sheet to catch any drips from the cake.

2. Melt the butter in 10-inch cast iron skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over the butter, then turn off the heat (you don't want all your sugar to be melted). Arrange as much fruit as you can fit, cut sides down, close together on top of the brown sugar. Sprinkle sliced almonds, if using.

3. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl (if you're a sifter, you can sift this. Using a fork works just fine).

4. Beat together the butter, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Beat in the eggs until mixture is creamy and doubled in volume, 2-3 more minutes. Reduce speed to low and add the flour mixture in 3 batches alternately with the yogurt, beginning and ending with flour mixture, and beat just until combined.

5. Pour the batter over the fruit and spread as evenly as you can. It might not look perfectly distributed right away, but don't worry -- it'll sort itself out in the oven. In any case, it's going to be the bottom of the cake. Bake the cake in the middle of oven until it's top is dark golden brown and a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. It's hard to overcook this cake because of all the fruit juice that will bubble up- it's really the golden color on top that will help you judge when it's ready.

6. Let the cake cool in the pan for a bit to reduce the chance of molten juice/sugar running down the pan when you flip it. Place a large plate if you have one (I use a cutting board) over the skillet, using oven mitts firmly pressed the plate and skillet together, and flip the cake onto plate. Lift the skillet off the cake (knocking on it with a wooden spoon helps to release it). If any fruit stuck to bottom of the skillet just scrape it off and place it back on the cake. Cool to warm or room temperature. It's good right away, but even better the next day.

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

All photos: Wendy Goodfriend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nikki Henderson. Photo: People's Grocery

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

Michael Pollan. Photo: Alia Malley

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

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

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

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

Bay Area Bites will provide coverage of the course.

Related Articles:
Nikki Henderson: On the frontlines of edible education by Sarah Henry (Berkeleyside)

Alice Waters at KQED with her new book 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

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

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

Host: Scott Shafer

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

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

Collage by Wendy Goodfriend

Do you remember your mother's favorite cookbook? My own mother, raised in the 1950s, married with children in the 1960s and 1970s, a working mom with a vegetarian husband and teenagers in the 1980s, had dozens of cookbooks on her kitchen shelves, each a talisman of a particular moment. To me, each of them is as much a part of her as her scarves and shoes, her Estee Lauder perfumes, the coral lipsticks and gold foil of half-unrolled tubes of Certs always in her pocketbook.

Now, I imagine, there are moms who love their books from Rachael Ray and Paula Deen, who gravy-stain their Emerils and their Inas. But I made my very first cookies "all by myself" from a recipe in the Joy of Cooking, the late-50s version that still had hand-drawn illustrations explaining how to skin a squirrel and decorate an Easter bunny cake. The recipe? Rolled Caramel Cookies, fussy, waferlike things that had to be swiftly removed from the baking sheet and wrapped into a curl around the handle of a wooden spoon while still warm. Even then, I wasn't happy in the kitchen unless I was trying out something just a little beyond me.

I watched, then helped, my mother make the perfect Banana Tea Bread from Craig Claibourne's New York Times Cookbook, whose austere layout was complemented by black-and-white photographs of an equally severe hauteur, presenting every veal roast like an affair of state, complete with bone-china consomme cups and silver candelabra. For dinner parties, we tried out the poached, stuffed sole with tricky beurre blanc from Mastering the Art of French Cooking and the chocolate mousse from The French Chef Cookbook.

Pretty soon, though, Mom loosened up, making homemade granola, whipping up Tiger's Milk shakes, and growing her own basil and tomatoes in the backyard. Now into the kitchen came The Seasonal Kitchen by Perla Meyers, circa 1973, which I loved for its earthy, oily-garlicky insistence on cooking what was fresh from the garden, and for its chunky, resolutely modern sans-serif typeface and brown-paper pages the color of a Bloomingdale's shopping bag. But I especially loved the photo of Meyers on the cover. The photographer had snapped her striding along, a confident brunette in orange turtleneck and black trousers, looking like Mary Tyler Moore if Mary had clutched a shopping bag bursting with organic vegetables instead of a plaid tam o'shanter.

It followed the New York Times' Natural Foods Cookbook (1971), in which the paper of record tried to get down with what those crazy kids were doing, with their whole wheat breads and their bean sprouts and their blackstrap molasses. Mom made her own mayonnaise, went to the vitamin-smelling health food store for cartons of brewer's yeast and wheat germ. She still keeps a plastic bag of soy flour in the fridge, the essential ingredient for the excellent Soya Coffeecake. And I still remember, vividly, the terrifying ("3 fruit bats, well washed but neither skinned nor eviscerated") yet fascinating recipe for Fruit Bat Soup, not to mention the groovy, Rousseau-inspired dust jacket.

Given that my parents were a lot more interested in health food than most of our suburban neighbors at the time, these books were shortly followed by Mollie Katzen's whimsically hand-written, cheese-heavy Moosewood Cookbook, then the equally whimsical Vegetarian Epicure (1972) by Anna Thomas, and Katzen's follow-up, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

Julia gathered dust while these went into heavy rotation when first my sisters, then myself, then my father all became vegetarians. Easy broiled lamb chops and chicken breasts were replaced by tofu nut balls and endless veggie chopping, much to my now-working mother's irritation. Having since tackled the multi-part, multi-page recipes in the The Greens Cookbook to impress my still-vegetarian sisters, I can understand her frustration.

Thank god, then, for quiche, salvation of the 1980s busy mother. Already a dab hand at piecrust, she could whip up a quiche à la anything the night before, pop it into the fridge, and instruct my dad to put in the oven an hour before dinnertime, which he could just about manage, having learned from the infamous Roast Chicken Incident that our oven only worked when both knobs were turned on, one for temperature and the other for settings like bake and broil.

The Silver Palate's luscious chocolate fudge sauce was a much-loved indulgence in our house (over Haagen-Dazs vanilla Swiss almond ice cream, of course) and so the fabulous Silver Palate Cookbook (1982) quickly earned a place on the shelf. I pored over it, imagining a glamorous life of high-style dinner parties punctuated with goat-cheese phyllo triangles and seafood lasagna. As Paul Prudhomme became a celebrity chef on the strength of his blackened redfish and shrimp remoulade, my parents took jaunts to New Orleans, coming back with spiral-bound cookbooks full of recipes for gooey bananas Foster and gloriously messy barbecued shrimp, served swimming in bowls of tinglingly spicy sauce with yards of crisp-crusted French bread.

Although my father hadn't been to the Bay Area since shipping out for the Pacific during WWII, he nonetheless bought my mom a copy of the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, written by Alice Waters with then-chef Paul Bertolli. My mother never cooked from it (too much grilled squab and nasturtium-flower salads to make it useful for suburban New Jersey, circa 1982) but I read and re-read it endlessly. Alice Waters had escaped the suburbs of New Jersey to eat deliciously in France and re-invent herself in California; how I longed to do that, too!

Stir-frying, fueled by the wok craze and our own forays into the newly popular Hunan and Szechuan restaurants in New York City, came into my mother's kitchen through The Thousand-Recipe Chinese Cookbook by Gloria Bley Miller (1984). Tucked inside the front cover was a soy sauce-spattered sheaf of printed recipes from Uncle Tai's, my parents' favorite Hunan restaurant, a fancy place in midtown with ice-blue wallpaper, tuxedo'd captains, and fantastic hacked chicken, sesame noodles, and lamb with scallions, worlds away from the greasy fried noodles dunked in sticky duck sauce at our local strip-mall Cantonese joints.

I still find the sight of any of these books--on the shelf of a used bookstore, or in the welcoming, pleasantly decorated kitchens of ladies in their 50s and 60s--incredibly comforting. A glimpse of the Silver Palate Cookbook or Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen (1984), buttressed by the twin volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking,and I feel like I've come home.

My mother watches Ina Garten's cooking shows now, and collects her bright, enticingly easy Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. I tuck jars of homemade jam into my suitcase when I go to visit her in New York; she stocks up on goat cheese, bagels, salmon, and lamb chops. She's discovered panko crumbs and Prosecco, rainbow chard and pomegranate juice. I sneak downstairs in the morning, to get the coffee going before she gets up. We cook together, and she reminds me again of how, at 15, I threw her out of the kitchen so I could finish whatever I was making my own way. We laugh about this, and she points out my own three cookbooks, now on display in the wicker kitchen bookshelf. I tell her I learned everything from her.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

Alice Waters photo by David Liittschwager

Alice Waters caught up with Bay Area Bites on the last stop of her In the Green Kitchen book tour recently. She greeted and hugged most of the guests at the designer (chi-chi) Carrots Boutique, where four hundred dollars buys a smashing chapeau. Cocktails were made up by handsome male barkeeps from the neighboring Bix Restaurant, and owner Doug Biederbeck seemed obsessed with the event flow--he was mulling over when and whether Waters would speak and wanted to be sure folks knew they had to pay for Waters' latest cookbook. Eats were radishes and fava bean crostinis.

Daniel Lurie was one of the hosts of the Carrots event, and said that "everyone loves Alice… clearly," as he watched her surrounded by loyalists. Lurie told BAB that he showed Ms. Waters how to ride the subway in New York City over a decade ago, when he was living there. No surprise that Waters demurred on answering SFist Editor Brock Keeling’s query, “What is your favorite junk food?” However she did eventually agree to share her favorite Bay Area food-related faves with BAB. Waters has lived in North Berkeley, "a short walk away from Chez Panisse, for over 40 years."

Boulette's Larder
1 Ferry Building #48 Map
(415) 399-1155
Hours: No table service on Saturday
Breakfast Monday-Friday 8AM to 10:30AM
Lunch Monday-Friday 11:30AM to 2:30PM
Brunch Sunday 10AM to 2:30PM

Waters: My Saturday morning trip to the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market is one of my most beloved rituals--I stop by Boulette's to get my English muffins and eggs for breakfast. For a weekday lunch I order a simple, perfect salad or pulled pork sandwich.

Primavera at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market
1 Ferry Plaza Map
NO PHONE
Hours: Saturday 8AM to 2PM

Waters: I love their authentic, organic handmade tortillas--they also have incredible special dishes from all the regions of Mexico.

Flatland Flower Farm at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market
1 Ferry Plaza Map
NO PHONE
Hours: Saturday, starting at 8AM

Waters: I buy wonderful plants here for my garden--vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers--as well as deliciously crisp, dry-farmed apples in season.

Swan Oyster Depot

1517 Polk Street (between California Street and Sacramento Street) Map

(415) 673-1101

Hours: Monday-Saturday 8AM to 5:30PM

Waters: I come here when I’m craving freshly caught crab or oysters on the half shell--the place is small, but grab a spot at the cool marble countertop bar if you can.

Sebo
517 Hayes Street at Octavia Street Map
(415) 864-2181 –-no reservations taken
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 6PM to 10PM
Sunday 6PM to 11PM

Waters: This Japanese restaurant is incredibly tiny--and so, so good! It serves the best sushi I’ve tasted in San Francisco.

Zuni Café
1658 Market Street (between Franklin and Gough)
 Map
(415) 553-2522

Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 11:30AM to 11PM
Friday-Saturday 11:30AM to midnight

Sunday 11:00AM to 11:00PM
Closed Monday


Waters: My home away from home for 25 years. The roasted chicken with bread salad is one of the truly great dishes of the Bay Area.

Blue Bottle Café
66 Mint Street (between Jessie Street and Mission Street) Map
(415) 493-3394

Hours: Monday-Friday 7AM to 7PM
Saturday 8AM to 6PM
Sunday 8AM to 4PM

Waters: This is the coffee we serve at Chez Panisse--it’s organic, and has incredible flavor. Their café on Mint Plaza has several unique ways of brewing your coffee--all of them delicious.

Omnivore Books
Omnivore Books Map
3885 Cesar Chavez Street (at Church Street) Map
(415) 282-4712

Hours: Monday-Saturday 11AM to 6PM
Sunday 12PM to 5PM

Waters: A tiny store that sells new cookbooks and vintage, hard-to-find editions. It also hosts special tasting events and book signings.

Acme Bread
1601 San Pablo Avenue (at Cedar Street) Map
Berkeley CA 94702-1317
(510) 524-1327

Hours: Monday-Saturday 8AM to 6PM
Sunday 8:30AM to 3PM

Waters: This is the finest bread in the Bay Area, period. And it’s all made with organic flour and using only solar energy!

Pizzaiolo
5008 Telegraph Avenue (at 50th Street) Map
Oakland CA 94609
(510) 652-4888

Hours: Monday-Thursday 5:30PM to 10PM
Friday-Saturday 5PM to 10:30PM
Closed Sunday

Waters: Wood-fired pizzas, a superb bar, and a great big patio out back.

Ajanta Restaurant
1888 Solano Avenue (at The Alameda) Map
Berkeley CA 94707
(510) 526-4374
Hours: Monday-Sunday 11:30AM to 2:30PM, 5:30PM to 9:30PM

Waters: This lovely neighborhood Indian restaurant uses organic produce and has an ever-changing, seasonal menu.

The Cheese Board
1504 Shattuck Avenue (at Vine Street) Map
Berkeley CA 94707
(510) 549-3183
Hours: Monday 7AM to 1PM
Tuesday-Friday 7AM to 6PM
Saturday 8:30AM to 5PM
Closed Sunday

Waters: For over four decades, this workers’ collective across the street from our restaurant has been serving seasonal pizzas, fresh sourdough baguettes, and divine cheeses to all of Berkeley.

When I think of general stores, I imagine rough-hewn outposts in dusty mining towns swirling out of sepia-hued cowboy flicks -- places where grumbling codgers hawk dry goods, tools, soap, guns, and clothes to a small population of frontier folk. I'm a scholar of spaghetti (and spaghetti westerns), not by any stretch an expert on expressions of culture and community in isolated towns on the American Western front during the latter portion of the 19th century. Still, I imagine that those stores were places where people went to get the things they could not grow, raise, or make for themselves. And they were dependent on them, not just because they ferried along much-needed goods from faraway places, but because they acted as centers of community activity. Residents of a small town might go to the general store to buy flour and end up seeing each other, sharing stories, and bonding. By my amateurish reckoning, it's a pretty good example of community coming together naturally, face-to-face, materializing in a place where needs are met, back when needs couldn't be met anonymously via online shopping or a trip to a big-box retailer.

This is what I was thinking when, last Thursday, I read a San Francisco Chronicle food section story about a "general store" popping up, not in some grim mud-slicked alley of Deadwood, but in Oakland, California -- urban epicenter for community-conscious adventures in sustainable food and agriculture. Every few weeks, a revolving cast of Chez Panisse and Eccolo vets set up shop and sell sausages, heat-and-serve entrees, fresh pastas, frozen pizza dough, jams, breads, and ice creams -- high-end convenience foods to stock fridges and freezers for quick dinners and easy lunches. In the piece, Chronicle writer Carol Ness draws parallels between this pop-up and the larger trend of which it is emblematic:

"The store is part of the new phenomenon of temporary eateries, farm stands and even one "underground market" that spring up here and there around the Bay Area, sometimes regularly in the same location, sometimes not."

Simultaneously, however, Ness makes an effort to set this new enterprise apart:

". . .[S]o far the Pop-Up General Store is one of a kind because its wares carry an exceptional pedigree: They're made with pristine ingredients -- Becker Lane pork, Soul Food Farm eggs, Riverdog produce -- by a dozen or so Bay Area chefs, almost all of whom cook or have cooked at Chez Panisse."

That pedigree, of course, comes at a price the average Oakland resident can't pay. As portrayed, the general store suggests a movable mini-Ferry Building, a stroller-clogged social scene for self-described "foodies" swooning over chicken confit and bags of freezer-ready heritage pork gyoza, not a place to do serious shopping. That doesn't necessarily bother me. Elite eating (and shopping) is an articulation of values. I rarely buy shoes, and cheerfully wear the few I own until they fall apart and literally flap off my feet -- all because I'm cheap and don't see the point in having more than a few pairs at a time. I won't, however, buy steaks at Foods Co. By calling their enterprise a "general store" though, founders Christopher Lee and Samin Nosrit (well-known East Bay chefs I first encountered reading through Novella Carpenter's Farm City) are actively trying to evoke the sort of life-sustaining community-generating apparatus that came to my mind the moment I saw Ness's headline -- all while selling boudin blanc for $14 a pound. While such a project might draw attention to certain sections of the community -- producers, chefs, growers -- and bring together others -- hungry food writers, people with money -- the vibe -- however delicious -- doesn't quite jive with the handle.

When I traveled to Europe for the first time at age thirteen, I remembered what my French teacher had told me about shopping in Europe. The way she described it, there was a little store for everything you wanted. You went to a butcher for meat, a cheese shop for cheese, and a bakery for bread. Vegetables came from a produce store, wine from a wine shop. When my family cooked meals in the small Paris apartment we were renting for our week-long stay, we shopped in this manner, and while getting groceries took longer, I recall loving the process. The cheese-monger had a spotless white coat and an elegant way of severing off the tiny wedge you wanted from a big wax-covered wheel. While the fromagerie was cool, a wash of whites -- eggshell, cream, and snow -- the pâtisserie had a burnished, golden-brown sheen. It was warm and crowded, and I thought oddly of castles upon seeing the jutting spikes of baguettes and rows of pastries lining the windows like toasty battlements. Entering and then leaving these tiny, enveloping works became a weird kind of entertainment, one I cannot associate with shopping in the U.S., unless I'm squeezing through the aisles of Bi-Rite or visiting a farmers' market. Sometimes I wonder if the American culture of shopping -- going one place to get all things, whether it's Safeway or the Ferry Building -- is rooted what once was necessity for people settling at the edge of civilization. Given the choice, I would, naturally, prefer to one-stop-shop at a general store dishing up butternut squash ravioli than one pushing hardtack and pemmican. That would be fun. Nonetheless, the practical ethos of a general store has more in common with gas stations and corner bodegas selling batteries, bottled water, condoms, and medicine (along with porno magazines, booze, and cigarettes) than a D.I.Y. congregation of food-lovers and growers. Despite sourcing products from all over the world, they reflect what the community needs and desires. If only it were boudin blanc.

Jonathan Safran Foer visited KQED's The Writers' Block to record a reading from his latest book, Eating Animals. He was open to participating in a spontaneous video interview and shared his personal eating preferences, where he was dining in the Bay Area, thoughts about food politics and ethics, and ideas for his next book.

Listen to Jonathan Safran Foer's reading at The Writers' Block
Purchase Eating Animals at amazon.com

Credits:
Video by Emmanuel Hapsis & Wendy Goodfriend
Photos by Wendy Goodfriend
Pumpkin by Dan Perez

This pages of this week's Entertainment Weekly are sprinkled with their holiday gift ideas. (Dear Amazon: No matter how many mags, blogs, or reps flog your new Kindle, I'm never going to use it. While I don't love the space my biblio excesses take up, I love the smell, touch, and heft of real books way too much. Another thing I love too much? Spending $399 in far more worthy places. Love, Stephanie) As a television obsessive, a few EW foodie gifts stood out for me. There's the old-new hamburger phone from the new It-Movie, Juno $19.99 (wards.com), the Hung knife that will allow you to "chop like the champ" $210 (korin.com), and the wine, 2002 Conti Sertoli Salis Sforzato, that might make you feel dirty, sexy, and monied for $55 (vinositeshop.com).

That's all fine and dandy, but if you want to spread some San Francisco love across the country, try dousing your loved ones with these local gift ideas.

June Taylor Foodstuffs: Aside from her usual delectable pots of jams and jellies, at this time of year June Taylor also has port-soaked fruitcake and vegetarian mincemeat. Note to the ex-pats and Anglophiles out there: grab these while the going's good. She also has candied citrus peels (blood orange, Seville orange, Rangpur lime, Meyer lemon), fruit paste, and pears preserved in cassis. (Cake: $30; Mincemeat: $26; Pears: $36/$18; Fruit Paste: $15; Candied Citrus Peel: $14)

Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food: This new cookbook from the famed Bay Area chef is a must for those of us who collect cookbooks, meals, and menus from Chez Panisse. Far more simple and straightforward than her other cookbooks, The Art of Simple Food, not only takes individual ingredients and breaks them down into uncomplicated, delicious dishes but Waters teaches the salivator about pots and pans, menu planning, and how to stock your pantry and choose your ingredients. ($35)

Anything from Kermit Lynch: The man carries some wines as low as $11.00, okay? I mean, honestly, with Kermit Lynch vetting your wine, can you really go wrong here? I didn't think so. Bonus: you don't need your own globe-trotting Nick George/Darling to know it's going to be good.

Cocoa Bella Chocolates: If you opened a box of chocolates in my grandma's house, chances were good you'd be in for an unpleasant surprise. While she didn't bite into each chocolate to see if she was going to like it, she did jab a fingernail into the bottom, thus allowing the contents to ooze onto the frilled paper. With their custom box builder, Cocoa Bella ensures you never have to poke, prod, or bite a chocolate to determine its stomach worthiness. ($40 for 20 pieces, $75 for 40 pieces)

DeLessio's Chocolate Bubble Wrap: You use bubblewrap to pad your presents, why not eat it? As addictive as popping the bubbles themselves, DeLessio offers six different flavors for $16.50 a pound.

St. George Absinthe Verte: Last week, Lance Winters of St. George's Spirits in Alameda got the news that he could start selling his newly concocted Absinthe Verte. Banned in the U.S. since 1912, cocktailians can finally wrap their lips and brain cells around the anisette-flavored green beverage that reputedly made madmen out of some of history's most celebrated artists and writers. San Francisco's Green Fairy goes on sale December 21st and supplies are limited, so I shouldn't really be telling you about this if I want any left for myself. ($75)