Daily Archives: November 19, 2010
The Berkeley Wire: 11.19.10
Check out the Digital Arts Club Fall Festival at Berkeley City College [DCC]
Best Jewish marijuana collective headline ever [JWeekly]
Rain dampens crowd for tuition protest [Bay Citizen]
Pho Bar moves into former dollar store space on Euclid [Grub St]
Two more games before the Memorial Stadium facelift [SF Chronicle]
Photo: TheRealMichaelMoore/Berkeleyside Flickr pool.
Pioneering disability center opens its Berkeley campus
The Ed Roberts Campus, on Adeline opposite Ashby BART station, opened its doors this week introducing a welcome resource for people with disabilities, and lending more than a touch of contemporary architectural style to Berkeley.
As Rachel Trachten reports on Examiner.com, several agencies have already moved into their offices on the campus, while others will follow in the next few months.
A total of seven agencies devoted to working with adults and children with disabilities will eventually be housed … Continue reading »
It’s Big all round in Berkeley this weekend
Unless you’re congenitally opposed to looking at a sports page, you probably know that the 113th Big Game between Cal and Stanford kicks off at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow at Memorial Stadium. Cal is a humdrum 5-5 for the season, while Stanford is ranked seventh in the nation, with a 9-1 record. Stanford’s only loss was at Oregon, the nation’s number one team, earlier in the season. But Cal had the Ducks quacking for mercy last Saturday before an unlikely … Continue reading »
Berkeley High turns out for funeral of fellow student
The service was due to begin at 11 am at Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church at 408 West MacArthur Blvd near Shafter Street in Oakland (pictured above).
Read Berkeleyside’s coverage of the tragedy here.
Locanda da Eva restaurant to close after four months
The Chronicle’s Inside Scoop reported last night that Locanda da Eva on Telegraph Avenue, which opened at the end of July, will have its last day of business this Sunday after failing to find a sufficiently big customer base.
The restaurant, which served California-inspired Italian fare, is owned by first-time restaurateur Robert Lauriston, formerly SF Weekly’s restaurant critic. Lauriston told the Chronicle that business just didn’t pick up enough, even after a remodel earlier this month.
“What … Continue reading »
La Cocina helps launch Mexican food business
The story of how Dilsa Lugo launched Berkeley catering company Los Cilantros starts in Cuernavaca in the Mexican state of Morelos where she grew up.
Her family had a vegetable garden outside of town, where her father grew corn, beans, chilies, lemons, mangoes and more.
Her mother, who had nine kids to feed, cooked fresh tortillas on an open fire every day.
Lugo’s family farmed and cooked together out of economic necessity and enjoyed the flavors of a homegrown harvest and the pleasures of the table. As a child, she liked to help in the garden and the kitchen.
In college, where she studied horticulture, she became schooled in the dangers of pesticides to farm workers, consumers, and the environment.
Before leaving Mexico seven years ago, she ran a successful greenhouse business selling plants, including poinsettias and marigolds, for festive occasions.
She landed in Berkeley with her husband, embraced the organic food movement, and lamented the lack of authentic Mexican eateries that offered organic food. So she began to make her own.
Her tamales, tacos, and tortillas proved a big hit with her husband’s co-workers in construction.
Maybe, she thought, she could start a food business here. But first Lugo attended the Berkeley Adult School, where she took English classes. There she learned about a program for aspiring cooks looking to land employment in the food industry called The Bread Project.
While participating in that program, she heard about and subsequently received support from La Cocina, a nonprofit commercial kitchen and food business incubator in San Francisco that helps low-income female food entrepreneurs formalize and grow their own businesses.
Lugo toyed with the idea of starting a Mexican bakery but opted, instead, to run her own catering company which she dubbed Los Cilantros in honor of the pungent herb that flavors much of Mexican cuisine.
The 36-year-old lives in West Berkeley with her family, including a school-age son and a brand-new baby. We spoke at her home a couple of weeks ago.
… Continue reading »
