Making quick work of a tray of roasted red peppers at Chez Panisse.

Last month Chez Panisse succumbed to social media madness and joined Twitter. But, rather than bombard its already 2,431 followers with promotional messages or daily menu updates, the Alice Waters-owned restaurant is playing it cool and tweeting with the understated style we have come to expect from the team that works with Berkeley’s Slow Food queen.

Wild fennel at Chez Panisse.

Every few days a beautiful photograph will be shared — be it a mother and daughter enjoying a leisurely midday repast, a luxuriant bunch of wild fennel drying on a railing, or a gorgeous trio of decorated Acme loaves, created to celebrate the restaurant’s 40th anniversary.

Given the quality of the images, we were surprised to learn that the photos are snapped by Chez Panisse communications director David Prior on his i-Phone. “We want to keep it simple,” he told Berkeleyside — which is certainly in keeping with the Waters way: the best ingredients, simply prepared.

A birthday present to Chez Panisse from Acme Bread.

"Noon today in the cafe", taken on August 26 at Chez Panisse.

All photos: David Prior.

One of the many culinary destinations enjoyed by a Boston Globe writer.

I don’t think most Berkeleyans take our wondrous food choices for granted, but if you’ve become blasé, take a gander at how a Boston writer reacts to the Gourmet Ghetto. That and some choice Oakland spots represent an “omnivore’s dreamworld” for writer Patricia Borns.

“Food for pleasure, food for thought” she muses while sampling delicious treats at Chez Panisse, the Cheeseboard Collective, Ici Ice Cream, Adesso and the Brown Sugar Kitchen among many others.

But running a high-end brasserie in the Tenderloin proved untenable; when business faltered, he shut up shop and picked up a gig as the executive chef at the Americano Restaurant in the city’s hipster Hotel Vitale.

Earlier this year, Arenstam, 45, made the move to work full-time in the family store, swapping dishing up fancy food in the Embarcadero, for serving sandwiches, salads, pasta, pizzas, and roasts in the Elmwood at Summer Kitchen & Bake Shop, which he and Reis opened last fall.

These working parents know what it’s like to put in long hours and then wonder what to serve for dinner. Reis, 41, who previously taught cooking classes at Washington Elementary School, had first-hand experience with moms and dads who wanted to get good food on the table but felt pressed for time. That conundrum helped spark the concept for the pair’s food business.

Rather quickly the store has become a popular go-to destination for gourmet picnic fixings and received kudos on this site and elsewhere for their simple yet delicious dishes. We’re talking seasonal picks such as Wild Arugula and Grilled Nectarine Salad and Herbed Orzo Pasta with Cucumber, Peppers, and Feta. And that dessert counter? Don’t get me started.

They’ve also landed in a little hot water with local merchants about whether or not folks should be able to sit and eat what’s coming out of the kitchen. You can read about that complex zoning debate here. What everyone seems to agree on: The food is good, seriously good. And it reflects the duo’s slow food background: Two years ago, Arenstam served as a delegate to Terra Madre, the biannual Slow Food gathering in Turin, Italy.

I talked with the couple, who live in Piedmont with their school-age son Theo, at the shop’s communal wooden table a couple of weeks ago.

What’s the story behind the store’s name?

Charlene: Paul and I worked in restaurants on Martha’s Vineyard early on in our relationship. If you’ve spent time there over the summer you know there’s an easiness to life; it’s really a magical place. That’s also where I, a Southern Californian, discovered the New England “summer kitchen” tradition: An outbuilding with a kitchen away from the main house, where cooking, canning, baking, and preserving takes place. The idea behind it is to keep the main home cool during the summer harvest season. I like to think we serve as the “summer kitchen” for the people who frequent our store. We’re really an extension of our customers’ kitchens.

Can you give us a taste of the kind of food you serve?

Paul: We’re trying to offer people something of a fine-dining experience in a grab-and-go environment. And we want it to be both family friendly and sustainable. So we sell Fulton Valley Farms fried chicken tenders — we can’t keep enough of them — you’re getting a familiar, comfort food, but it’s raised locally, organically, and sustainably. And it’s cooked in a clean oil and all our kitchen grease ends up as biodiesel fuel.

How does it feel to run a take-out shop after years in high-end restaurants?

Paul: It’s humbling. I like to joke that I have 25 years as a professional chef in some of the best restaurants around and now I make sandwiches, salads, and pizza. But it’s really how we eat ourselves right now as a busy, young family. We’re selling the kind and quality of food that we would want to pick up for dinner.

Seating snafu aside, have you had any other hiccups as a new food business?

Paul: I’m always thinking of ways we can be more efficient with the food, while maintaining the quality we want to provide. People want to be able to just walk in and pick up dinner in a hurry. They really don’t want to wait for something to be prepared or cooked. But good food is made with hands. Finding that balance is a challenge.

What else do you have cooking for the shop?

Charlene: We’d like to showcase more local food artisans. Currently we offer pantry items from Blue Chair Jams, Happy Girl Kitchen and Blue Bottle Coffee.

What’s good about working for yourselves?

Charlene: Seeing the vision come to life. It looks and feels exactly the way I thought it would.

Each Friday in this space food writer Sarah Henry asks a well-known, up-and-coming, or under-the-radar food aficionado about their favorite tastes in town, preferred food purveyors and other local culinary gems worth sharing.

Henry muses about food matters on her blog Lettuce Eat Kale. Follow her on Twitter and become a fan of Lettuce Eat Kale on Facebook.

If you have an idea for a Berkeley Bites interview, send your suggestion to sarahhenry0509@gmail.com or leave a comment here. To read previous Berkeley Bites profiles click here.

Since the shuttering last summer of Eccolo, an acclaimed Italian eatery on 4th Street, that restaurant’s one-time sous chef now juggles an impressive number of part-time jobs in the culinary world.

Nosrat is the co-creator (along with former boss, Chris Lee, currently cooking in London) of the much buzzed about Pop-Up General Store, a fleeting food market every few weeks housed in the Grace Street Catering headquarters in Oakland’s Temescal area.

The Pop-Up sells top-notch prepared foods by notable Bay Area chefs, many of whom, like Nosrat, who sells homemade pasta and Lee’s signature sausages, are Chez Panisse alum.

This 30-year-old daughter of Iranian immigrants grew up in a food-conscious home where freshly prepared, seasonal Persian dishes were a staple.

A stint in Italy reinforced the importance of a cultural connection to food, which she passes along in cooking and butchering classes under her Home Ec moniker and on the road with urban farmer and friend Novella Carpenter.

Nosrat picks up the occasional shift at Chez, where she got her start, and includes some well-known Berkeley names among her private cooking clients (she’s mum on that matter, for public consumption anyway, in case you’re curious.)

Oh, and she also “pops up” to cook afterhours, family-style, fixed menu dinners once a month at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco.

The mastermind behind a Bakesale for Haiti benefit that netted $22,500 from three Bay Area locations last January, Nosrat even finds time to write about her gastronomical adventures, most notably for The Atlantic online this week.

She lives in North Berkeley, where this interview took place over an impromptu picnic of pickled produce under consideration for a future Pop-Up event.

Why a Pop-Up General Store?

Chris and I missed cooking for our customers. We wanted to find a way to make and share the foods we love without carrying the burdens of a restaurant on our shoulders. We quickly realized how much fun it would be to share this format with our friends, many of whom we’ve been cooking with for years, so we invited other professional cooks and food artisans to join us.

It took off really fast. I think it fills a need in the community, it connects us with customers who crave the kind of food we want to create, and it’s more affordable than going out to eat.

Where do you like to take out-of-towners when they visit?

Gioia Pizzeria. I like their New York-style crust, it’s a little bit sweet and chewy. And they put crazy seasonal stuff on top like zucchini, pesto and ricotta in the summer and butternut squash and blue cheese in the fall.

The 100 percent organic Thursday farmers’ market, of course.

And Ici. I love ice cream and every time I go in there I’m struck by how much care and technique goes into each scoop. It’s affordable luxury, restaurant-quality food at a fraction of the cost. Plus ice-cream makes everyone feel like a little kid again, if only for a moment.

What’s missing on the Berkeley food scene?

A great organic salad bar. I love salad. It’s all I want sometimes: A big bowl of little gem lettuce, beets and avocado. Or a farro and nut combo, or romaine doused in green goddess dressing.  If there was a place where you could bring a plate and choose from, say, 20 salads I would eat there every day.

Who are your local food heroes?

Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. Okay, I know everyone probably says these two. But for me, it’s not some kind of abstract connection, I have ties to both of them and feel honored and lucky I do.

Alice Waters raised the standards for what we eat across the board. I think her greatest gift, which is rarely acknowledged, is the value she places on the beauty and aesthetics of the eating experience. If you learn anything while working at Chez Panisse it is attention to detail.

Michael Pollan seeks to democratize the food movement. He has a unique ability to explain what’s wrong and what needs changing –often quite complex issues — but he boils them down to their elemental parts and make them really accessible.

What’s the best thing about the food movement here?

Its thoughtfulness. Everywhere you go you find people who really think about what they’re growing, cooking, and eating. People pay attention to where their food comes from. That can be a double-edged sword, some people can seem overly picky or snobby about food.

We live in a bubble here in the Bay Area. We have access to some of the best, freshest produce in the country. When Novella and I were in Kansas City, Missouri last summer we couldn’t find somewhere to eat that wasn’t a chain restaurant. That’s why I think it’s so vital that we encourage and empower Americans to return to the kitchen.

Visit popupgeneralstore.blogspot.com for date, time, and food selections for the spontaneous market. Update: Next Pop-Up just announced on Twitter, scheduled for Wednesday, 6/30. Advance orders advised. Due to a recent surge in demand many items sell out.

[Photo: Bart Nagel]

Each Friday in this space food writer Sarah Henry asks a well-known, up-and-coming, or under-the-radar food aficionado about their favorite tastes in town, preferred food purveyors and other local culinary gems worth sharing.

Henry is a freelance writer whose stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Washington Post and San Francisco Magazine. A contributor to the food policy blog Civil Eats, she muses about food matters on her blog Lettuce Eat Kale. Follow her on Twitter and become a fan of Lettuce Eat Kale on Facebook.

If you have an idea for a Berkeley Bites interview, send your suggestion to sarahhenry0509@gmail.com or leave a comment here.

To read previous Berkeley Bites profiles click here.

When Felix Salmon and Michelle Vaughan wrote about their evening at Chez Panisse the other week, it provoked a flood of comments (78 at the last count). One of the things that raised some eyebrows was the cost of the meal. How do you end up spending $350 for two on a prix fixe dinner that costs $75.

Well, all can now be revealed. First, Felix admits some sloppy recollection. The total came to $321, not $350. The Slovenian pinot, which brought out some very erudite comments, was $78. The champagne cocktails before the meal were $11.25 each. Add compulsory 17% service and tax and you reach the grand total.

Michelle Vaughan and Felix Salmon are Berkeleyside friends who live in New York City. Michelle is an artist and Felix is a finance blogger for Reuters. They’re passionate about their food so when we heard they were coming to Chez Panisse for the first time, we asked them to record their thoughts. Here’s their tale:

Michelle: Coming to San Francisco this time for me was for one occasion, and one occasion only: my husband’s birthday. He needed to be in SF for work the day before, and instead of him spending it alone, I volunteered to fly out. With one proviso:  that he get an amazing reservation for a decadent meal.

So Felix set his alarm inside his computer calendar to alert him exactly one month before so he could book through Open Table. He came back to me, “I booked us a reservation.” And I said, “Oh really, where?” And then he showed me the computer screen: Chez Panisse, 2 people, 9:15pm.

Felix: The alarm thing in the computer didn’t work very well, but when Michelle and I were in a restaurant in Orange County last month, I remembered the Chez Panisse idea and got a resy using the Open Table app on my iPhone. I love Open Table, but I think that it sometimes works less well with old-fashioned restaurants.

Michelle: We have dreamed about going to this restaurant for years and years. It’s never happened. So you can imagine my excitement and I booked an air ticket right away.

Felix: Which of course was my cunning plan: I got to spend my birthday in San Francisco with my wife, which was great.

Michelle: Fast forward to F’s birthday: we’re on the BART traveling from San Francisco to Berkeley all dressed up and anticipating a fabulous night.

Felix: Berkeley’s big! And Chez Panisse is not very close to the BART. I was expecting something a bit more Jane Jacobs and downtown, rather than a restaurant-you-really-need-to-drive-to. Michelle was wearing heels, turning the walk from the BART into a bit of a schlep.

Michelle: We arrive at Chez Panisse bang on time.

Felix: We thought we had time to explore Berkeley or grab a drink beforehand, not so much. It basically took us an hour from getting on the BART in SF.

Once we got to the restaurant, I was immediately struck by the architecture: it’s a beautiful and unique restaurant, architecturally, and I adore the way it looks and feels. You feel immediately at home, with all the warm wood; it’s informal yet high-end at the same time. But it can get a bit crowded.

Michelle: It’s asparagus season so there is a big pile in a basket near the entrance. I love that, stating: this is in season, and this is what you’re going to eat.

Felix: The greeting was a bit chaotic, there was a lot of milling around in a crowded corridor before the hostess finally appeared, and she had to deal with a couple of other people first. She needed my last name to find my reservation — no California informality here — and said the table would be ready in 5-10 minutes, they were running a little late. I looked around the corridor, and had to ask if there was a bar. Oh yes, she said distractedly, it’s upstairs. She’d come and fetch us when the table was ready.

The bar was nice, if also crowded; we ordered a couple of cocktails and looked around. Five minutes passed, then ten…

Michelle: Our reservation was for 9:15, so I’m already pretty hungry, as is Felix. We wait and wait.

It was a long wait. Drinks were finished. I mention to Felix it was poor expectations management to have us up here so long, and not check in to see how we are or give us an update on when we’ll be seated. But we are patient.

She finally comes up and we walk down to the dining room. We sit down and soak up the room. No art, just very attractive woodwork somewhere between Mission and Art Nouveau, I was having a hard time deciphering which. It was elegant but not snobby.

We receive our beautiful paper menus (green onions illustrated on the cover), which stated a fixed tasting. Fine, makes things easy — four courses: asparagus salad, Maine lobster and scallop risotto, braised and grilled pork shoulder with gnocchi, peas and fava beans. Neapolitan ice cream for desert. Great, we are ready.

The waiter comes to discuss the wine menu, which Felix is trying to choose from. He narrows down to a few — asks for a Pinot Noir that is earthy, light and has lots of character. We like a barnyard kick. The waiter wavers a little, unsure if they had something to match his request. So Felix asks about an Italian choice, and the waiter says, “Ah yes. That is fantastic and should be what you’re looking for.” (Or something to that effect.) We’re happy, he walks away and then returns with the bottle. He says, “Well actually it’s not from Italy, but from Slovenia. You will enjoy it.” Slovenia? Really??? The fact of the matter is, the wine was good. Slovenia: who knew? But it was listed as Italian and the waiter who seemed to know something about it, didn’t interject in the beginning to let us know it was in fact misprinted and from somewhere else, which annoyed Felix. I was still thinking about Mission furniture and how trendy it was for yuppies in the mid-nineties.

Felix: Our waiter seemed friendly, if slightly aggressive. Certainly chatty. He told us that the Chez Panisse conception of locavorism extends to flying in lobster from Maine, which I wasn’t very excited about, since I don’t think Maine lobster travels very well and much prefer it in situ. Eventually he came to take our wine order; he said that an interesting-looking red Trousseau from Jura was going to be quite heavy, so I asked about a 2004 Pinot Nero from Friuli in Italy. He started waxing rhapsodic about it, and told us that it was aged in clay, which sounded so weird and funky that I had to order it.

When he came back with the wine, he didn’t present to us so much as announce its arrival. Here you go, he said, a Pinot Nero from the Italian-Slovenian border. Then he looked at the back label, and said oh look, actually it’s from Slovenia. (It was called Movia, if you want to look it up.)

I’ll try any kind of weird and wonderful wine, so the fact that the wine was from Slovenia didn’t bother me too much, in fact it was quite exciting. And the wine was good. But it is very odd that it was listed on the wine list as being from Friuli in Italy. And it’s also odd that the waiter who knew so much about the wine didn’t know what country it was from.

Michelle: Then the first course comes. The asparagus was delicious. We finish.

Felix: The asparagus, we both agreed, was perfectly cooked, and tasted better than just about any asparagus either of has ever had. In the annals of asparagus, this was undoubtedly first-rate asparagus. And it lived up to the Chez Panisse reputation of cooking first-rate local food simply, and just letting the natural flavors come out.

I did feel that a bit of effort with respect to the plating would not have gone amiss: just because it’s been cooked simply, doesn’t mean it can just be slapped down on the plate. If anything, when the food is cooked so simply, the rest of it becomes more important, including the way the food is presented, both on the plate and by the waiter. It’s the only way for the restaurant to show respect for the food and for its customers.

Michelle: We wait. The second course comes… our waiter had said earlier that this dish was really divine, but actually: meh. It was OK. Neither of us were bending over backwards.

Felix: The second course was nominally a risotto, but it came out more like a random pile of undercooked rice mixed up with light-brown liquid and the occasional lump of something seafoody. This was no unitary risotto: it had disassembled itself into its constituent parts, none of which seemed to have enjoyed the experience. The lobster and scallops were perfectly good, but hardly revelatory, and actually, for a restaurant which prides itself on letting the food’s flavors shine out, they were kinda buried in the rice. That wonderful light, spring-fresh flavor that one gets in great risottos was missing; instead, the dish was stodgy, and I certainly got no hint of the sheer joy I get from eating Maine lobsters in Maine. My lobster rule stays.

Michelle: And then for the third course. Except we didn’t get it. We waited and waited. Our plates had been removed and we just sat there. Our waiter was MIA. I wish I had been more attentive to my watch so I could tell you the exact amount of time which went by during each course — but what I can say is that all of it was too long. I finally had to find another waiter and tell him, “Listen, we haven’t seen our waiter in a really long time. We don’t have our mains, what’s going on?” and with that, he rushed back. Our food came out immediately after, our waiter apologized and gave us a glass of wine on the house. That was nice. But it doesn’t make up for our time lost, and that cohesive fine dining experience one should expect from Chez Panisse… we ate our pork and fava beans: they were OK. Nothing spectacular. And nothing wrong either. Everything tasted good, but it didn’t taste GREAT. It wasn’t that creative. I won’t even describe the Neapolitan ice cream because I think you get it. So what, right?

Felix: The wait between the second and third courses really was a joke. And we did seem to lose our waiter somewhere along the way, dealing with various different servers and even the hostess at various points. They did give us an extra glass of wine when Michelle ran out, and no one was ever unfriendly. They were just a bit absent. All of which is pretty unforgivable given that this is a restaurant which in theory knows weeks in advance exactly how many dishes it’s going to be serving that night, and exactly when each one is going to be served. If it wanted to, it could, like Alinea, time everything down to the minute. Instead, it seemed to be collapsing under some kind of unexpected strain. Maybe the chef got sick and couldn’t come in, something like that? I have no idea. But that was the impression.

The main meat course was two cuts of pork, cooked two ways: shoulder and loin, I think, braised and grilled. Something like that. If anything a bit high-concept for the down-to-earth Chez Panisse, and certainly so much cooking was done to the pork that I can’t tell you whether the pork itself was particularly good. The loin was better than the thin and dry slices of shoulder, which sat there forlornly looking as though their highest ambition in life was to be a filling in a sandwich.

The dessert course was a big disappointment for me: while I ate the strawberry ice cream, I left the vanilla and the chocolate — they just weren’t interesting. Mine did come with a candle, and a piece of paper saying happy birthday.

And finally came the coffee: bitter, far too strong, with none of the natural sweetness in a well-drawn espresso. We asked a couple of people if they could call us a cab, and eventually somebody did.

The room was full of a wide variety of interesting-looking Berkeleyans, but  I didn’t get the vibe that most of them were there for the food. (One table was clearly there for the wine, another seemed to be putting together a PowerPoint presentation.) Maybe it’s a pleasant place to have a nice meeting or meal out, catch up with colleagues or friends. And that’s a very important part of what a restaurant should be. But some restaurants aim higher than that.

The bill, when it came, included a 17% service charge; I can’t remember whether that was mentioned on the menu. But in the end we spent over $340 on dinner at Chez Panisse. I can certainly think of places where it’s possible to spend that kind of money on worse food, but I can also think of a lot of places where you get much more joy, professionalism and creativity.

Michelle: We walked out that night completely let down. We both love what Alice Waters has done for food and farmers, and I can only assume when she’s in the kitchen cooking it’s a fabulous experience. But the restaurant is another story — just putting together local, fresh food is not enough these days to get me excited. I can do that in my own kitchen, and if we want disorganized service, believe me, we can serve that up just fine at home. What we were expecting was to be dazzled, like we were the following day for lunch at the Slanted Door. That was spectacular (pineapple-anchovies anyone?).

Sure we’re spoiled in New York, with local chefs from downtown to Brooklyn experimenting, competing and getting weird. Corton and Eleven Madison (for very special nights out), Spotted Pig/Breslin (when Fergus Henderson visits, it’s the bomb) and Momofuku Ssam Bar are tried and true NYC favorites… I’d rather be pounded by rock music while some pierced hipster slaps down creative bowls of deliciousness at Momofuku, than deal with a disorganized fancy restaurant any day.

Felix: The legacy of Alice Waters is everywhere: in thousands of restaurants and farmer’s markets around the country the Alice Waters gospel is preached to the converted. It has been built on with fervor and imagination, and millions of Americans eat tastier, healthier food as a result. But I think that Chez Panisse is no particular exemplar of what Alice Waters really stands for. It’s not accessible; the food is not all that spectacular; and the overriding impression is of a past-its-prime institution trading on its name.

Michelle: Alice Waters is very important as a food activist, and we totally support the Edible Schoolyard. One is being built in East New York, Brooklyn, it’s going to be great. I am helping support a regional outdoor market which will hopefully open permanently in downtown. It will be different from a green market. She’s incredibly active, and I think influenced Michelle Obama’s decision to plant a vegetable garden at the White House.

We very much support all these efforts, which is part of the reason we were so damn excited to visit the restaurant! So we crashed hard when they just kind of threw it out there and then disappeared.

What do you think, Berkeleysiders? Did Michelle and Felix have bad luck? Was there somewhere else in Berkeley they should have gone for a celebratory meal worth flying across the country for?

Photo of Chez Panisse by Empty Highway on Flickr

Alice Waters appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday to promote her new book, In the Green Kitchen. She presented Maher with a basket of fresh produce, including lemons picked from Berkeley’s Edible Schoolyard. She talked about slow food and how it doesn’t necessarily mean slow-cooked food. “I could have a slow-food hot dog if I cared where the meat came for the hot dog, where the bun came from, where the ketchup came from, where the mustard came from, where the onions came from.”

Other highlights from the interview: Alice was originally afraid to be in the kitchen, some naked hippies once streaked through Chez Panisse, and she once tried to steer Bill Clinton away from some blackberry ice cream because she thought he should be eating a peach instead.

Watch Part 1 above and Part 2 below.

[Via: Grub Street San Francisco]

Only five of the Chronicle’s Top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area are in Berkeley, the birthplace of the locavore movement and the home of the doyenne of slow food in the United States, Alice Waters.

Of the five chosen ones — revealed in the paper’s annual league table yesterday, one is relatively new. The other four count as veterans in the fast-moving world of restaurants.

The five are: Chez Panisse — naturally, Corso Trattoria,  Rivoli, Japanese haunt O Chame on Fourth Street and Vik’s Chaat Corner, the perennially popular purveyor of superior Indian street food.

Rivoli and Corso (pictured above) are both run by Roscoe Skipper and Wendy Brucker, and the latter opened in the summer of 2008. Its rustic Florentine menu has garnered good reviews, as well as the seal of approval of cookbook author Mollie Katzen who told Berkeleyside it was her favorite neighborhood restaurant. Rivoli, also Italian, has been a Solano Avenue pleaser for more than 15 years.

One Berkeley restaurant fell off the list this year and that was the fishy Sea Salt on San Pablo Avenue, owned by K2 Restaurants which has a total of four restaurants in the city.

A small group of picketers from the Organic Consumers Association took up position directly in front of Chez Panisse at lunchtime today, in an attempt to raise awareness of what it terms “toxic sewage sludge”.

This followed remarks made by the OCA criticizing Chez Panisse owner Alice Waters, and Francesca Vietor, the executive director of the Chez Panisse Foundation and a Commissioner on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission over what it called their “hypocrisy” over the sewage sludge issue.

Two demonstrators dressed in beige all-in-ones held up a sign that read “Happy Birthday Chez Panisse Cafe. Please Alice, No Toxic Sludge”.  No garden associated with Alice Waters uses compost made with sewage sludge. OCA spokesperson John Mayer who was part of the demonstration admitted the sign was “provocative” and could be interpreted to mean Alice Waters or the Chez Panisse Cafe used toxic sludge.

Shortly before the protesters, arrived the Chez Panisse Foundation had issued a statement calling on the OCA to “retract their false statements” and issue a public apology.

Asked if the OCA intended to apologize,  Mayer  said: “Apologize for what?” “The [Chez Panisse] Foundation is in a perfect situation to speak on organic farming methods and we ask that it condemns the use of sewage sludge for any farming.”

In the travel section of yesterday’s L.A. Times, writer Nancy Hoyt Belcher describes the three-hour walking tour she took of Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto courtesy of one of Lisa Rogovin’s culinary excursions.

Belcher bit into Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk from the Cheese Board, full- and half-sour pickles from Saul’s, bought Sumatra Blue Batak from Peet’s and supped a glass of Merlot from Vintage Berkeley. She also took in the Juice Bar Collective on Vine (pictured above), Love at First Bite bakery and the Epicurious Garden.

As she says: “Food, glorious food, is mostly what the Gourmet Ghetto is all about.”

Read the full story here.