Tag Archives: Gather Restaurant
Gather chef Sean Baker named best of the year
A Berkeley restaurant is in the limelight today as its chef has scooped one of the most coveted awards in the food business.
Sean Baker at Gather Restaurant has been named 2010 Chef of the Year by Esquire Magazine which also picks Gather as one of the 20 best new restaurants of the year. The news was broken by Eater SF this morning.
Esquire’s restaurant features writer John Mariani is regarded as one of the pre-eminent American restaurant … Continue reading »
Berkeley Bites: Minh Tsai, Hodo Soy Beanery
Minh Tsai is on a mission to make tofu the next hip artisanal food. He knows he has a ways to go to get many Americans to even taste tofu, but if anyone can make it cool to eat bean curd, this enthusiastic self-described tofu master is the man for the job.
Tsai grew up eating fresh tofu from street vendors in his native Vietnam. He arrived in the U.S. via Malaysia, part of the so-called boat people exodus. Both … Continue reading »
Berkeley filmmakers focus on urban food movement
A Berkeley based film company is in the final stages of making a documentary about the Bay Area’s urban food movement which features several Berkeley faces.
Edible City tells the stories of people responding to the global food crisis in their communities and in their own backyards. It is the work of East Bay Pictures, a production company with an office on Rose Street. Director Andrew Hasse, who founded East Bay Pictures in 2008, is working with … Continue reading »
The Berkeley Wire: 07.08.10
Berkeley student on list of teenagers making the food revolution [Lettuce Eat Kale]
Bar Bites: Organic cocktails at Gather, an inviting place to hang out [SF Chronicle]
Berkeley law dean: let states borrow from federal government [New York Times]
Berkeley resident, music promoter, admits defrauding investor [SF Chronicle]
From museum to home: the Magnes makes its move [New York Times]
Berkeley-based Dynavax begins trials of universal flu vaccine [VND]
Donations being sought to save a piece of Berkeley’s punk rock history [NBC]
Photo by barnali/Berkeleyside Flickr pool.
The Berkeley Wire: 5.26.10
UC Berkeley, Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s close ties to BP [The New York Times]
Berkeley shakes up values guiding business school [The Economist]
Fork to farm tour starts and ends at Berkeley’s Gather restaurant [SFoodie]
Four Lawrence Berkeley Lab employees sickened by paint fumes [Berkeley Voice]
For Berkeley artist Brett Cook, public participation is art [SF Examiner]
Staying in Berkeley: Parenthood’s fine first year [TV.com]
Photo: Keoki Seu/Berkeleyside Flickr pool.
Berkeley Bites: Marc Rumminger
Engineer Marc Rumminger grew up in Michigan on a then-typical Midwestern diet: casseroles, canned soup and jello.
When he moved to Berkeley for graduate school his culinary world expanded and he became an avid home cook.
Rumminger experimented with Asian flavors, particularly Indian cuisine, and he immersed himself in pressing food issues, including the concept of locavorism.
Relatively early on in the world of blogging, Rumminger, 41, started writing about food on the group blogs Eat Local … Continue reading »
Food and farming: Double header this Thursday
Berkeleysiders interested in food and farming may find themselves torn between two edible events being held downtown — or bouncing between both this Thursday.
The Earth Island Institute and VegNews Magazine host a hot-topic debate: “Can You Be a ‘Good Environmentalist’ and Still Eat Meat?” In one corner, Nicolette Hahn Niman, a Marin rancher and author of Righteous Porkchop, who believes there is an ecologically sustainable way to eat animals. Niman’s … Continue reading »
The Berkeley Wire: 5.14.10
UC Berkeley’s Goodwin Liu wins Senate Judiciary Committee approval [SF Chronicle]
Those Gather restaurant guys, the “pathological optimists” are in the Times [NYT]
“A torrent of tenor”: Sonny Rollins’s Berkeley performance reviewed [Mercury News]
Photo: Campanile Berkeley by southerncal88/Berkeleyside Flickr pool.
Berkeley Bites: Kyle Cornforth
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.
Kyle Cornforth packed up her family last summer and headed to the outskirts of Chiang Mai to spend a year as the director of The Prem Organic Cooking Academy and Farm, which teaches traditional Thai cooking and farming techniques to kids from international schools around the globe, as well as adult travelers.
She wanted to share what she learned about local, sustainable, organic cooking working as the program coordinator for the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School. (Kyle, 30, will return to that position this summer. She met her husband Jay Cohen, a teacher at the school, in the Edible garden. Cue a chorus of awws now.)
She has spent the past year documenting her cross-cultural experiences in often amusing entries that can be found on her blog Cornhens in Thailand. The family, including daughter Zorah, will return to their South Berkeley home in a few months. (Full disclosure: I met Kyle at Edible while lending a hand as a kitchen volunteer.)
1. Can you name some favorite family-friendly eateries in town?
For breakfast we regularly go to The Homemade Cafe. We have been taking Zorah there on the weekends since she was an infant. It isn’t so much that the space is set up for kids, but the staff there has always made us feel welcome and been especially warm to Zorah.
Right around the corner there is a wonderful place for dinner, Digs Bistro, that has a parents night out the first Monday of every month. They have supervised activities for kids two and over — art, dinner, ice cream and a movie — and you can sit in the next room and have a delicious meal in a romantic environment.
2. Do you have a local food hero?
Amy Murray of Venus Restaurant is doing good work with quiet passion. I worked for Amy at Venus for five years. A lot of what I know about food and cooking I learned from her. She has been deeply committed to local food for a long time. I also run into her at the farmers’ market all the time, and I think it is important to see chefs out selecting the produce and ingredients themselves.
I often crave her food; anyone who comes up with the veggie nest is a hero in my book! It’s on the breakfast/brunch menu: Two poached eggs atop a salad of arugula, frisee, wild mushrooms, goat cheese, tomato, and bacon. It’s served with tapenade toast but I always substitute the biscuit. It’s the perfect way to start a weekend day. … Continue reading »
Berkeley Bites: Daphne Miller
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.
Daphne Miller, 44, is a family physician in private practice in San Francisco and the author of the sleeper success The Jungle Effect: The Healthiest Diets From Around The World — Why They Work and How to Make Them Work For You, for which … Continue reading »
