The East Bay has long been the epicenter of the gourmet universe. From Alice Waters introducing the Bay Area to the farm-to-table concept nearly 50 years ago to Alfred Peet kicking off the American coffee revolution from a Berkeley storefront—it seems that everyone in the East Bay has always had a prescient palate.
Make that everyone in the East Bay except me. When it comes to food, I have no idea what’s coming or going, what’s trending or ending, or even generally what I should be eating. You have to remember, as a card-carrying member of Generation X, who had the misfortune of going to public schools, I was raised on ye olde Food Pyramid, which was devised by some agribusiness lobbyist or other. If the preponderance of dairy wasn’t suspected enough, there was an overemphasis on meat, particularly red meat. If it actually was meat—anyone who ate a school lunch in the ’70s knows the forgotten mysteries of which I speak.
Ironically, my father is a true gourmand and a great chef, but as a kid, naturally, I resisted eating anything that didn’t have “Happy Meal” printed on it. Fortunately, the wave of ’90s artisanal consciousness caught me up in its wake, and I developed a taste for cuisine beyond industrially processed meat and potatoes.
Then came various stints as a food writer. I did a year as a food critic in Los Angeles, reviewing cutting-edge eateries that left me hungering for anything that didn’t boast “molecular gastronomy” as a guiding philosophy or was slathered in flavored “foam.” I once had a “deconstructed burger” that boasted a leathery red square of congealed ketchup. Fancy.
I fared better with later assignments in Sonoma (the wine helped). By the time I ended up in Oakland, however, I no longer had to write about food, I could just enjoy it. But with such a dizzying array of choices in the East Bay, I’ve come to rely on the gustatory guides within these pages—scribes whose palates are as refined as their prose. Like you, I’m eager to dig in and see what’s on the menu. Bon appétit!
