Artisan Food Adventures and Discoveries | Nutty Fig

Yesterday I bought figs at a farmer’s market and bought a bag of ground pecans. As I dipped the fig into the pecans I realized just how apropos my blog name is. This is really a non-post but I’m sharing my fig with you anyway.

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Moooo! (only Berkeleyites will get that)

I had to share the announcement of this great event put on by slowfoodberkeley.com

Slow Food Berkeley Celebrates Summer with a Pig Roast and Meatshare Picnic in Tilden

Its time to celebrate summer, and what better way than a BBQ and Potluck Picnic Party in the Early Summer Sun? The picnic will feature:
kegs of local beer, music and a locally raised pig, slow-roasted ala Cubana in “la Caja China.” This method literally translates into China Box and is adapted from the Chinese community in Cuba. When the roasting is complete, the pig comes out crisp and brown on the outside, and succulent and sweet so that it falls apart on the inside. Our roaster is none other than Slow Food Berkeley afficianado Phil Brown.

The potluck style picnic will take place at Padre Picnic Area in Tilden Park, located 1/2 mile from the Botanical Garden, signs will be posted. The time is 2:00 - 5:00 in the afternoon. We are also requesting each person be responsible for bringing their own set of plates, silverware, cups so that we may reduce waste.

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

This event is open to Slow Food Berkeley members, friends and family. If you are not a member, come anyway! Please bring any instruments, hula hoops; bring twister, and don’t forget the kids!

FURTHER DETAILS
Padre Picnic Site is located on South Park Drive, a half mile from the Botanical Garden, and there is a parking lot closeby. For more information on Tilden Park and a map:
http://www.ebparks.org/parks/tilden#features

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I’m obviously only posting this so I could write that title.

Rose colored, rose flavored, rose scented marshmallow chickes for Easter! Using Rose Sugar from Allstar Organics cut from a slab of vanilla marshmallow from BonBonBar.

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I can’t count how many times I’ve followed this itinerary to give people a taste of Susie’s Berkeley. There are lots of great nooks and crannies we didn’t touch on this trip and if you want any other Berkeley tips let me know. This “tour guide” has the bare essentials of what I consider a 2 hour must-do tour of Berkeley.

1) The Berkeley Bowl: As someone who often visits several farmers’ markets in a weekend, I find it hard to clearly explain why visiting the Berkeley Bowl is a must. First I say that people move to Berkeley just to be near it. Then I use my pitch that it’s 3x the selection of a Whole Foods at half the price and twice the freshness. That still doesn’t do it.

Part of what I love is if I do need to go to a “supermarket” the fact that they buy so much direct from growers, and post the names of the growers. It’s not a marketing thing, they’ve always done this. So out of the many varieties of lemons they had to choose from I was able to pinpoint the ones grown by my friend!

The Famous Berkeley Bowl

2) Cheese Board and Cheese Board Pizza

The ultimate Berkeley food institution, across the street from Chez Panisse. Even if you don’t need cheese, go buy some just for the experience.

As for the pizza, the lines will tell you why you need to go. The short list is:

1. Amazing pizza - 1 kind per day, always vegetarian
2. Convivial communal seating
3. Wine or BYO (and byo glasses)
4. Jazz bands
5. Open windows and a Berkeley breeze

What else could one want?

Cheese Board Pizza - Berkeley

3) Next stop: Berkeley Rose Garden

The Rose Garden is also a great place to bring cheese and bread for a picnic, along with good friends or a good book. Optionally get married during your visit.

4) Phoenix Pastificio Bakery and Pastaria

The Cheese Board only had shortbread and as we were after chocolate-centric cookies, I came up with plan B: Phoenix Pastificio, whose cookies I’d seen at a few farmer’s markets.  The founder of Semifreddi bakery started Phoenix Pastificio years ago. The last I’d seen them they had a cafe and bakery on Shattuck, often with a sign in the window saying they’d trade your meyer lemons for food (great idea!) It was a surprise to learn they’d moved down to the former Bread Workshop’s location, of which I was familiar, and delightful to know we could pop in for cookies…and listen to a little of the Led Zeppelin blasting, an unexpected perk. For me the highlight was flashing back to having met Eric at a Slow Food event years ago, at which he made pasta…not just any pasta but chestnut flour pasta, something I’d never had before. Imagine nutty pasta.

We loaded up on giant Callebaut chocolate chip and pecan cookies and flourless chocolate cookies to sustain us for the 10 minute drive back to San Francisco. There’s no storefront but you can stop by and buy stuff directly from the production area! Call first to check on hours.

Flourless Chocolate Nut Cookies - Phoenix Pastificio

Down University to Highway 80, everything was closed but we drove down Fourth St, for a preview of the little shops and restaurants awaiting their future visit.

Additionally heading down to 80 at your left is Vik’s Chaat Corner, an indian place that was formerly a tiny grocery type store with takeout that has blossomed into a constantly bustling sort of cafeteria-ish looking place with great food.

Bonus stop for clothing hounds: Jeremy’s on College and Ashby…Ashby is near the Berkeley Bowl. If you like the combo of high cool fashion and deals, do not miss this Jeremy’s. It is where the cheap clothes go to die that did not sell in their San Francisco store and where you can look like a fashion model sometimes for $20. Like the Berkeley Bowl: Don’t ask questions, just go!

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I am not too, cool, hip, or classy to see a brewed coffee priced at $3.50 and not ask why I would pay that for a coffee. (Although ironically when in London I paid that for a Starbucks but this is California where I’m used to paying $2.30 for a hand-dripped Blue Bottle coffee, so I had to ask.)

The fellow at Intelligensia in Silverlake did not blink an eye as he prepared to answer:
-Intelligensia works directly with the coffee farmers. Not a co-operative but directly with the growers.
-They pay the farmers 50% more (if I heard correctly) than the market price and well above the Fair Trade price.
-They only use the best coffee and when it’s at its greenest state. I’m not quite clear how this compares to the state of “normal” coffee beans but it sounded good.
-Their coffee machine cost $10,000.
-Each coffee is individually ground (which I’m not so sure if unique but it’s a good thing).

(Here’s a blog post they wrote about some of their costs and pricing.)

I’d run into Intelligensia by accident. In fact when I saw a sign in front of a restaurant I remembered hearing there was a new cafe here. I started to Google it on my crackberry when I looked up and saw it 20 feet away from me. Destiny.

It’s in a lovely old Spanish style building with Moroccan looking tile floors, overall a wonderful cafe with a fabulous Americano and good people. I’ll be back, sans the obnoxiousness.

There’s something to be said when you know the story behind what you’re eating or drinking, the way I did with the orange BonBonBar that I slowly luxuriated over as breakfast…figuring if “orange” was in the name and the nougat had eggwhites, surely it must be the perfect breakfast snack.

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