Tempted to pass up that plate of lurid, crimson steak tartare topped by a blob of saffron egg yolk? Not so fast. If it came from the kitchen of Simone Fung and Sebastian Mendieta—collectively known as S+S Gastro Grub—this may very well be dessert. The Oakland catering couple loves to concoct dishes that trick the eye, but treat the palate and the “tartare” in question is actually chopped compressed watermelon crowned with a golden orb of mango juice and mint shards.
A recent assignment for Oakland Magazine sent me to interview Fung and Mendieta about their mobile pig roaster. But during our chat at their live/work loft in Oakland’s industrial hip “Jingletown” neighborhood, thanks to tastes they offered me, I discovered their fascination with the techniques of molecular gastronomy, spherification and sous vide cookery.
With their multi-cultural backgrounds—she grew up in Hong Kong and he in a tiny town in Nicaragua—and extensive global street food research in travels from Malaysia to Jamaica, they resist getting stuck in a narrowly defined cultural corner. Their edible creations traverse the map, deftly combining elements of a range of cuisines and sometimes even fuse elements from their two food heritages—as in marinated, sous vide, duck-tongue tacos.
S + S have been thrilling diners at local pop-ups, underground dinners, fundraising events and private parties with their sublime creations since 2007. For years, the couple indulged their mutual passion for edible inventiveness by throwing large parties in their live-work artist loft. Finally, their enthusiastic friends convinced them to start a business and they acquired a shiny black catering van in 2011.
For the moment, however, both have day jobs: Fung is office manager for a San Jose semi-conductor company, while Mendieta works as logistics coordinator for a heavy construction firm. So their food-transforming forays are reserved for evenings, weekends and holidays. But their popularity is spreading as quickly as the uni sauce under their perfectly seared scallops.
pan seared jumbo day boat scallops with uni sauce and nori potatoes
The duo has cooked at fundraisers for the San Francisco Food Bank and Old Skool Café, been part of Food Social, Behind the Cart, done a Japanese themed pop-up dinner at (where else?) a Mexican restaurant, Cosecha, as well as catered birthday celebrations, showers, and outdoor park festivities.
something is fishy here (or not)
Fung says with a twinkle, “We like to trick people’s eyes and minds. Sometimes we serve dishes without telling guests what they’re eating. They think they know but then they’re surprised when what they taste doesn’t match what they were expecting.”
A good example is their “tuna belly” which is actually made from compressed watermelon that has been chilled until it is pliable, then seared with a combination of fish sauce, honey and lime juice. It’s savory, no wait it’s sweet.
Mojito mix-up
S+S’s home “test kitchen” is stocked with the latest gadgets and materials necessary to perform this culinary legerdemain. Sous vide cooking slowly transforms an egg into a silky custard by a carefully controlled 50 minutes at the magic mark of 63 degrees. Spherification shapes liquids into caviar-like balls that can resemble something else; for example, carrot juice balls sprinkled on a salad convince diners they’ll be crunching on tobiko. A recently devised molecular mojito dessert combines lime sorbet, mint foam, rum spheres, and a sprinkle of pop rocks to deliver a roller coaster ride of taste and textures. Inspired by farmers’ markets and committed to sourcing ingredients from a 150-mile radius, S+S Gastro Grub supports local food purveyors and artisans such as Berkeley’s The Local Butcher.
Fung and Mendieta aim for modern interpretations of classic comfort food: think gumbo potpie, with okra and crawfish, mac and cheese with cold smoked pasta with a surprise hickory kick at the end. Their mobile pig roaster–a charcoal-fired Dutch oven on wheels–in which they can roast a succulent whole pig or lamb is a guaranteed party starter.
This is not dessert
Their motto, “oaktown flava. napa roots,” pays homage to their favorite local eateries: Commis, Plum, and Camino, plus inspiration gleaned from Napa Valley’s Ad Hoc and The French Laundry. The duo’s dream is to expand their catering business and set up a cooking school for troubled Oakland youth. Meanwhile, watch out: that cream puff that looks like it’s filled with coffee ice cream and drizzled with chocolate syrup is actually a savory cheese puff injected with foie gras mousse topped by rivulets of maple balsamic sauce.
Next event: Friday April 20, 5-8pm, at Linden Street Brewery, S+S will offer their pickled quail eggs, bone-in pork chop buns, edamame and black bean sliders and more.
Middle Eastern restaurants dot the Bay Area dining scene, like parsley sprinkled over a plate of hummus. A recent discovery, Albany’s Zaki Kabob House, intrigued me for two reasons: the menu, featuring Palestinian dishes not commonly found at other shawarma-falafel spots, and the compelling story of Zaki’s determined owners, the Ayyad family.
Sitting on the patio of their modest green building on San Pablo Avenue, I spoke with Fayza, Kameem, Ramzy and Layla about their journey to opening Zaki (which means ‘delicious’ in Arabic) and some of their Palestinian specialties. (Palestinian cuisine includes foods prepared and eaten by Palestinians, whether living in the Palestinian Diaspora, West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Jordan, or refugee camps. It traces Persian, Turkish and Greek influences and shares features of other Levantine cuisines, such as Lebanese, Syrian and Jordanian.)
Fayza, the matriarch and recipe developer, recently returned from an annual trip to her native Jerusalem for inspiration. A gracious hostess, every time I inquired about an unfamiliar dish on the menu, she made sure I got a taste, adding, “Hospitality is part of our culture.”
As I munched on spheeha (also spelled sfiha) a mini-pizza with moist turmeric-scented dough topped by lamb, tomato and tahini (veggie version features spinach), Fayza’s husband, Kameem told me that after moving to California 30 years ago, his first job was in a cardboard-tube factory, making $3.50 an hour.
Later he owned a liquor store, but Fayza admits she was always uncomfortable with that, since Islam prohibits alcohol — and it is not served in their restaurant. When Kameem owned and ran the Halal Meat Market in Berkeley, Fayza worked as a butcher, carving up goats and sides of beef. Then medical problems and the economic downturn hit the family hard. They lost everything. “But,” said Kameem, “ you can’t give up. There is always opportunity. When one door closes another opens.”
The door leading into their dream restaurant did not swing open without a lot of faith and hard work. This spot on the Berkeley-Albany border was a KFC when the family first noticed it, which was then replaced by a string of other eateries that all went belly up. The jinxed spot has been variously, a donut shop, Chinese, Korean and African restaurants.
The day in 2008 that Naiem found a tiny “For Sale” note taped on the door, the abandoned property was dark, damp, littered, and an impromptu, open-air dorm for homeless people. “The place was in such bad shape,” Kameem recounted, “that everyone told me I was a fool to buy it.” But the challenge appealed to Kameem and he and his family toiled everyday for 8 months to clean and remodel it. “We filled dumpsters the size of elephants with trash,” he recalled.
Neighbors first tried to discourage them, saying that given the spot’s history, they would be too afraid to frequent the new cafe. But as the Ayyads installed patterned tile walls that reminded them of home, and made the space cozy and inviting, local residents started rooting for them.
One day when it looked like the remodeling was complete, the neighbors couldn’t wait any longer and lined up at the front door for lunch, even before there was an official opening. Fayza wasn’t quite ready yet and just made them salad, chicken and pot after pot of rice, since she had no idea how much people were going to eat. Slowly, she started adding dishes to the menu, familiar Middle Eastern fare, like hummus, falafel and shawarma, but with Fayza’s special spin. Their standout dish has always been the organic, rotisserie chicken, marinated in olive oil, lemon juice and vinegar and rubbed with Fayza’s secret blend of spices.
All this talk of chicken made me hungry and I asked about maklouba, one of the daily specials. “This is a Jordanian-Palestinian dish that we eat at home every Friday. It literally means upside-down,” Fayza said as she invited me into the kitchen where she and daughter Layla, who serves as kitchen manager and cook, took a huge pan layered with chicken, vegetables and rice out of the oven and gently turned it over onto a giant platter to offer me a bite of the warm mélange.
Fayza, who had a Moroccan father and Palestinian mother, explains that this dish is usually eaten with the hands. Since I just wrote a post about eating with the hands, in which I got a lesson in Moroccan right-handed dining, I felt prepared. But Fayza says that common practice in her culture is to wash the hands, but leave them wet (perhaps because this avoids any worry about unclean towels?)
The maklouba, like the spheeha and other nightly specials I tasted in the next few days are homey, hearty, unfussy, satisfying dishes. Besides familiar salads of cucumbers and tomatoes (with feta, tahini, or red onions) dressed in olive oil and lemon, a few salad items were new to me: mudamus, creamy poached fava beans with stewed tomatoes, which Layla informed me is a breakfast staple.
And mashweeya, a grilled vegetable salad that Layla explained is usually a summer dish, enjoyed by the family standing around the hot grill. The plate of smoky eggplant, tomatoes and garlic with olive oil was so flavorful, that I tasted a hint of summer, even on a rainy March evening.
The nightly specials are a big draw at Zaki, even with the ninety-five percent non-Middle Eastern clientele. Son and business manager, Ramzy, says,
“Many of our customers are well-traveled people who have tasted these foods on trips. We also get fourth or fifth generation Lebanese, for example, or someone who remembers the way their Persian grandma made lentils.”
Lamb is a key ingredient in dishes traditionally served on special occasions and at Zaki, the lamb is so tender it falls apart if you but glance at it. In fasoulia, the Tuesday night special, it is cooked with green beans stewed with garlic and tomato sauce.
In mensaf, the Saturday night special–that always sells out–the lamb comes in a bowl of creamy sauce of yogurt, sautéed onions and lemon juice that one pours over a dome of Jasmine rice and yogurt-soaked bread.
As she brought me a plate of her zesty, spiced falafel to try, Fayza confided that the headscarf she wears seems to attract cultural projections. When she attended Contra Costa College 20 years ago, she was the only student with such a head covering.
“They called me Mother Teresa,” she recalled. “And they wanted me to change my name to Liza, and my husband to change his to Dan. Can you imagine us, ‘Liza and Dan?’ But no way, I’m not changing. I stay true to myself,” she said as she graciously poured me another cup of mint tea.
Why do customers travel from as far away as Sacramento and Eureka to a little shop on Albany’s Solano Avenue every March and leave with bags full of crushed sumac, sprouted wheat, and flower-shaped chickpea cookies? To celebrate Norooz (also spelled Nowruz) or Persian New Year, a secular holiday, observed in thousands of homes around the world on the first day of Spring.
On a recent foray to Zands, my neighborhood Middle Eastern store, I spotted an intriguing assortment of items artfully arranged on a table. I asked the owner, Monier Attar, about the meaning of the arrangement and she graciously described the symbols and traditions associated with this ancient holiday.
Norooz, a pre-Islamic festival dating back at least 3000 years, is rooted in rituals from the Zoroastrian religion. This celebration of the first day of Spring originated in the geographical area then called Persia, but is now observed in many lands, including Iran, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Canada and the U.S. It crosses religious and national boundaries and is celebrated by Persian Jews, Christians, Baha’is and Muslims.
Photo courtesy Monier Attar
I am no stranger to symbolic foods (the Jewish Passover Seder plate includes horseradish for the bitterness of slavery and a fruit and nut mixture representing the mortar used by slaves for building structures in Egypt). But next to the food, I noticed several other items on the table– goldfish in a bowl, a mirror, a dish full of what looks like grass, coins in a cup of reddish spice– that pique my interest.
Attar explained that the most essential tradition of Norooz is for every family to prepare the Haft Sin or 7 symbolic items that start with the letter S (in Farsi):
Sabzeh, sprouted wheat or other grain growing in a dish, to symbolize rebirth. Samanu, a sweet pudding made from sprouted wheat that represents fertility and the sweetness of life. Seeb, apples, for health and beauty. Senjed, the sweet, dried fruit of the Lotus tree, for love. Sir, garlic, for medicine and good health. Somaq, crushed sumac berries, to reflect the color of the sunrise. Serkeh, vinegar, to symbolize patience and age.
Senjed, one of the 7 foods that begin with S
Preparations must commence days before the actual day of the vernal equinox and include a thorough housecleaning, sprouting the grain and buying new clothes for everyone in the family.
The equinox is calculated to occur the moment that the Sun crosses the celestial equator and equalizes night and day, which happens at different times across the globe (see chart). This year, the West Coast will celebrate it Monday March 19 at 10:14pm.
“It’s important that at the exact moment of the equinox, the family is sitting around the table, because you want the family to be together for the rest of the year,” says Attar. “We pray and hold hands and then the countdown on radio or TV announces the exact moment and we all kiss and hug. I’m getting goose bumps just talking about it,” says Attar, tearing up, “It’s emotional for me because I think of my parents.”
Attar grew up in Iran, but left in 1984, at age 35 with her 2 young children.
“I sacrificed my parents to make a new life for my children. My mom is still in Iran. When I was a child, New Years was the most exciting time. Every year it comes at a different hour. When it was at 4am, my mother woke us up an hour before to take a shower and put on new clothes. But the best part is that for the next 13 days the young people in the family go visit the older people who give them money, crisp new bills.”
This tradition is similar to the Chinese New Year tradition, where New Year’s bills are placed in red envelopes.
Of all the dishes on the Haft Sin, the hardest one to procure is the Samanu. It takes days to prepare a sweet creamy pudding made from sprouted wheat that is cooked for many hours. The wheat must be sprouted for 5 days until white roots and sprouts appear, then it is crushed and the mash repeatedly “milked” and cooked on the stove for at least 5 hours. It is finally finished overnight in a low oven to give it that burnished brown hue.
Attar offered me a taste. It was so sweet and nutty, it’s hard to believe it’s only made from sprouted wheat and flour. Many Persian families put a tiny symbolic dish of the stuff on their table but Attar cooks pots of it for her customers and says, “Once people taste how delicious it is, they actually want enough for their guests to eat.”
Whole wheat and its early sprouts
Another tradition is on the 13th day of the New Year, the family takes the Sabzeh (the sprouts growing in a dish) from their place on the table and after a picnic in the park, throws them into running water, to rid the house of sickness and sadness.
Additional items on the table may include: golden coins representing prosperity and wealth, a basket of painted eggs for fertility, live goldfish in a bowl of water for life, a flowering hyacinth for its lovely smell, lit candles for enlightenment and happiness, a mirror to represent truth or reflection and a platter of special pastries. Every year, Attar makes thousands of cookies from chickpea flour or rice flour with nuts.
Cookie platter. Photo courtesy Monier Attar
The customary meal for New Year’s Day is Sabzi Polo Mahi, rice with green herbs served with fish. Attar says this is the Persian equivalent of having turkey for Thanksgiving. She carries fresh whitefish and the traditional herbs for the rice: parsley, coriander, chives, dill and fenugreek.
Norooz also has special meaning to Zohal Nassrollahi, Berkeley City College student and first generation American. “When I was a child, the event seemed very magical. I’ve always loved certain things on the Haft Sin table: the glowing gold coins, the maroon colored sumac,” says Nassrollahi, who studies art and design.
“I plan to keep celebrating Norooz, even when I have children. It’s a way to stay connected to my culture, even though I have never been to Iran. But it’s kind of bittersweet, because the holiday is a lot about spending time with the family and we have such a small one, just my parents and me. I also love the tradition of Chahar Shanbeh Suri (or fire-jumping).”
This ritual traces back to Zoroastrianism, as a rite of purification. Bonfires are lit in the streets on the last Tuesday evening of the year and people leap over them while chanting. The translation, “Give me your beautiful red color, and take back my sickly pallor,” demonstrates the fire’s ability to cleanse.
“Fire is a powerful symbol,” says Nassrollahi, “When you hop over the fires, it takes away the negativities from the past year and helps you focus on the future.”
Berkeley’s Persian Center holds its annual bonfire-jumping event on the last Tuesday evening before Norooz, rain or shine — and invites both adults and children, Persians and non-Persians to join in the fire-jumping festivities with music and food. (If you missed it this year, check the Persian Center’s website next year.)
Attar carries the traditional snack of dried fruit and nuts to eat on Chahar Shanbeh Suri plus everything else one would need to fully celebrate the holiday. As she served me a cup of tea and some of her cookies, she told me Norooz (whose literal meaning is “new day”), is the perfect time to let go of grudges, apologize, hug and make-up and start over again.
Although the details of this ongoing story have yet to be fully revealed, it spotlights cultural stereotypes often associated with dining etiquette. While North Americans and Northern Europeans deem that transferring edibles to the mouth with a metal-pronged stick is somehow more refined than using the utensils we were born with, members of the many cultures who have been eating with their hands for thousands of years beg to differ.
Africans, Arabs and Indians (to name only a few) describe in rhapsodic terms the advantages of eating with their fingers: the sensuous connection to the food, the feeling of sharing and community, practicality (in that it’s easier to pluck that last bit of meat off the bones) avoiding waste, even a lingering aroma on the fingers to sustain the memory of a marvelous meal.
After reading scores of impassioned comments that the above mentioned article garnered, I felt compelled to conduct my own interviews to get a first-hand perspective on this cultural divide, followed by a hands-on lesson (see video clip below.)
photos courtesy of Vijitha Shyam of Indian food blog Spices and Aroma
Vinita Chopra Jacinto grew up in Northern India and is now a chef instructor at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. She feels strongly that Indian food tastes best when eaten with one’s fingers. She tells me that Indians eat with their hands because they believe that food is, “more than just protein, carbs and fat it nourishes the mind, intellect and spirit. Eating should be sensual and mindful, employing all the senses: sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. Using your hands gives you a tactile connection with your food.”
Jacinto clarifies some regional differences, “In the North, where breads are commonly consumed, you tear a piece of bread and wrap it around your food. While, in the South, rice is combined with curries, and each mouthful offers a unique blend of flavors. Traditionally in Southern India, plates are made of disposable, recyclable, banana leaves. Using a knife and fork on a banana leaf would shred your plate.”
Significantly, all cultures that shun silverware maintain a set of rules for eating with the hands. Before the meal, the hands must be washed, wiped or even rubbed with sand, as desert Arabs do. But the foremost rule is that only the right hand is employed for eating.
“The left hand is never used for that,” Jacinto says, “It is considered unclean.” In principle, at least, this is because the left hand is saved for bodily cleaning. Another taboo Jacinto cautions against is jutha, or double dipping your bread into a communal dish of food.
“The secret to gracefully eating with your fingers,” Jacinto advises, “is to use your thumb. For example, a small amount of rice is formed into a little pile on your plate, blended with one or more bits of curried lentils, vegetables, meat or fish, and then picked up with a twist of the wrist, held onto by the fingers and maneuvered right up to your mouth. But don’t put your fingers into your mouth.” she instructs, “Just use your thumb to push the food inside.”
Fharzana Elankumaran, founder of I Heart Curry, where she teaches Indian cooking classes, also grew up eating with her hands in Bangladesh. “I appreciate this way of eating because you have more control over your food,“ she says. “For example, if you’re eating fish or chicken, you don’t have to worry about cutting with a knife around the bones. When you use your fingers, you can get every last bit of meat and so waste less. It’s an expression of the great respect we have for the food.”
In her Indian cooking classes, Elankumaran encourages students to eat with their hands, but finds that it may be a challenge for first-timers. “ Sometimes my students tell me their hands get tired, because they are using a whole new set of muscles.”
Yemeni dish at Oasis Market and Restaurant
On a shopping trip to Oakland’s Oasis Market and Restaurant, I spy manager Rassam Sharif eating his lunch by hand. It’s a Yemeni specialty, fahsa (cooked boneless beef topped with whipped fenugreek, with a salsa-like sauce). Sharif kindly demonstrates his technique: he tears off a bit of tandoori bread, dips it into the meat and salsa, and brings it to his mouth with 3 fingers. Sharif prefers eating by hand because, he says, “You have more connection to your food. With a spoon, it’s just like shoveling something into your mouth to get full. In Islam, we are taught that the Prophet said to eat from your own side of the dish, slowly, with the right hand, just until you are not hungry. It makes you take your time and be mindful of what you’re eating.”
Enough talk, I decide, it’s time for me to get some hands-on tutoring.
Luckily, my request for cross-cultural dining instruction interests Mostafa Raiss El Fenni, owner of Berkeley’s Sahara Home Décor. He invites me to stay for lunch and we sit on intricately carved and painted chairs amid his stunning collection of Moroccan carpets, ottomans, embroidered textiles, brass lanterns, conical clay pots and delicate tea glasses.
Mostafa Raiss El Fenni — Moroccan food
Raiss El Fenni, a former Cal student and chemist, whose shop promotes the works of artists from his homeland, tells me, “Eating with your hands is about sharing,” and as the youngest in a family of 12 children, he got a lot of practice doing that. There is an intimacy formed when you all eat from the same dish dipping in small pieces of bread, he explains. “ And if you find a piece of meat close to you that’s especially good, you can share it with your neighbor.”
“Does each person take the piece of meat and bread onto their own plate?” I ask.
“We don’t have individual plates. We are a very collective society. But if we invite guests over who are not familiar with this way of eating, we show them how it’s done.”
Watch my lesson in eating with the hands, Moroccan style:
In the college dorm, it was a bit of culture shock for Raiss El Fenni that each student ate his own sandwich. “I couldn’t get used to eating by myself. So, I just waited with my food until they were done, and then said, “Hey, want to share? Eventually they got the idea and would offer to share some of their sandwiches with me too.”
Raiss-El-Fenni also hosts Moroccan parties in colorful Berber tents set up outside his shop. Parties range from mint tea and pastries to an all-out catered feast with live music and belly dancers. And of course, he will encourage your guests to eat with their hands for the true Moroccan experience.
Tanjia Moroccan Restaurant
After my tasty lesson, I invite my husband out for a Moroccan meal and tell him I’ll show him how to eat with his hands, so we head over to Tanjia, an Oakland Moroccan restaurant we haven’t yet tried.
We enter the lovely blue and red interior with low couches that let you sit close to your dining companion. But I am disappointed to see the tables set with forks and knives. When I tell the server we hoped to eat in Moroccan fashion, she gladly takes away the silverware and returns with a pot of water and washes our hands.
The first course is an assortment of delicately spiced salads: carrots, eggplant, cucumbers, tomato and bell pepper. Easy to scoop up with chunks of home baked bread. But with the arrival of the lamb and eggplant and chicken with honey and prunes, which are so meltingly tender you can tell they have cooked slowly for hours, my husband chickens-out of the hands-on approach and, to keep him company, I ask for two forks. It’s not so easy to change a lifetimes’s eating habits.
Owner Jamal Zahid recently took over the restaurant from his brother, Said who started Tanjia in 2000. It has always been a “silverware optional restaurant” but seeing the reaction of a younger generation of customers not used to the traditional Moroccan way of dining sans utensils, Zahid decided– as an act of hospitality to his guests– to set the table with forks and knives, a reversal of his brother’s default setting. Personally, Zahid favors eating with the hands as a way to feel connected to the food and savor the meal slowly.
Ethiopian platter and injera – Cafe Colucci
At Oakland’s Café Colucci Ethiopian restaurant, by contrast, forks are nowhere in sight. Injera, the spongy, slightly sour, crepe-like bread made from the teff grain, functions as tablecloth, plate and utensil and the food is served family style, atop a large injera circle. “Eating is almost a sacred ritual,” says owner Fetlework Tefferi, whose award-winning restaurant just celebrated its 20th year. Besides the rules of hand washing and right hand only, she adds another from her native Ethiopia, “Once the tray of food is laid on the table, no one rises until all are done and the tray removed. We chew slowly, with closed mouths and a calm dignity. The food is sacred. It’s not polite to rush through your meal.”
Again, eating with the hand is more than just a mechanism to get sustenance into the mouth. “On certain occasions,” explains Tefferi, “we feed each other by hand, it’s called goorsha and it’s a loving act, an endearment. You might feed a child who is not eating enough or a guest you are entertaining. But if I were to make a bite for a man, “she chuckles,” I need to make sure it’s a big, well-packed roll of injera. I guess it’s a macho thing.” She adds, “We usually don’t eat alone. If you are in a restaurant in Ethiopia, for example, and the people at the next table get served first, they will probably ask you to join them or at least take a few bites with them. That kind of sharing is what holds us together.”
Tefferi demonstrates how to tear off a small square from the rolls of injera in the basket. She describes the technique as “wrap and roll.” You lay your piece of injera over some food and use all your fingers to gather up the filling and twist it into a little packed pouch, which you may dip into several different dishes on the tray. Our platter today has collard greens seasoned with black cumin, cabbage with carrots, potatoes with ginger, garlic and turmeric, lentils in red berbere sauce, yellow split peas in turmeric sauce, Ethiopian cheese and kitfo, a highly seasoned raw meat dish.
“Children are taught to make a bite of food that’s just big enough to fit in their mouth all at once, without stuffing their cheeks and to eat only with their right hands.” Tefferi remembers her mother training her left-handed brother by having him sit with his left hand behind his back.
“In the restaurant, we get 97% American diners. If they ask for silverware, I tell them it will be $10 extra,” teases Tefferi, with a twinkle in her eye, “ I just want them to try eating with their hands.” This gracious cultural ambassador wants to encourage more people to appreciate the 3000-year old cuisine of her homeland. “We need to revisit the way people used to eat; how much they cared and believed that whatever they put into their mouths was sacred,” says Tefferi. “The aroma is important too. Even after you wash up at the end of the meal, the scent of the food remains on your hand. Later, you might hold up your hand to someone else and say “Smell my hand, see how good the food was!”
(It was and I did.)
“Eating with a fork and knife is like making love through an interpreter”
– attributed variously to Prime Minister Nehru and the Shah of Iran
Related links:
A recent study says babies may eat better when they feed themselves with their fingers
Sometimes a simple piece of candy can zoom you back to childhood in an instant. On a recent visit to Powell’s Sweet Shoppe, researching a Valentine’s piece for Bay Area Bites, I spied something among the vintage candies I had completely forgotten existed: Nik-L-Nip wax bottles filled with colored syrups. All of a sudden, I could feel the sticky waxy glob I would bite off to get the sugary juice and hear my mother’s voice warning, “Don’t eat that. It’ll make you sick!” Sneaking forbidden temptations may hold a universal allure harking back to the apple in Eden. Here is a place you can tap into the appeal of the long-ago-forbidden in a Valentine’s Day gift for your sweetie (or even yourself).
Instead of arming Cupid’s bow with an arrow dipped in the latest chocolate-cayenne-goji berry-sea salt-caramel to woo your sweetheart, aim for your honey’s inner child with a retro sugar rush from Powell’s Sweet Shoppe in Berkeley (or other Bay Area locations).
The Valentine table is carpeted in conversation hearts—speaking dialects from Disney princess to Sponge Bob Square Pants—plus a blanket of red and pink jelly beans and cupid corn, valentine Dots, kiss me mints, chocolate covered marshmallow hearts and XOXO lollipops.
It’s easy to get lost in a sugar-coated trip down memory lane browsing the College Avenue shop’s collection of 6000 classic candies in varieties that date from the 20s to the 80s.
The real fun starts with a perusal of the bags and bars on the nostalgia table that run from Abba-Zabba’s to Zotz. “This is where childhood memories are reawakened,” says Shahrazad Junblat, co-owner of the shop with her sister and brother-in-law. “I always hear customers exclaim, ‘Oh my God, I haven’t seen this since I was 5,’ or ‘ Grandma always used to buy me this.’” The vintage treats include: Look!, Big Hunk, Moon Pie, Sugar Babies, pastel button dots on strips of paper, Turkish taffy and Nik-L-Nip wax bottles filled with sweet syrup.
For the sweetest history lesson ever, check out the Candy by the Decade chart on Powell’s website.
Did you know that Bit-O-Honey, Butterfinger, Charleston Chew and Jujubees go way back to the early 1900s?
If you are a 50s Boomer, you’ll remember Fizzies, Pixy Stix, and Hot Tamales.
Flower Child of the 60s? Fruit Stripe gum, Twizzlers and Lemonheads should ring a bell.
Wore Jordache Jeans in the 70s? Pop Rocks and Ring Pops came out in your decade.
Played Pac Man in 80s? Maybe while chomping Runts and Nerds.
(If you are wondering about the “ethnic” angle to this post, it’s in Powell’s imported candies from around the world, coming up here).
Junblat left the corporate world after 20+ years to cheerfully preside over “this happy place.” She personally favors the British imports, including Cadbury bars, Rountree’s Fruit Gums and Aero bubble chocolate, aptly housed in a red British phone booth. Additional foreign imports satisfy both world travelers and expats, such as Australian Kookabura licorice and Violet Crumble bars. Famous Dutch licorice is represented by licorice coins, hard licorice buttons, and salty salmiak rocks.
Gummis range from butterflies, penguins and mice to khaki green army guys and even sunnyside up eggs.
Asked for the latest trend in candy, Junblat quickly replies, “Bacon is the new black.” And points to a table with bacon flavored floss, toothpaste, chocolate, fizzy drinks and lollipops.
Some sweets perform a double duty, like candy beaded necklaces and Melody pops that play a tune.
All manner of jawbreakers sit in jars, from teensy marbles to huge orbs the size of a baby’s head. Aaron Lindstrom, shift manager, admits to keeping a gigantic jawbreaker hidden in a paper bag under his bed when he was in the third grade. He secretly worked on it for months until it was gone.
Powell’s most helpful website also lists candies for those with dietary restrictions and preferences.
It’s nice to know that vegans can still enjoy Swedish Fish, Chick-O-Sticks, Hot Tamales and Boston Baked Beans.
There’s a large number of gluten-free goodies too.
The current adventure actually started ten years ago, when our friend Sylvia learned we were about to leave on a trip to Paris. She pressed $50 into my hand, begging, “You have to get me two kilos of vanille des îles at Thé Mariage Frères.” Sensing my hesitation at possibly transporting a couple of kilos of some unknown (controlled?) substance, she whispered, “Try some yourself, you’ll love it.”
Turned out my friend’s drug of choice was an intensely flavored black tea infused with incomparable vanilla from Madagascar. And to procure it, my family wandered the winding streets of the Marais district of Paris to a quaint teashop with an elegant tea salon that served swoon-worthy pastries. Our then 9-year old daughter, Lila, fell completely under the spell of Thé Mariage Frères, as did my husband and I.
Thanks to a recent work assignment of my husband’s, the three of us are back again in Paris for a week. But this time—because of Bay Area Bites—I have an appointment to interview Monsieur Loris Thibaud, the man in charge of Thè Mariage Frères, in my role as journaliste amèricaine, and 19-year old Lila (a college sophomore and art major) will be my photographer.
When we enter, the teashop is abuzz with last minute shoppers. The walls are lined with hundreds of large timeworn tins labeled with mysterious names like fleur de désir, thé des impressionnistes and rose de porcelaine, from which white-suited clerks scoop and weigh the aromatic mixtures on ancient scales.
Monsieur Thibaud greets us and leads us up the narrow staircase to the little museum where we can talk tea in relative quiet among antique pots, canisters and baskets. He shares a little history:
As the oldest beverage in the world, tea began its reign in China 5000 years ago and moved on to Japan, Persia, the Islamic world, Russia and then to Europe in the seventeenth century. In 1665, after King Louis XIV‘s doctors told him tea would benefit his digestion, the King sent brothers Nicholas and Peter Mariage to Persia and Madagascar, respectively, to sign trade agreements and gather up the magical stuff.
Several generations of Mariages stayed true to the trade of tea importing and finally in 1854, Henri and Edouard Mariage commenced wholesaling to the restaurants and hotels of Paris. But despite the venerable looking, colonial design of the tea counter, this charming retail shop only opened in 1984 and currently, there are no more Mariage family members in the business.
The French take their tea as they take their wine: quite seriously and Thè Mariage Frères prints up a list of essential rules to make their tea correctly, which might actually come in handy since their collection of teas include black, white and green varieties from over 30 countries. But their specialty is fragrant blends, created much like perfume, by combining aromas and tastes, selecting from hundreds of scents: including the leaves, flowers, bark, seeds, roots, leaf-oil and fruit of an entire arboretum of plants.
After a bit of a wait in line, Lila and I are seated in the elegant tea salon, with its custard yellow walls and potted plants, surrounded by stylish patrons and their tea-fueled chatter. We order sandwiches first: melted cheese with smoked salmon and a smoked chicken with creamy spread, both served on greenish matcha tea bread.
In fact, Mariage Frères has pioneered the art of cooking with tea and every dish on their menu incorporates some form of tea, from tea flavored jelly, to tea infused rice and vinaigrette to a tart topped with pears poached in hibiscus tea, and a chocolate cream pie featuring bergamot, the essence of Earl Grey.
Each table sports a few of their exclusively designed teapots, which encase the black or white porcelain in a silver shell to help keep the tea warm (without need for a British tea cozy). Over the years, I’ve enjoyed a number of their teas, (especially black teas with fruit, like peach, mango or black currant.) But today, Lila and I return to our first love, the intoxicating vanille des îles.
Lucky us in the East Bay can buy some (but not all their hundreds of varieties) at Market Hall Market on College Avenue!
Back in Paris: The next morning, we are up early, exploring vintage clothing shops in the cobblestoned Montmartre neighborhood where we are staying. Lila notices the welcoming window of an adorable tea spot called MILK, which stands for “Mum in her Little Kitchen.”
No way we’re going to pass that up. So we head in for a mid-morning tea and toast that eventually leads to a decadent pistachio and chocolate fondant. The table is set with pots of homemade jam in flavors like strawberry mint or spiced clementine, plus a banana, date and coconut spread. The cozy space feels exactly like we’re sitting in someone’s 1960s kitchen, with Formica dinette sets in crayola colors and flowered dishes. Owner, Deborah Habib makes all the goodies daily in her kitchen in the back of the room. Her father is our server. Habib also sells cute accessories, arranged in niches around the room, which include a motley collection of paisley aprons, mushroom magnets and kitchen elves. Luckily, Lila has her camera along to capture the photogenic bric-a-brac.
I thought this story was just going to be about Mariage Frères, but it seems to be expanding. So I tell Lila, “If we’re going do more than one tea salon, we need to do three or four.” Tea parties have actually been a recurrent theme in our lives. A china cabinet holding my grandmother’s collection of English bone china teacups and saucers resides in a treasured corner of my dining room. When she was little, Lila loved giving tea parties, first for her teddy bears and then for her friends. Sometimes, in the more turbulent teen years, a shared cup of tea from a flowery teapot could call a momentary truce on eye-rolling or nagging. Now that she is away at college in Canada most of the year, our tea sharing opportunities have dwindled. What could be better than a mutual quest for unique Parisian tea salons?
Lana, a Paris native and family friend, who is the same age as Lila, suggests our next destination, La Fourmi Ailée. The robin’s egg-blue exterior of this intimate restaurant stands out amidst the historic buildings nestled in the shadow of Nôtre Dame. Its interior resembles something out of a fairy tale, with a whimsical painted ceiling of clouds, plenty of book-lined shelves, and a row of pre-loved teapots along the windowsill. Although a full lunch menu is available, we arrive after the kitchen has closed. The tea is good, but I find the pastries a bit odd: apple streudel with mushrooms?! It’s a sweet, funky place to sit and sip tea, especially if you are in your twenties, but my taste in Parisian tea salons runs more to gracious elegance.
We end the week in style, with a visit to a glorious tea salon in the spacious dining room of a 19th century mansion that is now a museum—Musée Jacquemart-André. Nélie Jacquemart and Edouard André were avid Italian art collectors as well as husband and wife. The opulent rooms of their former residence, filled with exquisite paintings, sculptures and furnishings, provide an intimate opportunity for visitors to engage with the works of art.
In their former dining room, the walls are hung with tapestries and the space is dotted by huge flower-filled, burgundy vases, that match the floor-length drapery and thick carpet. When we are seated, the tea service is polite and refined.
I pick a luscious wedge of plum pie and Lila chooses a decadent raspberry cream tart. We drink Ceylon tea, perfumed with aromas of strawberry, cherry, raspberry and redcurrant. Outside the windows, massive stone lions guard the manicured garden. The tea is fragrant, the pastry perfect. Lila and I sigh contentedly. This is a moment to savor.
Lisa Rogovin, Epicurean Concierge - Edible Excursions
Sometimes I get an intense longing for exotic adventure, the kind of cultural immersion that involves being faced with novel situations and sampling untried goodies. Fortunately, there is such an adventure so close to the East Bay that we don’t need to pay for a plane ticket, just a toll across the Bay Bridge. It’s in San Francisco’s Japantown, a place I’ve visited several times in a kind of timid way, not really venturing out of my culinary comfort zone. So when I was invited to join Edible Excursions’ new Japantown tour, that promised an introduction to “hidden restaurants” and “neighborhood ‘secrets’ often passed over by rushed visitors,” I was hungry to learn. Although I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to Japanese cuisine, epicurean concierge, Lisa Rogovin introduced me to a new set of sweet and savory yummies hiding in plain sight.
The former ad exec for Gourmet Magazine, whose company provides tasting tours of the Mission, Ferry Building and Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto, was recently asked by Japantown’s Merchant Association to add a tour of the 4-block area centered on Post and Buchanan. After having done her cultural homework, Lisa ushered a half dozen of us through the warrens of a pair of concrete mall structures that anchor Japantown, as well as some surrounding streets in order to educate and tantalize our taste buds.
Surprisingly, our outing began with a non-Japanese beverage, a warm sweet potato latte at Yakiniq Café, where owner Christy Hwang serves the traditional Korean comfort drink, made with sweet potato, syrup and foamed milk. Lisa informed us that besides Japanese shops and restaurants, Japantown encompasses a few Korean dining spots and even a Danish Bakery.
As we sipped our hot drinks in the funky, art-lined café, Lisa issued a gentle warning, “This will be three and a half hours of eating; so pace yourselves.” That caveat was promptly forgotten as soon as we drained our cups of foamy liquid.
On our walk to our next stop, Lisa gave us a short rundown on the history of Japantown, which began to take shape just after the 1906 earthquake when Japanese San Franciscans needed a place to gather for community support. At its height, it stretched for 36 blocks until WWII internment orders emptied the thriving neighborhood, uprooting its residents and merchants. After the war, many came back to rebuild their lives. In 1968, an urban renewal project bulldozed old Victorians and erected the imposing concrete buildings still at its center, whose fortress-like exterior may seem daunting to uninitiated visitors.
One artifact from the original Japantown that is very much alive is Benkyodo, an unassuming little diner and bakery, that makes traditional fresh mochi confections.
This family business opened in 1906, and is now run by brothers Ricky and Robert Okamura, grandsons of the original owner. Entering their long narrow café, we discovered a split personality: the right side features a low orange Formica counter, matching leatherette bar stools and a Coca Cola menu board with changeable red and black plastic letters that dates from the 50s. Fare and prices also seem to be frozen in time (hot dog $3.15, hamburger $3.10)—just the thing to attract a cadre of regulars. The left side is dominated by the bakery case, which on this late December Friday attracted a crowd of shoppers, standing in line to buy special handmade mochi and manju pastries for the New Year. We sampled chubby, chewy rice flour orbs filled with sweet red beans or blueberries.
Sadly, our next stop was a piece of Japantown history that was just about to close after 105 years in business, Uoki K. Sakai market. There we tasted an earthy hijiki seaweed salad and crunchy burdock and carrot salad from their deli while Lisa clued us in on preparing sushi rice using rice vinegar powder sold at the store. There are two other markets still left in Japantown.
From the oldest businesses, we transitioned to visit the latest addition to Japantown, the New People complex, a narrow, stylish white edifice which houses the SF Film Society, a café and retail stores such as Sou-Sou for tabi (divided shoes and socks) with bold fabric designs and Baby the Stars Shine Bright for Lolita frilly pink dresses.
We stopped downstairs at Onigilly for an updated version of the ubiquitous Japanese finger food, onigiri, balls or triangles of white rice wrapped in seaweed, which may be stuffed with pickled plum or cooked salmon. In Japan, these portable meals are sold in train stations, convenience stores and are as much a part of bento lunchboxes as our PB&J sandwiches.
Onigilly (a play the American pronunciation of onigiri) is the creation of Koji Kanematsu, the first male to go through La Cocina’s food business incubator program. He updated the traditional snacks using brown rice and fillings such as eggplant, hijiki and spicy scallop, as well as the traditional pickled plum. Onigilly also operates a food cart in Justin Herman Plaza and other locations around town.
After this substantial snack and a quick tour of the trendy shops in New People, we headed across the street to the Japan Center. As we entered the busy mall, Lisa, an engaging and knowledgeable guide who was inspired by her own cultural curiosity, told us, “You’ll notice we won’t be having any sushi, tempura or teriyaki today. I want to introduce you to new things and demystify some Japanese dishes that might be unfamiliar to you.”
Our eating adventure continued at Mifune Don, where we sat down for another mainstay of real Japanese cooking that is not commonly known to foreigners. Okonomiyaki is called a “savory pancake” but the name literally means “what you like” and is a tasty way to use leftovers. These large grilled discs usually contain some combination of eggs, shredded yam, cabbage, meat, or seafood, topped with a special brown sauce and squiggles of Japanese mayonnaise. They are sprinkled with bonita shavings, whose eerie 3-D undulations seemed to be waving at me, inviting me to partake in this hearty, vegetable griddlecake. My first okonomiyaki was a satisfying discovery and definitely will not be my last.
Then our group of locals and out of state visitors shifted into an intense assault on sweetness, starting with a neon-hued, mini Geisha float—green tea ice cream topped with red beans, green tea syrup and red mochi cubes at Carol Murata’s Café Hana.
For our second dessert, we strolled over to May’s Coffee Shop, run by Carol’s mother May Murata since 1973, to sample taiyaki, a fish-shaped sweet with a long history. In Japanese culture, the sea bream is considered a symbol of good luck and these distinctively shaped pastries are made by pouring waffle-like batter into metal molded trays and topping with red beans, chocolate or other fillings. The two halves of the fish are then folded together and cooked until golden brown. They originated in Tokyo in 1909.
Full of lucky fish pastries, we ducked into Nippon-Ya, a stylish shop specializing in omiyage, the artfully wrapped regional specialties that Japanese visitors commonly bring back from their travels for friends and co-workers. Beautifully boxed mochi in fruit flavors, plus cookies, tea and other souvenirs from all over Japan are their most popular selections. We were offered tastes of creamy chocolate mochi.
On our way out of the building Lisa pointed out shops that carry stickers, stationery and fashion and then impossibly announced that it was time for lunch. A 3-course lunch at that, with wakame, a slippery green seaweed salad, a pair of mini gyozas and a big bowl of steaming nabeyaki noodle soup with vegetables, fish cake, chicken, shrimp tempura and udon or soba noodles. The key ingredient of the soup is the dashi flavored broth and Mifune Bistro’s dashi had a strong, clear taste.
As I waddled out after lunch, much wiser and definitely much fuller than before I started the tour, I made mental note of the dozen new tastes I’d sampled, and wondered if this is how sumo wrestlers begin to build their girth.
Edible Excursions’ Japantown tour is offered every Friday and the second Saturday of the month, from 11-2:30, for $85. Itinerary may vary.
