FOLLOW US
Food & Drink
Town Biscuits crafts butter-forward biscuits
Chas Barwick defines a good biscuit as, “One that doesn’t crumble to pieces when you bite into it, and really butter-forward.” Barwick opened Town Biscuits last fall with her husband, Will Kovach, a chef with 15 years...
Green Girl Bakeshop inspires loyalty and national distribution
This aging body doesn’t absorb sugar the way it used to. The heady days of rushes and highs are behind me. Whether it’s disguised in pastries, swimming in scoops of ice cream or layered in cake, sugar...
Teni East Kitchen relocates to Piedmont Avenue
When we walked into the new Turkish restaurant on Berkeley’s Fourth Street, more than half of the tables sat empty. But without a reservation, even on a sleepy weeknight, they weren’t seating customers inside or outside on...
Greenling Fish Market champions local seafood
Since last fall’s crabbing season, Greenling Fish Market has sold locally caught fish—halibut, cod, rockfish and salmon—at the South Berkeley Farmers’ Market. The Greenling setup has a completely different backdrop at Fisherman’s Wharf in the city. I...
Bake Sum balances expansion with employee well-being
In 2021, Joyce Tang started Bake Sum at the Bread Project’s commissary kitchen. Five years later the bakery moved into a second location in Alameda. Since those first pastry box pop-ups in Berkeley, Bake Sum has expanded...
Kantine brings Nordic cooking home
Laminated pastries are my primary vice. If they’re in any way descended from or related to their European ancestors, I’ve sought them out in every Bay Area county. But Scandinavian baked goods have never held my attention—at...
Umami Mart bottles a taste of Japan
Umami Mart started as a blog and then materialized IRL as a pop-up in Oakland before expanding into its current incarnation as a specialty market and sake bar. Friends since childhood, Kayoko Akabori and Yoko Kumano were...
