If one mayor represented all of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, that person's 2.5 million constituents would live in the country's fourth-largest city. And just as these East Bay counties are very different from the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, the East Bay Express is a very different paper. From the international populations that make Oakland and Richmond so dynamic, to the ideological diversity that separates Berkeley from Walnut Creek, our readers are united by their love of a region that is second to nowhere in beauty, livability, intellectual firepower, and cosmopolitan charm.
Every week, the Express provides these well-educated world travelers the only medium dedicated exclusively to them. From our authoritative cover stories; to our in-depth local reporting, arts and dining coverage; to the area's most comprehensive weekly calendar; the East Bay Express has been this vibrant region's leading voice since 1978.
Kathryn Harper is a Renaissance woman; she has worked as a librarian, psychotherapist, and community advocate. She grew up in the snow belt of Syracuse, New York, and headed to Austin, Texas, in 1994 for the sunshine, job opportunities, and barbeque. In 2004 she moved further west to the scenic and culturally diverse San Francisco Bay Area. Kathryn is also a self-taught artist, poet, and an omnivorous, voracious reader. Believing passionately in the innate creativity of all humans, she dedicates her life to igniting curiosity, promoting creative and critical thinking, and inspiring enthusiasm for lifetime learning. Kathryn can always be persuaded to savor a good meal, play board games, or dance. She lives in Santa Clara, California, with her husband, her amazing daughter Claire (born 9/8/07), and Stella the cat.
The intention of this blog is for people to post their own food experiences or stories of restaurants, cafes or diners in Alameda, CA. One person could potentially eat at every single food establishment in Alameda since the city is still quite small, but I have not come across that special person just yet.
Alemany Farm is a 4.5 acre working organic farm in southeastern San Francisco. The Farm is collaboratively managed by volunteers, San Francisco city officials, and residents of the Alemany community. Friends of Alemany Farm (FoAF) is a volunteer-managed project sponsored by the San Francisco Parks Trust. We are dedicated to working hand-in-hand with the surrounding community to increase food security and support environmental education for all San Francisco residents. FoAF oversees organic food production at the site, offers workshops and educational courses, coordinates the volunteer efforts, manages a free neighborhood produce delivery, and hosts field trips for children and adults.
Food and wine. I cover anything in those universes. I prefer handcrafted and artisanal foods, because those usually taste better. I'm a member of Slow Food, and The Art of Eating is my favorite food magazine. If you're familiar with either of those, you know my take on the food universe. If you're not familiar with them, you should be. I believe that our industrial agriculture system has created a wealth of problems and I figure it will in time go careening off the cliff of its own short-sightedness.
Bay Area Bites is part of KQED's Blog Authors Collaborative. Blog contributors and commentators are solely responsible for their content. If you're interested in writing or contributing to a blog on kqed.org, email us with your idea. Bay Area Bites, KQED's aggregate food blog, is dedicated to providing a variety of food-related information from the Bay Area and beyond. BAB bloggers are culinary professionals, food writers, and cookbook editors. Many have local food blogs of their own. Blogger profiles are online so you can learn more about each BAB contributor. KQED advocates citizen media and has started aggregate blogs to provide a forum for alternative, non-mainstream points of view, including those of the user. BAB is committed to providing accurate and honest information. Posts are based on individual bloggers' opinions. These perspectives are not necessarily the opinions of KQED. KQED Interactive supports BAB bloggers' contributions and has provided ethical and stylistic guidelines for them to follow.
The Becks & Posh food blog was started in 5 minutes on a whim. Back in May 2004 then work colleague, Tim, was perhaps a little tired of hearing Sam rattle on about food all day long. "Why don't you start a blog?" he said. "A blog?", she replied, "What's that?". Tim explained to Sam that a blog was an online diary and that perhaps she could write one with restaurant reviews. He pointed her in the direction of blogger.com and thus, with what now reads like a rather naive review of Sushi Groove South, Becks & Posh was born. Sam would like to point out that she has absolutely no particular affection for, admiration of, or affinity with Victoria Posh Spice and David Beckham after whom the blog is named. She spent about 3 nanoseconds thinking of the trivial title, never dreaming that one day people would actually read her blog. 'Becks & Posh' is extremely tenuous modern cockney rhyming slang for 'nosh', which is in itself slang for food. Hence Becks & Posh was started in a void, and it was another 3 months before Sam discovered that the were actually other food blogs in the world, and that the biggest gift that blogging would bring her would be the chance to join such an amazing and supportive community of like-minded people.
Burritos, taco trucks, The Mission, technology, Macs, iPhones, Canada — so much to discuss.
Pim grew up in Bangkok, was shipped off to study in other places, and somehow found herself living and loving it in the San Francisco Bay Area. She quit her Silicon Valley job in 2005 to pursue a career in food: the writing, reporting, and basically anything interesting thereof that comes her way. Her recipes, writings, and photographs have since appeared in the New York Times, Food & Wine Magazine, Bon Appétit magazine. She's also moonlighted as a judge on Iron Chef America.
Chez Pim chronicles her globetrotting adventures –and misadventures- in the world of all things edible, from vibrant street-side fares in Asia to the refined world of Three Michelin Star restaurants in Europe. Pim also cooks a mean pot of curry.
Hi! I'm Amy Sherman, a San Francisco–based cookbook author, food writer and recipe developer. I launched the blog, Cooking with Amy, in 2003. Not long after it was chosen one of the top five food blogs by Forbes and also singled out by The Guardian (UK) as a top food blog. It has received over 2 million visits.
On the blog I offer original recipes, reviews, commentary, news and culinary travel information. I hope you enjoy visiting as much as I enjoy writing and sharing my discoveries.
I am honored that my blog is listed as a “Site we Love” by Saveur, linked to as a favorite by Cooking Light, Epicurious, Good Housekeeping and Redbook among others and was “blog of the day” on the Julie & Julia movie web site.
I write for various magazines, including Cheers, where I write about food and beverage pairing. I also write about trends and culinary travel for Epicurious, write restaurant reviews for SF Station (a local city guide) and was a weekly contributor at KQED’s food blog, Bay Area Bites for over five years. I was also contributing editor at Glam and wine and spirits writer at Project Foodie.
I am the author of Williams-Sonoma New Flavors for Appetizers and Wine Passport: Portugal (SmartsCo) and wrote the introduction to a recent reprint of the classic Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book.
Single Asian male living in the SF Bay Area. Self-taught home cook, into sharing recipes and reviews. Loves traveling and discovering new food. Seeks like-minded foodies.
Cheryl Porro – software quality engineer by day, erstwhile baker for hire by night – stumbled upon the world of food blogs through a forwarded link, sent by a friend, admirer, and consumer of Cheryl’s baking experiments. A few hours of surfing later, the rest was history…
Although a devoted baker since the age of 13, Cheryl simply wasn’t ready to abandon the reliable world of software for the high-stakes game of owning a bakery. But the creativity, the exchange, and the inspiration she found among this community of food bloggers – this was just the outlet she needed! In short order, Cheryl signed up for her very own blog, and Cupcake Bakeshop was born that fateful day in March 2005.
Baking, namely cupcakes, has since taken residence in Cheryl’s day-to-day life. Cupcake Bakeshop has evolved into a place to experiment, inspire, create, and share her work with others. Cheryl continues to lead a double-life as an amateur baker and full-time professional software quality engineer, with a degree in chemical engineering. She has also become a dedicated food blogger and amateur food photographer (her main client being herself).
Cheryl lives in San Francisco with her musician husband, new baby, and sensitive Boston terrier and can be found during her lunch breaks at the Ferry Building Marketplace coveting pricey ingredients.
About the Blog
Cupcakeblog.com is about – you guessed it – cupcakes. More specifically each post features a unique cupcake recipe created by Cheryl Porro and accompanied by her own photography. The recipes on Cupcakeblog.com reflect Cheryl’s food philosophy – think slow food meets sweets.
Cupcakeblog.com has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle food section (print and web), in the San Francisco edition of The Onion (print only), in the fall 2007 edition of Adorn Magazine (print only), on Yahoo! 9 Web TV (the 9th story), as a Yahoo! Pick, in Yahoo! Buzz (the ‘cool’ link), and in the Wall Street Journal Online blog watch.
Fat Bottom Bakery
Oakland, California, United States
Fat Bottom Bakery is a project started by Carolynn and Ashley in Oakland, Ca-- the manifestation of our desire to spread delicious, cute, cruelty-free things to the world.
Keep up with us through our blog and look around town-- you'll be seeing us around at shows, Pride, parks, parties, and maybe even farmer's markets!
Foodie Friday started when a group of friends at Cal, jaded by the dorm food at Crossroads their freshman year, began cooking once a week in their apartments. It started off simple, with pastas and chilis, and gradually evolved into a weekly event with themes like Fondue Night and Southern Night.
When a core group of them lived together in the summer of 2009, and began cooking together throughout the week, the Foodie Friday blog was born to chronicle their adventures.
Forage Oakland is a project that- at its core- works to address how we eat everyday, and how everyone can benefit from viewing their neighborhood as a veritable edible map, considering what is cultivated in any given neighborhood and why, and what histories influence those choices. The gleaning of unharvested fruits; the meeting of new neighbors; the joy of the season's first hachiya persimmon (straight from your neighbor's backyard, no less); the gathering and redistribution of fruits that would otherwise be wasted- can be powerful and can work to create a new paradigm around how we presently think about food in our collective consciousness. Imagine gathering several friends for morning, midday, evening or weekend foraged city bicycle rides through your neighborhood.
We are Funk Town Farm, a community garden located in the area known to locals as “funk town” in East Oakland. The garden was started in 2008 behind 219 East 15th Street at 3rd Avenue and two blocks up from Lake Merrit. We are a group of novice and experienced gardeners who want to grow our own produce (and flowers) to use and sell at a sliding scale farm stand on Sunday mornings. We also raise chickens for eggs, as well as involve the community in “sponsoring a chicken” and composting. We want to provide our neighbors with the opportunity to have fresh organic fruit, veggies and eggs no matter what their socioeconomic status may be. Unlike most community gardens we garden together on our lot and share the produce. Each hours work = one basket of produce.
A child of back-to-the-land hippies, I grew up in rural Idaho and Washington State. I went to University of Washington in Seattle where I majored in Biology and English. I’ve had many odd jobs including: assassin bug handler, book editor, media projectionist, hamster oocyte collector, and most recently, free-lance journalist.
I studied under Michael Pollan at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism for two years. My journalistic work reflects my interests–in farming, food, the environment, and culture. In a nutshell, I like to tell stories about people who follow unconventional paths.
I'm just your average 30-something year old guy who likes to eat and cook (not necessarily in that order.) I currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area with my partner Dean and our two dogs. Over the years, I've amassed quite a collection of cookbooks, taken a few classes, and used many friends as guinea pigs for my culinary experiments. On this site, I'll share with you some favorite recipes and some funny stories from my numerous attempts to discover "is it ED-ible?" Contact: IsItEDible AT gmail DOT com
This little blog turns six years old this week. I was being interviewed for a project recently and was trying to describe why I started my blog. At the time, there were very few food bloggers, and I started because I needed a creative outlet. I always thought that I didn't start with any specific purpose, but looking back at the beginning, it's obvious that I was destined to write about food and farmers and farmers markets.
The most remarkable thing about starting Life Begins at 30 is how much it has infiltrated every part of my life. Even when I'm not writing here on a daily basis, things I do each day are some way related to the fact that I started this blog.
When I sat down to write this post, I went through every blog post I've written to find my favorites. The posts you see quoted below may surprise you -- they are not necessarily the most popular, or the most important. But to me, they played an interesting part in the life of this blog.
Thanks friends and readers. You are the reason this blog is still going.
Livermore Links is the hyperlocal news blog focusing on the Livermore Valley, located in the East Bay's Tri-Valley region.
When my husband, Alejandro, and I moved from Brooklyn to Berkeley, we knew we’d find warmer weather and greener pastures. We had no idea we’d be in for year-round produce, the likes of which I’ve only seen in Italy.
The decision was not an easy one, with family and friends living in New York – but something about the daily subway ride into Manhattan and the supersonic speed of life told us it was time for a change. So, we quit our jobs, packed our things and set out on a two-week cross-country adventure that brought us to our new home in sunny California.
One of my favorite things about Berkeley, besides the food, is the smell. Every time I walk outside I breath in citrus and roses – hence, Local Lemons. It makes sense that a place with such sweet air would produce amazing food.
Mission Loc@l believes that by covering a neighborhood fairly and thoroughly, we can build community and a sustainable model for quality journalism.
As part of that effort, we seek collaboration and experimentation that will serve the community we cover and journalism. In the Mission District that means being a bilingual site and using print, multimedia and video to deliver information that offers diverse residents a way to connect and stay informed.
The site launched in October 2008, opened an office in the Mission District in January and many of us are Mission residents.
The project is part of an initiative in hyper-local coverage developed by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and supported by the school, the Ford Foundation and other donors.
Our aim is to become a self-sustaining model for public private partnerships that involve journalism schools, private foundations and community supporters.
This summer’s staff includes five interns from UC Berkeley, one intern from SF State and a visiting scholar from Mexico. We also participate in collaborations to mentor young journalists.
We’re a fast-growing news and features website bringing our readers more interesting, more compelling and more important stories about the people, places and things in Marin County.
MoreMarin.com debuted in Spring of 2008, as a small, online-only news source. Since then, we’ve added multiple sections including cultural, environmental and outdoor activities coverage, food reviews and the most comprehensive and up-to-date restaurant database in Marin.
The big guys have taken notice—we’ve recently partnered with SFGate.com. Our stories now appear on their website daily, and that has boosted our traffic dramatically.
My Organic Day is a blog that was created in 2006 by Christine (Lin) Patel with a passion for sustainable, green living with a focus on organic food and events in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have been an advisor for Om Organics, a nonprofit dedicated to local and organic products and services in the Bay Area and also a volunteer walking tourguide for Cityguides, a nonprofit dedicated to tours in San Francisco.
You can contact me at christine<at>myorganicday.com. I hope you enjoy the blog!
Oakland Local is a news & community blog for Oakland that combines reported stories, blog posts & news and events from over 35 community and nonprofit partners. Updated several times a day, OL takes a social justice approach to Oakland issues including food access, climate change, development and transportation. We are diverse and reflect many voices...and we welcome new bloggers, community members, and writers. If you are a blogger in Oaktown, list yourself in our directory--we have 186 blogs there--are you among them?
Oakland North is a news project of U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. With support from the Ford Foundation, graduate student reporters at the School are creating focused news outlets to concentrate on different parts of the Bay Area. Our goals are to improve local coverage, experiment with online and digital media, and listen to you–about the stories and features that most interest you, the issues that concern you, the information services you want, and the reporting you’d like to see undertaken in your own community.
Oakland North is staffed this fall by the reporting students of Cynthia Gorney and Kara Platoni, both journalists who have lived in Oakland for years. You can click here for bios of all 18 students.
We hope to keep Oakland North a source of news and community conversation, and we welcome all comments, corrections and suggestions. Please check out our sibling news outlet across the bay, Mission Local, covering San Francisco’s Mission district; and look for the launch this fall of the new Richmond Confidential.
We all take seriously our Ford Foundation mandate, which is to explore new ways to give communities back the coverage they’re losing as regional newspapers shrink–and also to be inventive about what digital journalism can do for all of us in the future. We’re learning new ways of telling stories in sound pictures, in cellphone dispatches, and in other forms of back-and-forth still under development.
Oliveto is a restaurant with varied interests and experiences. We opened in 1986, and are known (possibly only somewhat known) for being at or near the front of many ideas that later became more common practice (olive oil, salumi, extensive menu of quality house –made pastas, whole animals use, to name a few). We approach things with lots of energy and integrity, and we try not to take short cuts. We like to keep things fresh, and this web journal is our latest idea in that vein. It puts to use many of our interests, skills and experiences.
In this new journal of stories, movies, cooking information and news we hope to give you an insider’s look at the workings of our restaurant community, of Oliveto, as a part of a larger community in which we live. We also think that we are entering a time when people want to actually know where their food comes from not just for wholesomeness and nutrition or for assigning it worth, but for the joy and satisfaction that can come of it—a fuller more connected life.
The first time you had your shoes taken off - how surprised were you to see that you still had toes?
Absolutely shocked... I was expecting something bigger ;)
Welcome to The Bay Area, a new New York Times blog covering stories of interest to readers from the nine counties that embrace neighborhoods from Mountain View to Mt. Tam to Mt. Hamilton, Pleasanton to Palo Alto to Petaluma, San Jose to San Rafael to San Pablo, Fremont to Fairfield to the Farallones.
You get the idea.
Think of The Bay Area as a café with good coffee (or tea), comfortable armchairs and permission to talk to one’s neighbors, who are generally interesting and informed. Here, you’ll find conversations on the region’s politics, entertainment, crime, education and, of course, food. It is a discussion that is taking place in all the local micro cultures and micro climates, among neighbors, bloggers, family members, friends and co-workers.
We will point to interesting stories in The New York Times, which recently launched the Bay Area Report, a section with coverage of news, arts, wining, dining and lifestyles that appears on Friday and Sunday. We will also highlight local news and information from regional media, bloggers, student publications and Twitter. We will report news live from meetings, public gatherings and other events.
Join us, please, with your ideas and comments, photos and videos (bayarea@nytimes.com). The Bay Area is more than a region around the San Francisco Bay. Wallace Stegner might call it a geography of the spirit. And there are fault lines rumbling every day.
The Ethicurean was founded in May 2006 by me (Bonnie Powell) and my friends JC Costello, Erika Bodoin aka Omniwhore (who came up with our name), Kathryn aka Corn Maven, and the Butter Bitch and Miss Steak (who prefer to remain anonymous due to their corporate jobs). Since then, several more writers have joined us; we now have contributors in six states. (Meet/contact the Ethicureans.) We have more than 20,000 unique visitors a month, and over 40,000 page views.
For any of you readers that have been to Maverick it is very likely you have had chance to taste this high quality product which we have prepared several ways. The last time we served antelope it was ground fine with minced shallots, capers, egg yolk, cilantro and ancho chili sauce to put a Maverick twist on the classic steak tartare. Guests will be enthusiastic about our next preparation in which we cut filets out from the leg muscle, marinate it and grill it.
It’s the same all over the world. Knock on a door. Pick up a phone. Stop a stranger on the street. Ask a question. You might get the brush off, or you might hear a story. Oakland and Berkeley are no different from anywhere else. Yet, in this metropolitan area of half a million people where 89 languages are spoken, tech entrepreneurs share buildings with potters, and one of the world’s great universities sits not five miles from one of the world’s great ports, too many stories are left untold.
The OakBook wants to tell some of those stories. And we want to offer a place where you can tell yours. We will bring you news from the schools your children attend, the ways your neighborhood is changing, new art, new theater, and new places to eat and drink. Our website invites you to give your take, whether it’s on an old cafe, a new charter school, or some outrageous plan hatched in City Hall. We’d love for you to tell us what we should be covering. So, send us your feedback. We want to hear from you
When walking down the streets of Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville, I often see folks I know. Waving to the familiar faces makes me happy, as I have a home amidst the city! From my morning latte at Peet’s to my Sunday shopping at the Farmer’s market, I enjoy all the East Bay offers. Follow this real estate blog covering the beautiful cities of the East Bay!
This is a place where a new Oaklander shares ideas about eating local, sometimes eating from an urban garden, sometimes having noteworthy experiences in an urban garden, regular trips to the farmers market, cooking in a tiny kitchen, sometimes eating out, and the occasional great bottle of wine.
The purpose is to add my voice to the many Bay Area locals who are making locavore work. I’ll warn you, I’m not a purist, and I’ll not even define local, but I hate waste and love people. I save zip lock bags, rescue lettuce from the Lucky’s dumpster, share chickens with my neighbors and love an impromptu covered dish.
You’re invited to comment, dispute, approve, answer my questions and ask your own. Can’t wait to hear from you!
Welcome to the Public Press, an emerging concept for a noncommercial daily Web/print/broadcast collaborative news service. The idea is to put journalism first -- operating as a nonprofit organization that prioritizes public service over commerce.
One idea is to eliminate advertising altogether, creating a robustly independent specialized vehicle for serious news. A newspaper born in the 21st century could experiment with new forms of "reverse" publishing -- pulling commentary, blogs and alternative news perspectives into print dynamically.
Vegansaurus is a vegan eating/living guide to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is definitive/arbitrary.
VinDivine, what to drink, where to eat, what to buy and an all-around how-to guide for going through life, having a blast!
VinDivine is a blog dedicated to food, wine, travel, gadgets and things to do, from San Francisco to New York City and beyond!
email: info@vindivine.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/vindivine
Vinography began on January 15th, 2004 as a personal project for founder and editor Alder Yarrow. The site is now a respected source for non-mainstream wine writing, and one of the most influential wine blogs on the Internet. Featuring wine and sake reviews, restaurant reviews, editorials, book reviews, wine news, and wine event coverage, Vinography publishes new content daily to a global readership. The site's contributors work hard to create an alternative to the traditional sources and styles of wine journalism, partially through its emphasis on the stories, the people, and the passion behind wine, all told from a decidedly down-to-earth perspective.
In her professional life, Wanda Hennig is a writer, an editor, a photographer, a traveler and a communications consultant specializing, these days, in social media. She is also a certified life and business coach with post-graduate degrees in psychology and education (counseling and teaching). Her experience includes working in newsrooms, on magazines, and in nonprofit and corporate communications in South Africa and the Bay Area. She was previously editor of Diablo magazine, writes regularly for Oakland and Alameda magazines, and spent 18 months on the Oakland Tribune copy desk. Her intention with this Wordpress site, set up in web magazine format, was to develop and share online competencies, to write and publish, to get conversation flowing, and to offer writing and coaching services, among other things. She has a secondary site (/delicious-life) where she blogs, as time permits. She also writes for examiner.com (San Francisco Culinary Travel).
Based in the Bay Area, Jeanne Brophy is a freelance writer focused on the culture and history of food. When not writing she has a career with one of the top ten travel agencies as a marketing professional. Areas of specialty range from San Francisco, regional foods, food marketing, cookbook reviewing to the history and cultural foodways around the world. She has also contributed to cookbooks as a recipe tester, written professionally for organizations such as Napa Valley Vitners Association and Pasqua Coffee. In additon Jeanne is an exhibiting photographic artist. Most recently she won the Gourmet Magazine Cook the Cover competition. World on a Plate, a writing portfolio, has been maintained since July 2004.
Hi there! My name is Fanny, food writer at YummySF.com. This food blog started in 2007, after my first trip to the Winter Fancy Food Show. YummySF was a way to share my discoveries of healthy, unique, and delicious natural food products as well as favorite recipes and restaurants.
In San Francisco, you can find a rich culture of restaurants that cater to vegans and raw foodists as well as almost any ethnic food you can imagine. That’s one of the reasons why San Francisco is a top destination for tourists from around the world. Whether you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or you want to visit our beautiful city, check out YummySF for my latest food adventures.
