The name of Chef Michauxnée Olier’s restaurant, Willows & Pine, pays homage to her family’s history in Oakland. When she was growing up, her mother and grandmother worked at The Barn, which used to be on Pine Street in West Oakland. “I loved being in that space because it was family, it was home,” she said. And the first house her great-grandparents bought was on Willow Street. Naming her first restaurant in their honor is Olier’s way of saying thank you because they worked hard to take her family out of poverty. Olier is applying the same principles she learned at The Barn to Willows &am ..read more

The pizza recipes at North Berkeley’s three.one four pizzeria belong to a chef who lives in and runs a catering business in Los Angeles. Mario Vollera, along with a silent business partner and hospitality expert Brandon Wilson, have reimagined the former Lalime’s space as a “swanky pizza lounge.” Wilson previously helped Restoration Hardware open restaurants across the country, most recently in Marin. While working at Restoration in Corte Madera, his soon-to-be business partner suggested that Wilson take a trip to Los Angeles to try Vollera’s sourdough pizza. “I was just blown away,” he said ..read more

The following article was written after I interviewed Cash Caris on April 3. At the time, the chef sounded optimistic about Delirama’s reincarnation as Elsie’s on Solano. On Sunday night, Caris posted on Instagram that he would close Elsie’s until April 17 to reassess their business plan.  By Monday morning, Caris added an update, “It is with a heavy heart that I share the news of the Solano location’s closure after more than two years of serving our wonderful community.” He cited “high rent, utilities, labor costs and the uncompromising need for quality ingredients” as the reasons behin ..read more

When I went to the Gilman Wine Block First Friday, the Xulo tortilla and taco stand flanked one of the festival’s outer edges. Even though the retro logo was emblazoned on an eye-catching overhead sign, Michael de la Torre’s pop-up was placed where a wallflower might stand at a party. The monthly event on Gilman Street is packed with some of the most inventive chefs currently producing food at Bay Area pop-ups. Despite its unassuming location, Xulo was a standout in a crowded field.  De la Torre’s flour tortillas taste as delectable as the homemade corn ones now taken for granted at many ..read more

Toriano Gordon closed the Vegan Mob’s Oakland hub last September. Gordon refurbished the former Kwik Way with his brand’s distinctive color, a neon green that illuminates Lake Park Avenue day and night. The atomic-age carport is still intact but empty. When Gordon and I spoke about his new cookbook, Vegan Mob: Vegan BBQ and Soul Food, A Plant-Based Cookbook, the chef said that his best sales had always been in the East Bay. The decision to close the Oakland location was a personal one. Gordon has changed his business model. Instead of running a restaurant, the chef is diversifying. To date, h ..read more

In Frederick Wiseman’s 44th documentary, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, no omniscient narrator appears on screen or via voiceover to introduce the characters. The four-hour film (!) begins with a medium shot of the Roanne train station, the exterior of which is painted a charming shade of mustard yellow. The director’s camera remains at that medium distance throughout the narrative, lingering from scene to scene, while allowing the images to explain themselves. Wiseman only deviates from that semi-distant observational—and deliberately anti-expository—point of view when he enters the Troisg ..read more

While Pim Soithong attends to customers who walk through the front door of Attraros, her husband, chef Akara Sutraromluck, stands behind the kitchen counter frying up a variety of Thai dishes. Attraros Thai Eatery is the couple’s second restaurant. They opened their first Oakland restaurant, Pintoh, together in 2017. Pintoh’s menu reflects the chef’s roots in northern Thailand where his family owned a restaurant. Soithong described the dishes there as, “comfort food, like stir fry and noodles.” At Attraros, Sutraromluck has kept some of his family’s recipes, but he’s also added handcrafted d ..read more

A pain suisse pastry isn’t as rare a find as the Hope Diamond, but it’s seldom seen at Bay Area bakeries. The long-reigning crown prince of viennoiserie is, sans doute, the pain au chocolat. What differentiates the suisse from the chocolat is a voluptuous layer of vanilla pastry cream. That layer of cream prevents the layers of dough from drying out and provides a nesting place for the chocolate chips. Lucile Espeillac, the head baker at Maison Benoit, has perfected the pain suisse. By some miraculous act of divine intervention, I arrived at the Danville bakery when the pastry was still warm ..read more

When Izler Thomas, the energetic head bartender at Pippal, claimed he would make a couple of unforgettable mocktails for our table, I was dubious. A few minutes later I thought he was a mind reader. He’d made a silken-smooth lassi, adding dried carnelian-colored rose petals to decorate the white foamy surface. His lassi tasted light and airy, a breezy reinvention of an often heavy, overly sweetened drink. The lassi was accompanied by a pineapple-and-cilantro cooler, equal to and bettering many freshly mixed aguas frescas. An unexpected pairing, the cilantro cut the pineapple’s sweetness witho ..read more

Chefs making the transition from running a pop-up to opening a brick-and-mortar are immediately confronted with a series of unexpected challenges. Pop-ups offer more freedom but a fluctuating source of income. Brick-and-mortars, on the other hand, bear the sudden weight of employee paychecks and a due date for the recurring monthly rent check. Shortly after Judy Wee opened Mama Judy Singapore Hawker last fall, the chef shut her Alameda restaurant down before returning to a more manageable catering schedule with occasional pop-ups. While making Saturday deliveries in Alameda last year for thei ..read more