Fat Apple’s (Berkeley)
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1346 Martin Luther King Junior Way |
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Although there are two Fat Apple’s Restaurants (Berkeley on MLK, and El Cerrito, just East of the El Cerrito Mall), architecturally, they could not be more different. The cozy Berkeley restaurant is painted to look like Jack London’s library, with (painted) books on the walls, and miscellaneous Jack London memorabilia.
People say they have excellent take-out, and baked goods, but I only go there for a hearty Breakfast/Brunch.
See Kathryn’s review of Fat Apple’s in El Cerrito
The Juicebar Collective (Berkeley)
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2114 Vine Street |
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Located in the heart of the Gourmet Ghetto, The Juice Bar Collective is hardly large enough to fit a car inside—unless you had an electric Smart Car. There’s a sales counter, and exactly one table inside, with extra seating on the sidewalk.
From this modest spot comes a mighty selection of sandwiches, soups, salads, baked goods—and JUICE! Almost all of the food is organic, and predominantly vegetarian.
My favorite dish is the black bean polenta casserole, which is offered either with cheese, or in a vegan version, with red salsa. For $5.25 I can’t think of a heartier lunch. They also have fantastic vegan cookies, including a vegan molasses cookie that will knock your (rainbow) socks off.
As indicated in the name, The Juice Bar is a collective, so there’s a good vibe amongst the people working there. They also have a selection of pizzas, lasagnas, soups, salads, sandwiches and wraps, including a hummus/veggie wrap which is the perfect item to scoop up for a picnic.
When the seating is all taken, I often sit on benches right across the street—it’s sunnier over there anyway. I highly recommend this restaurant to anyone, vegetarian or otherwise.
Café Gratitude (Berkeley)
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1730 Shattuck Avenue |
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When I first heard about this place opening in San Francisco in about 2003, I laughed at the concept: a healthfood restaurant that compels you to utter affirmations? No thanks.
Now, by 2010, I eat at the Berkeley Café Gratitude on a regular basis, and I love it. Café Gratitude exclusively serves food that is raw, vegan, and organic. The entrees are in fact listed as positive declarations: for example, I AM ELATED is a vegan quesadilla (the cheese is made from ground nuts) and I AM GIVING is an Asian kale salad.
My favorite dishes are the grain bowls, in particular I AM WHOLE and I AM ACCEPTING. The first involves sea veggies, carrots, roast almonds and kale over a choice of red Bhutanese rice or quinoa. The second also comes with an offering red rice or quinoa, topped with avocado, seaweed, and nuts. I get either of these with both grains, half-and-half. They are both delicious and nourishing.
Café Gratitude’s atmosphere is crunchy in the extreme: the waitpeople are kind and often dreadlocked, and the low grind of the juicer at work forms the background noise. Its red-brick walls make it cozy and warm. There are sofas, a bar in front, and outdoor seating on the sidewalk.
The food here is not cheap, so rather than raise prices infinitely, they started offering half portions, which is what I go for (it’s plenty of food).
I recommend this place to anyone—it’s great for vegetarians, not to mention a quintessential Bay Area experience.
Warning to people with nut allergies: for you, every entree may be I AM IN ANAPHALACTIC SHOCK. So be careful, lots of dishes involve nuts.
Soop (Berkeley)
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1511 Shattuck Ave |
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Soop is a great, unique, little takeout stall in the upscale Epicurious Garden. Obviously, they make soup, with a few vegetarian selections every day. I think they also make some sauces. You can buy either pint or quart sizes.
With a hearty piece of whole wheat sourdough, or fresh cornbread thrown in, Soop’s soups make for great, simple meals. I like the Thai Red Lentil with Coconut, but I keep coming back to the Green Soup, which is a puree of green split peas, zucchini, spinach, basil, parsley and celery.
It’s not like I’m a purist about food choices, or even someone who thinks it’s necessary to follow all the unwritten rules, but I have to admit to being a little shocked to see people mix, match, and combine different soups. I admit that when I was a kid I probably mixed Coke and 7-up from the soda fountain more than a few times, but truly that was more scientific experimentation than a well thought out culinary construct. You only have to mix coke with Fanta Orange once to realize just how wrong you can be. Still, I’m told, and I’ve witnessed, people adding the green soup to other soups, and swearing by it. Really! Well, okay, if you want to knock your socks off, get the Green Soup, and then walk across the street to the Cheeseboard bakery when the Zampano have just come out of the oven. With red-pepper flakes, a little bit of melted Parmesan cheese on top, cornmeal sprinkled all over, and just enough olive oil to make your fingers shiny when you pull it apart, Zampanos are the perfect bread to dip into Soop.
La Burrita (Berkeley)
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1832 Euclid Avenue |
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I’ve been a fan of La Burrita ever since I moved to Northside, in my grad school days, and I frequently recognize a few of the same guys who have been working there for years. La Burrita is tucked into the back of a little pedestrian food-alley on the west-side of Euclid Avenue, half a block up from Hearst, on a short commercial strip with nice cafes and a few other restaurants that mainly serve the campus community. Celia’s Mexican Restaurant and Brewed Awakening Cafe is just across the street.
There’s a big-screen TV hanging from the ceiling and tuned to sports, to keep you occupied while you wait for take-out, or stick around and watch the game. I could say that there’s nothing too special about the food, but year after year, I’ve made it a regular standby, especially when I’m on my own for dinner. I crave it because it’s consistently good, and you can tell that they understand the meaning of healthy ingredients. The portions are generous—I’m usually satisfied with a regular sized burrito.
La Burrita is very veg-friendly. They have six different vegetarian burritos which are just under $4 or $5, depending on the size you get. Not bad! Two of the default options are vegan.
La Burrita is actually where I discovered how much I love green, tomatillo salsa. It goes well with their thin, hot, almost irresistible tortilla chips. I struggle to take less than I usually do.
Once in a while, I’ll skip the burrito and order the Veggie Tamale Plate instead. The tamales can be hit or miss, but the rice and veggies that come with it are excellent. There’s also a different kind of sauce that they serve with the tamales that I like. I don’t know the name of it. The Tamale Plate is $4.29 and it’s large enough that I often can’t finish it.
There are a few large, picnic-type tables outside, where students gather around lunch and dinner time. Inside there’s more seating than it first appears, owing to the narrow row of two person booths along the north side.
La Burrita is enough of a mainstay for me that I miss it if I don’t go once every few weeks. I’ve got my stamped frequent-burrito discount card in my wallet, ready for the next time.
The Cheeseboard (Berkeley)
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1504 Shattuck Avenue |
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I have to admit that it’s not easy to write about something you love so much, and hold in such high reverence as I do The Cheeseboard, a bakery and cheese co-operative in North Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. But here goes.
If you want to get to know one of the best parts of Berkeley, visit The Cheeseboard on a summer Saturday morning, grab anything that looks good, and sit yourself down on the covered outdoor benches facing the street. The whole city eventually walks by. Morning dog walkers tie their antsy pets to the parking meters. Fleece-clad couples stop by, pushing strollers bearing well-fed, wide-eyed babies. Tweed-wearing UC professors, and gray-haired activists mix with young couples still in last-nights clothes. Therapists in neutral colors and smart wool shoulder wraps amble with the ladies of Vine Street. Teenaged skateboarders text by, narrowly missing the exercise set, who clutch the silver and black coffee travel mugs they carry around. All while few familiar panhandlers languidly angle for spare change.
I love the bread, the luscious smell of Fresh Baked Bread. I love the piquant, wafting aromas of sharp cheeses, baked into the cheese rolls, and detectable from a block away. I love the thin outer crust of the zampano roll, perforated with slits or holes on top, with red pepper flakes and a slightly melted cap of shredded real Parmesan (Asiago?) cheese. I love the simple olive foccacia baked into a hand-sized four-part disk, with a cornmeal undercarriage. I love Wednesday’s beer batter rye, which holds its hearty taste and freshness for days. I love the sourdough English Muffins, which make this native San Franciscan’s heart sing— completely plain with absolutely no adornment. They make Thomas’ English Muffins seem like a bad cardboard impostor, forever after. I love the morning scones with bits of fruit (like currant). I love the blueberry millet muffins, with lightly-crunchy toasted balls of millet, I had only ever seen before in birdseed.
I love the baguette pieces which condense all of the sourdough goodness of a baguette into a three or four-sided pillow of crust and seeds. I love the City Batard when I need a perfect, wide loaf of Sourdough. And who wouldn’t love the fluffy Chocolate Things, which are a decadent excuse for more chocolate for whomever needs such an excuse.
I cannot not mention the greatest Bialy this side of old Białystok—a chewy sourdough disk, like a hole-less bagel, but baked, not boiled. Translucent onions flecked with poppy seeds melt their way into the Bialy’s center depression. Oh my.
I love the Mr. Espresso coffee (my very favorite local, boutique, organic, fair trade coffee roaster), served daily until 10 am. And I fully appreciate the worker-owned Berkeley co-op vibe, where everyone you see making bread and selling the cheese has a stake in the success of the business and earns the same wage. Their pride shows in every roll, and Berkeley loves them for it.
Everything there is oven fresh, with the bread traveling just a few feet from the prep table to the oven to the self-serve racks. The Cheeseboard rotates their menu throughout the week, so if you go there enough, you start to learn the days when your favorite specialties appear. (Otherwise, here’s a Cheat Sheet.) This isn’t a place for dull, wide baguettes, bland white-bread, or flaky butter croissants. This is where real bread is born and comes of age.
Oh and did I mention that they sell cheese? There’s a long, wrap-around cheese counter, staffed by highly knowledgeable and friendly folks who take the time to make suggestions, explain the cheeses, and dole out samples, cut right there for you to taste. The chalkboard on the wall lists maybe a hundred different cheeses, if I ever bothered to count. There’s no obvious line, so draw a playing card from the rack in the center, and that’s your “number.”
If you’re wondering whether the artisinal cheese and gourmet bread ever tied the culinary knot, look no further than the huge lines snaking outside of The Cheeseboard Pizza next door.
So, if you want to please me, just sit with me there for a while. I’ll savor my bread, pretend to read the newspaper I brought, and try my best not make a small mess of crumbs below. And, if you would, please let me know if there’s anything clinging to my beard, since I’ll be in too much bliss to care.
Ajanta (Berkeley)
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1888 Solano Avenue |
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Ajanta is my all time favorite Indian Restaurant, and one of my favorite places to eat in Berkeley. It’s beautifully decorated, the service is warm and solicitous, and the food is seriously amazing, with plenty of vegetarian options.
Ajanta has a wonderful, ever-changing menu, with rotating regional dishes, and a other favorites that we always see. But if you’re expecting chana masala (garbanzo beans), baingan bartha (eggplant), and aloo saag (spinach and potatoes), like (almost) every other Indian restaurant in the USA, think again.
My absolute favorite dish is Bheh, Khumbi Aur Matar, a vegan dish from Sindh (western India, now Pakistan) with lotus root, shiitake mushrooms, and peas cooked with caramelized onions, ginger, garlic and spices including mango powder and coriander. Oh my.
You may also find entrées like Lobhia Aur Khumbi, a vegan Punjabi dish made with black eyed peas and organic shiitake mushrooms cooked in a sauce made with onions, garlic, tomatoes, and spices including coriander, turmeric, and paprika. Yum!
But whatever you order, do not miss the Tandoori Portobello Mushroom appetizer. It will forever change the way you think about mushrooms. It comes served with a spectacular mustard sauce.
If you’re vegan, let them know, so they can steer you clear of the dishes made with yogurt or butter (ghee). Whenever I have asked, they have always been completely accommodating.
Ajanta rates high on the date-worthy scale, and it’s a great place to bring anyone you want to impress. Even the wine list is broad and well considered. Given the quality of the food and the elegance of the place, the prices seem very reasonable to me.
Ajanta is across the street from the Oaks Theater.
TC Garden (Berkeley)
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2507 Hearst Avenue |
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I started going to TC Garden in 1993, and I could swear that the prices haven’t changed one cent. TC Garden is a small, no-frills, Chinese restaurant serving the UC Berkeley campus, on the Northside, and I love it. It’s tucked into a small restaurant row that every grad student at Berkeley has to know about.
Back in the 90s, Mom and Pop ran the place, with twin sisters cooking in the back. The menu is vast, and the food comes quickly. I remember it for the Tiananmen Square poster they had in the window, and the kindness they showed me, knowing my order, and welcoming me a few times a week.
Mom and Pop retired a while back, but otherwise the place has not changed. Lunch for three, with an appetizer and hot tea for around $16. Seriously.
There’s a long list of vegetarian entrées, from rice plates to chow mein and chow fun. My favorites are the mixed vegetables rice place (veggies in a clear glaze, over rice) and the mixed vegetables chow mein (in a semi-sweet soy sauce) which is excellent.
Celia’s Mexican Restaurant (Berkeley)
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1841 Euclid Ave |
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Celia’s Mexican Restaurant is a relative newcomer to Euclid Avenue, the main street for lunch and cafes on UC Berkeley’s north side. La Burrita is another Mexican restaurant that’s been there, across the street, for years, but Celia’s is different enough that I hope the two can co-exist peacefully.
Celia’s has a nice, large, sit-down dining area, with booths along one wall. I’ve only had one dish there, and it’s amazing. I get the Vegetarian "Hand Burrito" which should be called head burrito because that’s how large it seems. Filled with lightly sauteed vegetables, and covered in a tasty red sauce, this burrito is a real treat. There’s something about the white onions, zucchini, or black beans I ordered that makes this meal a huge standout. So far, I haven’t figured it out, so I’ll continue conducting the experiment 😉 Bucking the Nor-Cal burrito style, Celia’s burritos don’t come wrapped in thin foil and can never be stood up on their butt. They are simply too large, too delectable, and too delicate for a vertical burrito hoist. No, Sir; be prepared to use a knife and fork.
The food comes with thick, fresh tortilla chips and a few different kinds of salsa. Everything tastes homemade and fresh, the beans and rice are vegetarian, and the waiter is very friendly.
Café Raj (Albany)
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1158 Solano Avenue |
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This popular neighborhood destination near the bottom of Solano Avenue can sometimes be so busy that there’s a waitlist—even around 6 pm. However the line moves fast. A few years ago, they expanded into the space next door.
The menu has a special vegetarian section, featuring the well-known staples of Indian vegetarian food (as Ken and I see it). Bangan Barta (eggplant), Aloo Saag (spinach & potato), Saag Paneer (spinacy curry with cheese), and Chana Masala (garbanzo beans) top the list. They’re all are quite tasty, in particular the Chana Masala. How so many great things can come out of their tiny kitchen astounds me, but their food is consistently delicious, and light.
Café Raj is a friendly, family-owned place, and the people taking orders may even be the children: an extroverted and sweet group. It is reasonably priced and always delicious.
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