Spring Medley

Attention kids of all ages! Rockridge Food Tour now offers a one-hour ice cream tour. Learn about this much-loved dessert and sample the ice cream sandwiches at Cream, some gelato at Powell’s Sweet Shoppe, and favorite flavors at Oakland-born Dreyers. Cost: Adults $15; Kids 12 and younger $7.50. Private group tours and children’s birthday parties available. Info and reservations: here

Rockridge Summer Ice Cream Tours
Alternate Sundays beginning May 31, 3pm
Meeting point: Safeway outdoor public seating area
6310 College Ave, Oakland

This new ice-cream tour celebrates the first anniversary of the Rockridge Neighborhood Heritage and Walking Food Tour, created by Rockridge foodie Lauren Herpich. Edible East Bay’s intern Amanda Polick ventured out for the food tour, and shares her delicious experience.

by Amanda Polick

A slight drizzle was just starting as I met up with Lauren Herpich one Saturday in winter for her Rockridge Food Tour. As the people arrived (locals and tourists alike), Lauren handed out food tour maps and water bottles along with morning buns from La Farine French Bakery. As soon as the soft dough and sugar hit my lips, I suspected that the rain would not dampen my spirit or appetite on this three-hour, three-mile tour.

A love for history, food, and leading walking tours in Chicago led Herpich to start Rockridge Food Tours shortly after she moved here in June 2014. Interest has built so strongly and steadily since that time that her tour is already listed on TripAdvisor.com as one of the top things to do near Berkeley. Herpich offers tours twice a week (Thursdays at 2pm and Saturdays at 11am) and charges $49 per person, with a dollar from every ticket donated to the Alameda County Food Bank.

I was surprised at the amount of history packed into three miles. Herpich hand-picked six stops: At family-owned Amphora Nueva, we sampled a variety of olive oils including a fusion with North African green chili. The company is over 90 years old and still operated by the family: They mill and infuse their own oils so they can oversee the process every step of the way. At The Pasta Shop in Market Hall, cheesemonger Jason Plunkett gave tour members tasty bites of Cowgirl Creamery’s Wagon Wheel and a Challerhocker from Switzerland. As we rounded out the tour at Zachary’s Pizza, La Farine, Ver Brugge Meats & Seafood, and Dreyer’s Ice Cream Parlor & Café, we learned that all are places where Herpich regularly fills her own shopping bags.

As we strolled from one designated food stop to the next tempting location, Herpich pointed out additional local landmarks, such as Star Grocery, which was founded in 1922. On a detour through residential streets, Herpich noted home designs by (or influenced by) the Bay Area’s own Julia Morgan.

Three hours were barely enough to take it all in. I thoroughly enjoyed the walk and the treats along the way, and was surprised by the richness of history and culture in Rockridge.

Tour leader and founder Lauren Herpich leads guests to some of her favorite neighborhood shops. Photo by Amanda Polick.

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Learn to prepare and use foraged plant–infused cocktail products such as bitters and syrups. Mix and enjoy your own cocktails using wildcrafted bitters, syrups, glycerites, and more. Cost: $75. Age 21 and older. Info and registration: here

Sunday May 31 or June 14, 3–5:30pm
Foraged Cocktails Workshop
Five Flavors Herbs
344 40th St, Oakland

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Reviews by Kristina Sepetys

Mark Bittman, the opinionated New York Times food journalist/columnist, and prolific cookbook writer, has been living in the East Bay as a Visiting Scholar at the Berkeley Food Institute for the past several months. By all reports, he’s enjoying the experience here immensely. If you’re not familiar with his work, Bittman writes about cooking, eating, farming, food politics, and a myriad of related topics. He’s a contributing writer at other publications, like Runner’s World, where he’s written dozens of articles about his lifelong running habit and how he fuels it. Bittman is remarkable for his ability to speak to big-picture concerns, like creating a more sustainable and equitable food system, while also writing practical, instructional guides to help people do the one thing that he believes has the most potential to help the food system evolve: cook.

In his latest book, A Bone to Pick: the good and bad news about food, with wisdom and advice on diets, food safety, GMOs, farming, and more (Pam Krauss Books, 2015), Bittman has assembled some of his most talked-about, and in some cases, controversial New York Times columns, in order to more widely share his opinions about what’s wrong with the American food system and how to fix it (or, in his words, to “un-invent” it). It’s an engaging, easy-to-read book comprised of short chapters no more than a couple of pages long, yet Bittman manages to explore a vast array of critical issues like agricultural practices, national food policy (or lack thereof), labor and wages, social justice, fad diets, and a host of other topics, many of which revolve around the notion that the poor health of many American citizens points up significant deficiencies in the American food system and the forces that regulate it. Beyond discussion of the broader issues and the many ills the broken food system creates, his pieces return to a few simple bits of advice for the reader: stop eating junk and hyper-processed food, eat more plants, and cook.

When it comes to cooking, Bittman has no shortage of how-to tips. The self-taught home cook has authored 14 award-winning books, most of which are cookbooks and include the enormously popularHow to Cook Everything series. His latest volume, How to Cook Everything Fast: A Better Way to Cook Great Food (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) is a 1056-page (yes, it’s big!) reference volume with literally thousands of recipes and ideas for healthy, mostly whole-food meals that are quick and easy to prepare (within 15 to 45 minutes) like Cheddar Waffles with Bacon Maple Syrup; Skillet Spanakopita; Charred Brussels Sprout Salad with Walnuts and Gorgonzola; Apple Crumble Under the Broiler, and many more dishes that should inspire you to take control of your eating.