A passion for food and for a new life

David Bransten, who used to work at the glamorous junction of food, film and TV, has changed gears. As kitchen coordinator at the Father Alfred Center, which — under the St. Anthony’s umbrella — offers a one-year program for 70 drug addicts and alcoholics wanting to heal themselves and patch up their lives, Bransten is combining food with “workforce development” these days.

For the first six months of their year, residents in the program give their time to St. Anthony’s, working in various capacities. Nine of them provide food in the center’s kitchen, where residents eat, and those are “the gentlemen under my watch,” said Bransten. “They cook for their peers . ... And what is uniquely San Francisco is that we are preparing them to be job-ready in a cutting-edge culinary experience, exposing them educationally and in terms of practical skills.”

Bransten’s aspirations for them are quite separate from those for the hardworking kitchen staff at St. Anthony Dining Room, who prepare classic foods for mass consumption. He’s trying to prepare them for something more sophisticated, more in keeping with current California food trends. Spurring their imaginations, he has brought them his collection of cookbooks, especially emphasizing what’s imaginative and innovative.

And a few weeks ago, he arranged for a field trip. The men are usually confined to the premises during their first six months in the program, but Bransten arranged for them to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. None of them had ever been before, so they took a docent-guided art tour, had lunch at In Situ, the museum’s cutting-edge restaurant, and then visited that kitchen.

Bransten says the restaurant staff “couldn’t have been more gracious.” He’d warned the residents that “this was going to be very tweezer food” — that is, food placed on plates in meticulous arrangements — and there would be “conversations about flavor profiles and preparation and how the kitchen ran.” The chance to talk to the staff at In Situ — “a very cool dialogue,” said Bransten — was a chance to “meet the guys where they’re at. You don’t want to be patronizing.”

Bransten paid for the nine men’s fourcourse lunches (about $200 each) out of his own pocket. The trip was “all about passion,” he said, “whether it’s the visual arts or the performing arts or the culinary arts. Look at what it means to be passionate.”

In 2015, the board of directors of the Roxie movie house met to decide whether to close the theater, which was $72,000 in debt. They decided to stay open, re-staff, repaint, replace broken equipment and refresh. As a formally designated Legacy Business, the Roxie got money from Grants for the Arts, the Arts Commission and the Northern California Loan Fund.

At the time, their audience was about 46,000 a year. Since then — with program additions such as Roxcine, showings of Spanish-language movies — the annual attendance figure is 65,000. The income was $590,000; it’s now $1 million.

After many years of desperation, the Roxie’s sun has come out, and organizers are calling this year’s Rolling With the Roxie, Wednesday, March 8, a night of bowling at Mission Bowl, a “fun-raising.” (But money never hurts; there’s a silent auction online now at www.bit.ly/2lTeaWJ.)

A concert version of the musical “Tales of the City,” based on Armistead Maupin’s series of novels, will play at the Music Box Theatre in Manhattan on March 27, a benefit for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center (where it was first developed) and the Trevor Project. After its 2009 development, the musical was performed at the American Conservatory Theater almost six years ago.

The cast for the production includes Justin Vivian Bond, the first transgender Anna in that role; and Betsy Wolfe, who played Mary Ann Singleton in the ACT version and has gone on to Broadway fame, including a starring role in the forthcoming stage production of “Frozen.”

Maupin himself will take part. Singing and dancing? “No,” he said, “standing and reading. I think they want me to read the first chapter.” Maupin’s looking forward to the “wonderful sentimental experience” of reconnecting with cast members — “and at the age of 72, to stand on a Broadway stage.”

He also said that Jennifer Kroot’s documentary, “The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin,” will play at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, and then at BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival.

“You have to embrace your inner Trump. That’s all there is to it.” Husband to wife, overheard in Berkeley by Paul Dalmas