Great food debate heats up in Berkeley
On Sept. 9, reported Berkeleyside, the dinners of patrons of Chez Panisse were disrupted by a group of animal-rights demonstrators who came in uninvited. A group of perhaps a dozen Direct Action Everywhere protesters entered the dining room to announce the group’s representation of “billions of animals exploited, who are tortured and killed by humans every year . ... Animals are living, feeling individuals.”
Berkeleyside reported that they arrived at about 10 p.m, and about an hour later, when they refused to leave the restaurant, the police were called. No one was arrested, and the next day the restaurant acknowledged the incident and said charges were not being pressed.
And if you thought that was a dramatic happening, the real thunder and lightning is in the comments appended to the Berkeleyside report. I’m not identifying them by sides here; that’s your game for today.
“Yay for Chez Panisse! Love the food, very similar to Narsai’s restaurant ...” (A critic weighs in.)
“I had lunch in the cafe Saturday. Enjoyed the duck.” (Critic or master of sarcasm, you be the judge.)
“I seriously wonder how many of the demonstrators were cops.” (Person still nursing almost-50year-old wounds from People’s Park protests.)
“Plants are sentient beings . ... Just because they don’t have faces doesn’t mean we should eat them.” (Botanist or satirist.)
“Animals are our equals.” “When a coyote is charged with murder for killing a house cat and I am seated on the jury between a lamb and iguana, I will be sure to remember this.” (Debating the legal angles.)
“This is a scene straight out of Portlandia. Berklandia is even crazier.” (Cultural critic.)
“Wonder what would happen if meat eaters disrupted and protested at vegan restaurants.” (“Turnabout is fair play” advocate.)
“Were the dining patrons for some reason without forks and knives, and so felt disarmed and impotent to challenge the hoodlums?” (Rare advocate of violence who dares set foot in Berkeley.)
“Corpse munching? Do you call yourself an ovary eater when eating fruit?” (There’s always a gynecology angle.)
“I think you probably agree that people should spay their cats, and you also realize that the cats are not capable of making this decision for themselves.” (Any thinking cat is on the pill.)
“I’ve spent my whole life fighting white supremacy.” (And that goes for the mashed potatoes, too.)
As one of 200 or so judges at Sunday’s Good Food Awards event at the Hub, I learned, from fellow cheese jurists Jess Perrie and Jesse Schwartzburg, about the heartbreak of baggy rind. So far, this is an affliction from which I have not suffered personally, but I’m going to add it to my worrying list.
Presented with a wheel of cheese, the experienced cheese judge whacks off a chunk of the stuff — as a dainty amateur I gasped at the size of the samples — sniffs it, nibbles on it, rolls it around in his/her mouth, and then ponders its attributes. One doesn’t have to eat the entire sample. Nonetheless, we tried more than 40 of them. In the next few weeks, sure, let’s share a pizza, bring on the pasta, yes, I’ll have a slice of quiche and even a veggie cheeseburger ... but hold the cheese. Consuming interests: Ted Weinstein forwards an overheard from the J-Church, one middleschool-age kid saying to another, “I want to get a tattoo now, so it’ll be big and stretched out when I’m old.” (After years of wondering whether tattoos get stretched and blurry because of the length of time they’re on skin or whether they “smudge” because of the age of the tattoo-ee’s skin, this overheard remark inspired research. Aleph Omega of Ed Hardy’s Tattoo City says that tattoos are organic, so they age as your body does. This doesn’t have to do with the age of the human canvas. A wellapplied tattoo will keep its shape longer than a badly applied tattoo, and it is possible for an 80-year-old to get a new tattoo that will stay crisp. A tramp stamp for Grandma?
Howard Kaplan, whose family owned Kaplan’s Surplus and Sport Goods on Market Street until it closed in 2014, wrote an essay about minding the store and the Mid-Market experience. His piece was published online in Splice Today. If you’d ever shopped there — or if you often walked along that stretch of Market Street — you can read it at http://bit.ly/2d9h7eM . Open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik