Tracey Taylor is a writer and editor. Her work appears in The New York Times, the Financial Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a range of magazines. Her articles cover a broad range of subjects — including business stories, features on food, homes and architecture, as well as profiles and interviews.
Tracey is a co-founder of Berkeleyside, a hyperlocal site for Berkeley, California; she writes On the Block, a blog about Bay Area property, for the San Francisco Chronicle and Home Girl, her own independent blog. Tracey was editor of Campaign Magazine and Media & Marketing Europe Magazine. She is also the editor of two books: Posters of the Century (Profile Books, 1999) and Finding An Angel Investor (The Planning Shop, 2007).
Tracey’s full professional credentials are on LinkedIn. Contact her by email here.
[Author photo: Paige Green]
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Recently Published: New York Times, February 4, 2010
ORGANIC OR AUTHENTIC: THE SAUL’S DELI DEBATE
What’s not to like about Berkeley’s favorite deli? Why all the kvetching?
In many ways Saul’s Restaurant and Delicatessen in Berkeley — just a few doors down the street from Chez Panisse, the grande dame of the slow-food movement in the Bay Area — is the quintessential farm-to-table restaurant. It features local food, organic produce and a seasonal menu.
So why the consistent grumbling from perhaps one customer in five? Nostalgia, said Peter Levitt, the co-owner and chef who is a Chez Panisse alumnus. “We have so many culinary memories under one roof,” he said.
Which is a nice way of saying that some people prefer pastrami made the old-fashioned way — industrially — and feel that anyone who doesn’t approve of the high-fructose corn syrup in Dr. Brown’s cream soda should just suck it up and adjust.
If there’s one dining experience above others which is pregnant with expectations, it’s the Jewish deli. The pastrami sandwich had better be so large you can barely get your teeth into it. The blintzes had better taste like the ones your grandmother made.
The problem is that the deli menu many people regard as authentic, and which reached its heyday in the 1950s, is rooted in the industrial food system. Those towering pastrami sandwiches are typically created with factory-produced meat. The rye bread? Pasty and processed.
Ever since Mr. Levitt and his partner, Karen Adelman, took over Saul’s in 1995, they have tried to make the restaurant’s voluminous menu more sustainable, as they describe on the deli’s blog.
In 1998, Acme bread (founded in Berkeley) replaced the spongy white rye the deli had shipped in from New York. It is now broadly appreciated. They source their fish from Monterey Fish Company and their beef from Marin Sun Farms.
A year ago, they did away with Dr. Brown’s sodas, both because of the food miles they incurred and the high-fructose corn syrup on the label. The change proved to be the last straw for some die-hard deli fans.
“There were those who said if you don’t have Dr Brown’s, you’re not a Jewish deli,” Mr. Levitt said. “People forget that the original Jewish sodas were handmade and sold off the back of street carts.”
The house-made celery, cream and black cherry artisanal sodas, which took the place of Dr. Brown’s, now have their own loyal following.
Worried about what would happen if he went forward with more changes, Mr. Levitt called for a “referendum on the deli menu.” The event, which was set for Tuesday at the deli, will now be held at a bigger venue (the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay) to accommodate the more than 175 people who are paying $10 each to attend. It promises to explore questions like these: “What taste memories and flavors of the deli have been provided by an industrial food system? How can we look at our nostalgia and expectations critically?”
In fact, most customers appreciate the changes. Their grass-fed corned beef sandwich may be smaller or more expensive than the ones they ate back East, but it’s tastier, healthier and easier on the conscience.
But the restaurant staff also meets resistance, sometimes even hostility: One customer vowed never to return after seeing that gefilte fish was off the menu because it was out of season; another complained loudly when chilled borscht wasn’t an option in November.
Now, Mr. Levitt and Ms. Adelman say they have reached a crossroads — there is more they would like to do to the menu, yet they fear the backlash. That is what inspired Tuesday night’s event. They are bringing out the big culinary guns to put the future of their restaurant under the spotlight. Is the concept of the sustainable deli itself sustainable?
On the panel next Tuesday: Michael Pollan, a Saul’s lunchtime regular; Willow Rosenthal, the founder of City Slicker Farms; Gil Friend, the author of “The Truth about Green Business;” and Evan Kleiman, the Los Angeles chef and radio host.
Ms. Adelman says they are in effect seeking permission from their customers to continue tweaking what she describes as “an ossified menu.” Just as Jewish food has evolved over the centuries, those who run Saul’s are hoping customers will, for instance, rediscover traditional Sephardic-inspired dishes, which put vegetables, legumes and seafood at the center of the plate rather than meat.
“We want to bring our customers with us,” she said. “They’re our family, our heart.”
It’s a familiar story for David Sax, who wrote the recently published book“Save the Deli.” He has spoken at Saul’s.
“The deli customer is very opinionated, the feedback never stops — which is a blessing and a curse,” he said. “No one is more committed to a new approach to the deli than Karen and Peter. And their concept of taking deli food back to a time when food was respected is a good indicator of where delis could go from here.”
Mr. Pollan also supports the efforts at Saul’s.
“They are trying to do something very admirable, but it’s challenging,” he said. “Good meat costs considerably more than feed-lot meat, and it’s easier for a white-table establishment to absorb the costs of doing it right.”
As for Mr. Levitt, he admits he’s frustrated. “Alice Waters looked at the French menu and reinvented it,” he said. “Why can’t we do the same for the Jewish deli menu?”
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Recently Published: New York Times, December 26, 2009
SUNDAY ROUTINES: NOVELLA CARPENTER
Photo: Josh Haner, New York Times.
Novella Carpenter is a writer, urban farmer and Dumpster diver. Her memoir, “Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer,” chronicles her life on her small homestead near downtown Oakland. Ms. Carpenter, who studied journalism under Michael Pollan at the University of California, Berkeley, also helps run a biodiesel station in Berkeley, where she teaches chicken and rabbit rearing classes. She is working on her second book. (Her words have been edited and condensed).
UP WITH THE CHICKENS I get up at 7:30 to feed the chickens who gather on my back stairs and make a racket. Then I milk my goat, Bebe, while listening to NPR. All the days seem about the same. I do not have a weekend-centric, T.G.I.F. lifestyle.
PICK-ME-UP I drink a very strong cup of Lapsang Souchong, a smoky black tea. I call it bacon tea. I’m sure I’ll end up getting cancer from drinking it: they make it by roasting tea leaves over burning pine. I drink it with honey from my bees and goat milk from Bebe. I eat later — some figs from the tree, or some tomatoes, maybe a big salad from the garden.
MANUAL LABOR I do farm chores: milking, checking on the rabbits, collecting a few eggs from the chickens. They don’t lay as much as they used to. I need to cull them, but they are so old they are just not appetizing. Sometimes I’ll go to my office in Oakland and write. Sometimes I have a lot of farm work. The big chores are mucking out the goat yard, which can get really smelly. I’m often making something like cheese or sauerkraut, so I have to flip the cheese or change the brine water for any olives I’m curing.
EXPEDITIONS Bill, my partner, and I might plan a seasonal activity like olive picking in Davis, strawberry picking or tomato harvesting. Or we might go sailing or just have a picnic on Bill’s totally grubby boat. It’s a 21-foot sailboat that one of his customers gave him. It’s fun to sit on while the sun goes down.
DIVING FOR DINNER At night, Bill and I will often go into San Francisco to see a movie at the Red Vic or eat at our favorite Indian place, Shalimar in the Tenderloin. The real reason for going to San Francisco, though, is Rainbow Grocery. Sometimes we shop there, but mostly we wait until the store closes and the Dumpster comes out. We’re mostly there for the animals: the goats love the cabbage leaves, the bunnies love the bruised apples and fennel stalks. But we often find stuff for us to eat, too, like yogurt or bananas. Rainbow is great because they put the good, edible stuff in boxes within the Dumpster, so it’s easy to find and doesn’t get dirty.
A BOOK AND BED I go to bed around 11 or 12. I usually read in bed until I fall asleep.
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Recently Published: New York Times, December 20, 2009
VISTAS: WALTER HOOD – A BEACH WITH A DIFFERENT VIEW
Photo: Heidi Schumann for the New York Times
Walter Hood checks the tidal charts and heads to Crown Memorial State Beach on the island of Alameda at least once a week to run on the sand and take in the sweep of San Francisco Bay from a little-known vantage. Mr. Hood, whose landscape architecture firm designed the grounds of the de Young Museum in San Francisco, lives in Oakland, and he spends a lot of time traveling. In August, he accepted a Cooper Hewitt National Design Award at the White House. (His words have been edited and condensed.)
SENSE OF PLACE Sometimes you forget you live on the ocean. This beach, with its views of the water, mountains and cityscapes, is the closest place to home where I can get a profound understanding of the bay and where I live.
ECHOES OF THE EAST I grew up in North Carolina, and there’s an East Coast flavor to the promenade and the way the garden apartments and “Leave It to Beaver”-style homes here are built right on the water.
LOCAL HAUNT During the week, I can be the only person running on the beach, and it’s so silent. There might just be a few people long-boarding or practicing tai chi. Families come here on the weekends, but it’s never crowded like Ocean Beach. It’s low-key and it’s predominantly locals, not tourists. It reminds me how diverse the Bay Area is — with Latinos, African-Americans, Asians and whites. I remember that this is why I live here.
MESS IT UP Alameda Beach is one of the messy landscapes I like to talk about: it’s not manicured or overly designed. All the layers — the 1970s buildings, the marshes, the driftwood and the old-fashioned signs — are part of an everyday phenomenon. It’s not trying to be something it isn’t.
CITY-CENTRIC This is one of the few places where the view is not dominated by San Francisco’s crown: its skyscrapers and hills. The perspective is South San Francisco, Hunters Point and even, on a good day, the Pac Bell Stadium. Oakland, which I sometimes think has an inferiority complex, is there, too. It’s good to remember that the bay is one continuous place.