From the LA Times walking tour report, "Foodie paradise in Berkeley:"
"Food makes sense to everyone," says "epicurean concierge" Lisa Rogovin, "even if you're not a foodie."
It makes more sense after spending three hours with her in January as she led a walking tour of Berkeley's Gourmet Ghetto, the place where the California food movement got its start. Some may argue that Berkeley is also the end-all of the movement, but it's certainly not the be-all.
Up and down the Golden State, visitors are flocking to culinary tours. "I didn't invent the wheel," Rogovin says. Paying homage to California's culinary creativity and its dominance as an agricultural state, they're sampling chocolate in Sonoma, authentic Italian gelato in Old Pasadena and tortillas in San Diego.
Some say Peet's Coffee & Tea started the movement in 1966, along with the Cheese Board, to shape Berkeley's taste for sustainably sourced, organic and fresh ingredients. This mini-explosion happened five years before Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse Restaurant, known to locals as a neighborhood bistro, in the north Berkeley area.
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A group of us — eight women and one guy — assemble in front of the Cheese Board Collective, which Rogovin calls "the cornerstone of the Gourmet Ghetto." We introduce ourselves and discover that we share a love of food, but not all the participants consider themselves serious about it.
Rogovin brings out two small wheels of Cowgirl Creamery cheese, the Mt. Tam and the Red Hawk, and spreads them on crusty bread while she explains the collective movement. All the people who work at the Cheese Board Collective are members; there is no boss or manager, and all collect the same salary. They are experts in their business — the more than 300 kinds of cheese the store stocks. They also make bread and sell olives, coffee and pastries.
Two doors down, patrons at the Cheese Board Pizza Collective have spilled outside to sit at small tables and eat pizzas while live music floats out of the open windows.