The Gourmet Ghetto
My wife Yvonne and I used to hang out in a ghetto. This particular ghetto was in Berkeley, California, and, as with so many things in our marriage, it was filled with food. They called it the Gourmet Ghetto.
My buddy Mike Starbird had introduced me to the place when I met his friend Bruce McMurray, who lived on one of the hills in Berkeley. The day we met, Bruce took me on a walk to Peet’s—the original Peet’s, where neighbors lined up to get amazing coffee and then went outside, set their cups on newspaper racks, and visited.
A few years later, Yvonne and I rediscovered the Gourmet Ghetto when, on the advice of Yvonne’s boss Kay Berger, we began traveling from Southern California to Alice Waters’s ground-breaking restaurant Chez Panisse, also in Berkeley, which had just opened.
(This photo, taken in front of Chez Panisse, shows our friends Joel and Jacqui Bean, Kay Berger, our daughter Maggie, Yvonne, and me.)
Alice Waters had a garden behind her restaurant, and each morning she would pick out which plants to feature on that evening’s menu. The plants made for some interesting combinations, such as the night I found flowers in my salad. They were delicious!
On our trips to the Gourmet Ghetto, we stumbled on more great food in the blocks surrounding Peet’s and Chez Panisse. There was the Cheese Board Collective, a wonderful cheese store; and Cocolat, a candy shop that we could hardly bear to leave. The Berkeley Co-op was a left-leaning grocery store where you could get good, cheap food of all kinds. Each time we explored the streets around it, we would discover new places and sample their goods.
Sadly, the Gourmet Ghetto is not what it used to be, but a number of food movements started there. Chez Panisse launched the California cuisine and farm-to-table movements. Peet’s was the birthplace of specialty coffee. The Cheese Board Collective and Cocolat began Americans’ fascination with, among other things, scones and chocolate truffles.
Yvonne and I have great memories of the Gourmet Ghetto. We rarely revisit Berkeley these days, but wherever we go, we still enjoy good food.