"berkeley" news and stories

TurnHere is a media company that has videos that try to capture the real essence of their subjects, which range from "insider" tours of neighborhoods around the country and the world and tips on activities and restaurants. Basically, they're short films on where to go, what to do and why you would want to do it.

The restaurant and food videos are particularly interesting (of course) because video review/tour of a restaurant can show you so much more than just a photo or written review can. Many of the restaurant videos include interviews with customers, chefs and shop owners. Some of the videos are sponsored and some are not, but even the sponsored ones seem much more "real" than anything you'd see on the Food Network. For a preview, check out a guide to the Gourmet Ghetto in Berkeley, a look at Canter's Deli in Los Angeles and the all-dessert restaurant ChikaLicious in New York.

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I recently learned from one of our sister blogs, Gadling, that there is a museum devoted to sake, one of my all-time favorite libations. That such a place exists is no surprise. There are several sakaguras, or sake breweries, that offer tours, but most are in Japan. The cool thing about this sake shrine is that it's in Berkeley, Calif., and it's free.

The museum is the creation of Takara Sake USA and features tastings, brief tutorials on sake making and exhibits of sake brewing equipment. It is my sincere hope that such a place will help broaden the tastes Americans whose only experience with the fermented rice wine has been hot sake or overly alcoholic and nasty tasting cheap cold sake. There's a whole world of flavor out there to experience in premium cold sakes. Among the many notes that can appear in a good sake are: licorice, peaches, cherry, herbal grassy flavors, and, of course, rice. If you're curious about sake and live outside the Berkeley area, seek out your local izakaya, or Japanese pub. Another good place to learn about sake is John Gauntner's Sake World. Kanpai!

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Keeping track of what foods are in season at different times of the year can be difficult. For those who live in the San Francisco Bay Area, finding in-season, locally grown foods just god a little bit easier. The Local Foods Wheel is a bright, 12-inch wheel that rotates, revealing all the foods that are seasonally available. The front of the wheel indicates the produce that is available year round. The back of the wheel has a full seasonality reference, including a listing of the precise seasons a given product is available and a list of some of the more obscure foods that don't have icons on the wheel itself. Take the wheel shopping with you, or just use it as a reference when you're making your grocery list at home.

The wheel is $11.95 and can be purchased online, as well as at the Berkeley farmer's market and several other Bay Area locations.

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A masters student at UC Berkeley, Mike Wooldridge, started thinking about the relatively young "sport" of competitive eating and noticed that there were many records, but no way to compare performance results across food groups. He set out to see if he could normalize, or standardize, the results from all types of eating contests and make it possible to compare the performance of the eaters across different foods.

Mike analyzed 23 records and converted them into a rate of ingestion (ROI), resulting in a kilograms per minute value for every food.

The blue bars are the average ROI of given foods (easier foods have higher bars) and the yellow bars are the eaters' records. The big spikes are some of world champion eater Takeru Kobayashi's records, but you can see that, because the rest of the yellow bars are approximately equal, the eaters mostly perform up to the same standards, despite the food involved in the challenge.

[via Trencherwomen]

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Dream on, Cal alum. Zachary's has no plans to open a restaurant in Los Angeles, or at least, not that I've ever heard of. However, there is a way to get your favorite deep-dish, stuffed Chicago-style pizza from your college days at home in LA. It's' called the 6-hour Drive With a Half-Baked Pizza.

On the last day of a mini-vacationin the Bay Area, I stopped at a couple of my old food haunts in Berkeley, making Zachary's on College Avenue my last stop. On purpose. I wanted to take home a half-baked pizza. I stopped in (no parking in the Albertson's lot!), had a slice of their special stuffed pizza for lunch - grilled chicken and artichoke  - and ordered two spinach and mushroom half-baked pizzas.

Normally, the half-baked pizzas are for people who want to pick-up a pizza earlier in the day to avoid the chaos at Zachazry's around dinner time. They can take the half-baked pizzas and fully bake them for about 15-20 minutes at home somewherein the Bay area that night. I however, drove them for 6 hours along the I-5 back to LA.

The pizzas taste just as good in southern California. Zachary's recommends that you do not freeze the pizzas, but heck,next time I'm up in the Bay area, I'm buying a half-dozen half-baked pizzas, bringing them home, and freezing them to eat once a month.