California magazine blog

Pancake Socialism

February 28 is National Pancake Day according to IHOP, aka the International House of Pancakes, although the date is far from universally recognized.

Some sources say that January 28 is "officially" National Pancake Day. Still others refer to a National Pancake Week, which is generally slotted in the lead-up to Mardi Gras. That makes some sense as Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is also known as Pancake Tuesday. That's because pancakes were a way for the Catholic faithful to glut on fat (milk, eggs, butter, lard, etc.) before the fasting season of Lent began. (Carnival is Latin for "removal of meat.")

But I digress. The point, if there is one, is that if you go to any IHOP location tomorrow, you can get a free shortstack of buttermilks. They only ask that you consider making a donation to the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, a charity founded by Marie Osmond (of Donny and Marie fame) and John Schneider (of Dukes of Hazzard fame).

Be warned that you can't collect on your free griddle cakes in Berkeley, since the IHOP on University is no longer there. These days, the old A-frame is occupied by North Beach PIzza.

Wondering what other connections I could draw between Berkeley and pancakes, I did the only sensible thing: I searched for the word "pancake" at the Berkeley Oral History Project. That turned up a few remarkably overexposed photos of cakes on the griddle by none other than Dorothea Lange, some handwritten letters from John Muir to his wife, and the following reminiscence by Sidney Roger, an old lefty journalist and Cal alum who 'covered the waterfront' for KPFA and other outlets. Remembering his old man, Roger told the Bancroft:

Ripe for the Picking

A story published online at The Atlantic.com about “The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods” has caused a minor sensation and perhaps also some unwarranted hysteria. Unfortunately, it seems that food writer Ari LeVaux got much of the science he was writing about wrong. Various writers with a better handle on the topic have registered their skepticism, including Cal alum and science writer, Charlie Petit. According to his detractors, LeVaux didn't serve up "very real dangers" but rather ill-founded fears.

Of course, the debate on GM foods is an important and ongoing one. Indeed, our ability to feed a world population headed for 9 billion or more by mid-century could very well hinge upon the success of lab-improved seed strains to increase yields of staple crops. Frank Browning, a frequent contributor and author of the book Apples: The Story of the Fruit of Temptation, interviewed various Berkeley scientists in making just such an argument. His story, "Dinner by Design," ran in our "Food for Thought" issue from Winter 2009, as did another article about the challenges of feeding the world, called "The Locavore's Dilemma" by environmental reporter Glen Martin.

Alice's Restaurant

For our latest issue, we sent former Berkeleyan editor Jonathan King to rummage around in the Chez Panisse Archives in the Bancroft Library. On the 40th anniversary of the restaurant, we were looking for a fresh take on a subject about which it seemed everything had already been written. While King admits that the patchy archives failed to shine much light on the genesis of the institution, he produced an illuminating article nonetheless. It is interesting, for example, just to behold the cast of characters who were there at the beginning. Not just Alice Waters, but also people like Tom Luddy, co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival, who helped attract an influential clientele to the fledgling establishment, the artist David Goines, who designed the sign and menus, and architect Jeremiah Tower, who, according to the legend, came in and "fixed the soup" a la Remy in the film Ratatouille.

Those characters all figure in the new book by Waters called 40 Years of Chez Panisse, a scrapbook, really, of artifacts and memories from those who were there, including an introduction by Calvin Trillin.

Trillin calls Waters the Emma Goldman of New American Cuisine, a revolutionary spirit forged by her student days at Berkeley at the height of the Free Speech Movement. And that is precisely where the book begins, with a picture of Sproul Plaza circa 1964, a crowd of protesters massed before what are now called the Savio Steps. Waters informs her readers she is "somewhere in that crowd" and recalls Mario Savio saying, "America is becoming ever more the utopia of sterilized, automated contentment." In her own life, she intimates, she was searching for a "contentment that was unsterilized, fertile and handmade."

She found it in the kitchen.

Her Calabria

At age 50—after graduating from Cal with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, after a successful career in Silicon Valley, after marrying fellow Cal alum Lino Costantino ‘81, and after raising two children—Rossetta Costantino '83 wants the world to know about her family’s traditions, about Calabria and its cooking. Her book, My Calabria: Rustic Family Cooking from Italy’s Undiscovered South, began as a personal mission, Costantino says. While scarcity and hardship drove many Calabrians to move to places like the Bay Area, they and their food remained invisible. According to Costantino, they didn’t open restaurants, and they wanted to blend in. “If I told people I was from Calabria, they’d say, ‘What country is that?’” she says. “It’s still not well known, and that’s one thing that propelled me to write the book.”

Read the rest of the story, "Reconstructing Tradition," by Carol Ness, here.

Coffee Culture

Today is National Coffee Day. It's always national something-or-other day -- there's National Donut Day (June 1), National Punctuation Day (Sept. 24), National Toilet Day (Nov. 19), and everyone's favorite National Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept 19). Aye, 'tis true. ... But today it's coffee day, which makes it a fine time to recognize two Berkeley icons: The Med and Peet's.

The Med, or Mediterraneum, on Telegraph, is famous not only for having invented the Cafe Latte -- a capuccino with lots more milk -- it was also the place where Allen Ginsberg worked on Howl and Dustin Hoffman was filmed stalking his love object in The Graduate. (If you go to Moe's you'll see a blown-up still from the movie showing Hoffman sitting at a window seat looking across to the bookstore.)

And then there's the first-ever Peet's, established in 1966 on the corner of Vine and Walnut by Alfred Peet, who died in 2007. The inaugural store is still there, still selling the best beans money can buy. Next time somebody tells you Seattle is the birthplace of cafe culture in America, you know what to tell 'em.

Go Beers!

Hot day? How 'bout a cold beer?

Snapped at The Bear's Lair Pub, a campus tradition since 1962.

Go Beers

News comes to us that Fritz Maytag has sold Anchor Brewing to a couple of Bay Area entrepreneurs. Maytag was a Stanford grad. We'll have to see if the buyers are Bears. In the meantime, you'll be interested to know that in the next issue of California, we'll run five questions past brewer and Berkeley alum Dan Gordon of Gordon Biersch.

GB brews lagers, which use bottom-fermenting yeast and are stored for longer periods than ales, which use top-fermenting yeast. As for "steam" beer, as Anchor's best-known product is called, it seems the name was "applied to San Francisco brews of the Gold Rush era, one reason being that extra yeast was often added to the barrels before they were shipped up the Sacramento River, causing additional carbonation en route and a geyser of foam to gush forth when the kegs were tapped."

Mmmm. Beer.

Banquets Past

Not sure what's cooking for this year's Charter Gala, but in our files we have event menus dating back to the 1880s. Here's a sample table d'hot, from an Alumni Association banquet at the Palace Hotel in 1895:

MENU

Oyster on the Shell

Consomme D'Orleans

Olives, Radishes, Celery, Saucisson Lyon

Paupiette de Sole, Dieppoise

Potatoes Croquette

Filet of Beef a la Montesquieu

Punch au Kirsch

Roast Chicken with Dressing, Demi Glace

Romaine and Tomato Salad

Stuffed Egg Plant, New Peas French Style

Asparagus Ice Cream, Marasquino Sauce

Assorted Cakes

Dessert

Coffee

Quite the spread, no? And with asparagus ice cream, no less.

Damn.