Ms. Bone developed recipes using her creations, like poached pears with preserves. More Photos >
Even the pectin rebels generally follow the U.S.D.A.’s strict guidelines for canning procedures, which have become even stricter over the last two decades. “After the 1970s there was a real crackdown,” said Blake Slemmer, a lifelong canner and self-described “homesteader” in Atlanta who translates the detailed U.S.D.A. instructions into plainer language on his Web site, www.pickyourown.org.
“In the 1980’s there was a hard look at the science,” said Dr. Elizabeth Andress, director of the National Center for Home Food Preservation, who has worked with the U.S.D.A. for 25 years on developing the guidelines. “Canning is much safer and more reliable than when we began.” Current regulations forbid the simple open-kettle canning, in which hot food is spooned into hot jars, sealed, and left to cool. Now virtually all food must be processed after it goes into the jar, and cooks are firmly discouraged from canning vegetables other than tomatoes. (The high acidity of most ripe fruits helps discourage spoilers; most vegetables have no such natural protection.)
But experienced canners say that the warnings unnecessarily discourage novices. “You should be clean, but you shouldn’t be paranoid,” Ms. Mora said. “Imagine the conditions in which these techniques were developed.”
Although the science of preserving doesn’t change, tastes, economies and ideologies do.
Community canneries, where local farmers and cooks could once bring their produce to be canned, or do it themselves using large-scale equipment, have mostly disappeared. But in the Hudson Valley, a group in Schoharie County recently received a grant to help open a new one. Peter Pehrson, who is leading the project, said he was inspired and alarmed by the wasted produce on local farms that are geared for the commercial food market.
“The tradition here is for the community to come in and pick up the gleanings,” he said. “I couldn’t believe how much was left lying in the field.” Mr. Pehrson said he was raised on farms and knew that even basic preserving equipment could solve the problem and create a new resource: locally grown canned vegetables.
“Like most home cooks and gardeners, I overbuy, I overplant, and then the moment of reckoning comes,” he said.
Buying too much at the farmers’ market is the main reason Ms. Bone learned to can a decade ago. She loved good food, especially Italian food, and the preserving recipes that other canners used to win ribbons at county fairs just didn’t have the deep, complicated tastes she remembered from her father’s kitchen and visits to his family in Italy. Out of necessity, she began to develop her own safe recipes for canned foods she found useful, like pickled cauliflower and marinated artichokes.
“How much jam and dill pickles can a person get through?” Ms. Bone asked. Her book includes master recipes — for preserves like stewed onions with marjoram, lemony baby artichokes, and figs in brandy — and recipes for dishes that use them up. She is all about the churn of the kitchen, the movement of ingredients from the counter to the cupboard and freezer, back to the counter, to the table, and out. “It’s all part of the kitchen eco-system,” she said. “It all gets used in the end.”
She stepped away from a stovetop of boiling pots to arrange herself in a yoga pose. “In full peacock your elbows really dig into your stomach,” she said, balancing on her forearms. “Cooks like it because it keeps things moving through the intestinal tract.”
She doesn’t decorate her jars with calico, or stick charming labels on them, and is unconcerned about the color of her asparagus and the occasional overcooked batch of artichoke hearts.
“I’m not in it for the looks,” she said. “If it tastes good, I’ll eat it. If it doesn’t taste good, I’ll make it taste good.”
source:
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Preserving Time in a Bottle (or a Jar) (Part 1)
Evan Sung for The New York Times
When the tuna came to light, the date on the label was discouraging: 2006. “The Feds wouldn’t like it,” she said, referring to Department of Agriculture recommendations that home-preserved food be eaten within a year. “But it’s still going to make a great lunch.”
Ms. Bone, who has just published a canning cookbook titled “Well-Preserved” (Clarkson Potter), is not the blue-ribbon farm wife usually brought to mind by the phrase “home preserving expert.” She spent her youth in a plastic miniskirt, smoking and running between punk music shows on the Lower East Side. Now 50, a typically jumpy New Yorker and the mother of two teenagers, she grows nothing, though she is a regular hunter-gatherer at farmers’ markets.
But with her finely developed palate — she is a daughter of the influential Italian-American cookbook author Edward Giobbi — Ms. Bone has joined a growing movement of home cooks who are interested in preserving flavor, not just food.
“When I was young, we were just trying to desperately hold on to things,” said Edon Waycott, whose “Preserving the Taste” (Hearst Books, 1996) is one of the group’s bibles. She makes preserves from the mulberries, guavas and boysenberries she grows at home in Malibu, Calif., and was raised on working farms in North Carolina and New Jersey. “Now everything is available all the time, but capturing the ripeness and deliciousness of a strawberry is harder than it was back then,” she said.
Preserving food cannot be considered new and trendy, no matter how vigorously it’s rubbed with organic rosemary sprigs. But the recent revival of attention to it fits neatly into the modern renaissance of handcrafted food, heirloom agriculture, and using food in its season. Like baking bread or making a slow-cooked tomato sauce, preserving offers primal satisfactions and practical results. And in today’s swirl of food issues (local, seasonal, organic, industrial), home preserving can also be viewed as a quasi-political act. “Preserving is an extension of the values that made you shop in the farmers’ market in the first place,” Ms. Bone said.
“There’s an incredible surge of interest recently,” according to June Taylor of Berkeley, Calif., a pioneer in using local, seasonal produce and as few added ingredients as possible in her expensive, delicious fruit preserves. “People want to take back their food and their skills from the industrial giants.”
People are also looking for thrifty, crafty ways to eat well. In a time of high food prices, job losses and food safety scares, home canning is booming, with sales of equipment already up almost 50 percent over last year, according to the Jarden company, which makes both Ball and Kerr canning supplies.
Stacks of locally grown, peak-ripe produce are about to appear at farmstands and markets — then disappear for another year. The time window is opening for pickling artichokes, simmering berries and suspending plums in time, and syrup.
On Sunday, about 80 people are expected at a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Mission District, to preserve 500 pounds of ripe apricots trucked in from local organic farms. “The morning team will macerate them in sugar, cardamom and vanilla and the afternoon team will process them,” said Anya Fernald, who conceived the project and publicized it on Facebook and on www.yeswecanfood.com.
Shares in the apricots (future canning parties will tackle cucumbers in July and tomatoes in September) have been sold online, with a discount for those who show up to work in the kitchen. “By joining C.S.A.s or shopping at farmers’ markets, people have made the commitment,” Ms. Fernald said, referring to community-supported agriculture programs, in which people buy a weekly share of a farm’s output. “Now they will learn to deal with the ingredients.”
Canning, especially the friendly sounding “small batch” model, reduces the seasonal bounty to a series of manageable afternoon projects. (By contrast, older recipes call for bushels, rather than quarts, of produce.) “It’s not a huge annual event, but all of a piece with the way I eat and cook every day,” said Georgianne Mora, who lives in South Londonderry, Vt., and blogs at www.acookinglife.typepad.com. “The most flavor, from the best ingredients, with the least interference from me.” Ms. Mora, a purist among purists, has experimented extensively with jams cooked almost entirely by the heat of the sun, and sells them at farmers’ markets.
Like most ideologically tinged movements, preserving has its warring factions, its fault lines and its taboos. Many American home-canning classics — the kinds that win prizes at county fairs, like peas and carrots, dilled green beans, fruit jellies stiffened with pectin — are considered too sweet, too plain or too artificial by these cooks.
“I have never made one jar of jam with pectin,” declared June Taylor, referring to the naturally derived thickener that is a staple of both industrial and home canning. (It is called for in many recipes on the Agriculture Department’s canning Web site, the National Center for Home Food Preservation, www.uga.edu/nchfp/, considered the most reliable resource.)
source:
When the tuna came to light, the date on the label was discouraging: 2006. “The Feds wouldn’t like it,” she said, referring to Department of Agriculture recommendations that home-preserved food be eaten within a year. “But it’s still going to make a great lunch.”
Ms. Bone, who has just published a canning cookbook titled “Well-Preserved” (Clarkson Potter), is not the blue-ribbon farm wife usually brought to mind by the phrase “home preserving expert.” She spent her youth in a plastic miniskirt, smoking and running between punk music shows on the Lower East Side. Now 50, a typically jumpy New Yorker and the mother of two teenagers, she grows nothing, though she is a regular hunter-gatherer at farmers’ markets.
But with her finely developed palate — she is a daughter of the influential Italian-American cookbook author Edward Giobbi — Ms. Bone has joined a growing movement of home cooks who are interested in preserving flavor, not just food.
“When I was young, we were just trying to desperately hold on to things,” said Edon Waycott, whose “Preserving the Taste” (Hearst Books, 1996) is one of the group’s bibles. She makes preserves from the mulberries, guavas and boysenberries she grows at home in Malibu, Calif., and was raised on working farms in North Carolina and New Jersey. “Now everything is available all the time, but capturing the ripeness and deliciousness of a strawberry is harder than it was back then,” she said.
Preserving food cannot be considered new and trendy, no matter how vigorously it’s rubbed with organic rosemary sprigs. But the recent revival of attention to it fits neatly into the modern renaissance of handcrafted food, heirloom agriculture, and using food in its season. Like baking bread or making a slow-cooked tomato sauce, preserving offers primal satisfactions and practical results. And in today’s swirl of food issues (local, seasonal, organic, industrial), home preserving can also be viewed as a quasi-political act. “Preserving is an extension of the values that made you shop in the farmers’ market in the first place,” Ms. Bone said.
“There’s an incredible surge of interest recently,” according to June Taylor of Berkeley, Calif., a pioneer in using local, seasonal produce and as few added ingredients as possible in her expensive, delicious fruit preserves. “People want to take back their food and their skills from the industrial giants.”
People are also looking for thrifty, crafty ways to eat well. In a time of high food prices, job losses and food safety scares, home canning is booming, with sales of equipment already up almost 50 percent over last year, according to the Jarden company, which makes both Ball and Kerr canning supplies.
Stacks of locally grown, peak-ripe produce are about to appear at farmstands and markets — then disappear for another year. The time window is opening for pickling artichokes, simmering berries and suspending plums in time, and syrup.
On Sunday, about 80 people are expected at a community kitchen in San Francisco’s Mission District, to preserve 500 pounds of ripe apricots trucked in from local organic farms. “The morning team will macerate them in sugar, cardamom and vanilla and the afternoon team will process them,” said Anya Fernald, who conceived the project and publicized it on Facebook and on www.yeswecanfood.com.
Shares in the apricots (future canning parties will tackle cucumbers in July and tomatoes in September) have been sold online, with a discount for those who show up to work in the kitchen. “By joining C.S.A.s or shopping at farmers’ markets, people have made the commitment,” Ms. Fernald said, referring to community-supported agriculture programs, in which people buy a weekly share of a farm’s output. “Now they will learn to deal with the ingredients.”
Canning, especially the friendly sounding “small batch” model, reduces the seasonal bounty to a series of manageable afternoon projects. (By contrast, older recipes call for bushels, rather than quarts, of produce.) “It’s not a huge annual event, but all of a piece with the way I eat and cook every day,” said Georgianne Mora, who lives in South Londonderry, Vt., and blogs at www.acookinglife.typepad.com. “The most flavor, from the best ingredients, with the least interference from me.” Ms. Mora, a purist among purists, has experimented extensively with jams cooked almost entirely by the heat of the sun, and sells them at farmers’ markets.
Like most ideologically tinged movements, preserving has its warring factions, its fault lines and its taboos. Many American home-canning classics — the kinds that win prizes at county fairs, like peas and carrots, dilled green beans, fruit jellies stiffened with pectin — are considered too sweet, too plain or too artificial by these cooks.
“I have never made one jar of jam with pectin,” declared June Taylor, referring to the naturally derived thickener that is a staple of both industrial and home canning. (It is called for in many recipes on the Agriculture Department’s canning Web site, the National Center for Home Food Preservation, www.uga.edu/nchfp/, considered the most reliable resource.)
source:
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
shopOrganic.com Proudly Celebrates One-Year Anniversary of Launching Its Premier Online Organic Food and Natural Products Store
A major organic food store is celebrating their 1 year anniversary and making plans for the future with quality organic foods and natural products.
Tucson, AZ (PRWEB) May 27, 2009 -- shopOrganic launched one year ago in May 2008. At the time, the firm's founders knew they had a tough road ahead. Starting any new business requires time, money, and hard work, but shopOrganic was up to the challenge. In spite of the slowing economy, shopOrganic sales climbed all through 2008, and continue today.
"We focus on several things - selecting high quality certified organic products, working with small vendors, and providing the best customer service anywhere," explains Lisa Mainz, co-founder. "We set out to create the kind of online experience where we would want to shop."
We set out to create the kind of online experience where we would want to shop.
Laurie brought her depth of financial and operational expertise to the team, along with her passion for health and wellness, and has helped round out the team
shopOrganic has been growing steadily since we first launched the site
Our customers are loyal, they come back on a regular basis - and we get a lot of new customers each week as well.
We have a really strong following with people shipping to APO/FPO addresses and the feedback we've gotten has been great.
Our focus on working with small organic vendors who offer high quality products is a great niche for us
A lot of our customers live in rural areas where they cannot find these kinds of products
and urban customers love the convenience of shopping online and having their order delivered right to their door.
At the end of our first year, our operations are rock solid and we have built a loyal customer and vendor base
We are poised for significant growth in year two, as we execute our marketing plans and continue to expand our operations.
Lisa Mainz and her business partner Susan Snedaker are both passionate about organic foods and sustainable living. Collectively, the two have a diverse set of skills well-suited to this type of start up. Mainz has worked in the natural foods industry for over 20 years, watching it grow from a small, niche market to a large, mainstream industry that embraces organic food and non-food products. Snedaker started her career in the IT industry and has worked in a variety of settings, enabling her to gain expertise in web related technologies. She also crafted the business plan and financial model that let them raise equity capital for the startup.
In addition to the expertise of the founders, the pair relied on input from another key associate, Cara Silverstein, who contracted with them at the outset and proudly became shopOrganic employee #1. Cara's expertise and background in the health foods industry includes marketing, purchasing and customer service. The firm recently announced the addition of a fourth key member of the team. Laurie Marini, former COO and CFO for Canyon Ranch, joined the team in early 2009. "Laurie brought her depth of financial and operational expertise to the team, along with her passion for health and wellness, and has helped round out the team," explains Snedaker.
"shopOrganic has been growing steadily since we first launched the site," says Mainz. "Our customers are loyal, they come back on a regular basis - and we get a lot of new customers each week as well." The company ships throughout the US and internationally to APO/FPO addresses. "We have a really strong following with people shipping to APO/FPO addresses and the feedback we've gotten has been great." Mainz and Snedaker founded the company with a vision of creating a sustainable, socially, and economically responsible company that would meet the needs of a diverse set of customers. They believe they've found their sweet spot and are looking forward to strong growth in the coming year.
"Our focus on working with small organic vendors who offer high quality products is a great niche for us," explains Silverstein. "Our customers look to us to provide the highest quality products available and we work hard to provide the best customer service anywhere. We boast a 99.8% order accuracy rate and in the rare instance when there is a problem with a shipment, we take whatever steps are needed to resolve the problem quickly. That's the kind of service we want from an online company, so that's what we provide to our customers."
Mainz also explained that the site offers organic food and eco-friendly products to customers who might otherwise not have ready access to them. "A lot of our customers live in rural areas where they cannot find these kinds of products," explained Mainz, "and urban customers love the convenience of shopping online and having their order delivered right to their door."
"At the end of our first year, our operations are rock solid and we have built a loyal customer and vendor base," says Marini. "We are poised for significant growth in year two, as we execute our marketing plans and continue to expand our operations."
The company is currently working with an SEO firm to expand their visibility online and reach a larger audience. Future plans include the introduction of additional sites focusing on specific organic product categories. They are also preparing to raise a second round of funding to capitalize their growth plans.
source: http://www.prweb.com
Tucson, AZ (PRWEB) May 27, 2009 -- shopOrganic launched one year ago in May 2008. At the time, the firm's founders knew they had a tough road ahead. Starting any new business requires time, money, and hard work, but shopOrganic was up to the challenge. In spite of the slowing economy, shopOrganic sales climbed all through 2008, and continue today.
"We focus on several things - selecting high quality certified organic products, working with small vendors, and providing the best customer service anywhere," explains Lisa Mainz, co-founder. "We set out to create the kind of online experience where we would want to shop."
We set out to create the kind of online experience where we would want to shop.
Laurie brought her depth of financial and operational expertise to the team, along with her passion for health and wellness, and has helped round out the team
shopOrganic has been growing steadily since we first launched the site
Our customers are loyal, they come back on a regular basis - and we get a lot of new customers each week as well.
We have a really strong following with people shipping to APO/FPO addresses and the feedback we've gotten has been great.
Our focus on working with small organic vendors who offer high quality products is a great niche for us
A lot of our customers live in rural areas where they cannot find these kinds of products
and urban customers love the convenience of shopping online and having their order delivered right to their door.
At the end of our first year, our operations are rock solid and we have built a loyal customer and vendor base
We are poised for significant growth in year two, as we execute our marketing plans and continue to expand our operations.
Lisa Mainz and her business partner Susan Snedaker are both passionate about organic foods and sustainable living. Collectively, the two have a diverse set of skills well-suited to this type of start up. Mainz has worked in the natural foods industry for over 20 years, watching it grow from a small, niche market to a large, mainstream industry that embraces organic food and non-food products. Snedaker started her career in the IT industry and has worked in a variety of settings, enabling her to gain expertise in web related technologies. She also crafted the business plan and financial model that let them raise equity capital for the startup.
In addition to the expertise of the founders, the pair relied on input from another key associate, Cara Silverstein, who contracted with them at the outset and proudly became shopOrganic employee #1. Cara's expertise and background in the health foods industry includes marketing, purchasing and customer service. The firm recently announced the addition of a fourth key member of the team. Laurie Marini, former COO and CFO for Canyon Ranch, joined the team in early 2009. "Laurie brought her depth of financial and operational expertise to the team, along with her passion for health and wellness, and has helped round out the team," explains Snedaker.
"shopOrganic has been growing steadily since we first launched the site," says Mainz. "Our customers are loyal, they come back on a regular basis - and we get a lot of new customers each week as well." The company ships throughout the US and internationally to APO/FPO addresses. "We have a really strong following with people shipping to APO/FPO addresses and the feedback we've gotten has been great." Mainz and Snedaker founded the company with a vision of creating a sustainable, socially, and economically responsible company that would meet the needs of a diverse set of customers. They believe they've found their sweet spot and are looking forward to strong growth in the coming year.
"Our focus on working with small organic vendors who offer high quality products is a great niche for us," explains Silverstein. "Our customers look to us to provide the highest quality products available and we work hard to provide the best customer service anywhere. We boast a 99.8% order accuracy rate and in the rare instance when there is a problem with a shipment, we take whatever steps are needed to resolve the problem quickly. That's the kind of service we want from an online company, so that's what we provide to our customers."
Mainz also explained that the site offers organic food and eco-friendly products to customers who might otherwise not have ready access to them. "A lot of our customers live in rural areas where they cannot find these kinds of products," explained Mainz, "and urban customers love the convenience of shopping online and having their order delivered right to their door."
"At the end of our first year, our operations are rock solid and we have built a loyal customer and vendor base," says Marini. "We are poised for significant growth in year two, as we execute our marketing plans and continue to expand our operations."
The company is currently working with an SEO firm to expand their visibility online and reach a larger audience. Future plans include the introduction of additional sites focusing on specific organic product categories. They are also preparing to raise a second round of funding to capitalize their growth plans.
source: http://www.prweb.com
Neighborhood girds for Berkeley Bowl West
Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer
Berkeley Bowl, the landmark grocery famed for its fresh produce and gourmet fare, is slated to open its sprawling sister store next week. Berkeley Bowl West will be a larger, more spacious version of the original, offering everything from organic soybeans to 24-ounce cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
The $30 million store is located at Ninth and Anthony streets, a block off Ashby Avenue and just west of San Pablo Avenue on the site of a former roofing company. "In a way it's really gratifying to see it finally open, but it's sad, too," said architect Kava Massih. "We've all been working on this for so long; it's like seeing your kid go off to college. You just can't believe it's over."
Owners Glenn and Diane Yasuda began planning for the new store in 2002, just three years after moving from their original digs at a former bowling alley into a renovated Safeway on Oregon Street.
Anyone who's shopped at Berkeley Bowl on a weekend can attest to the store's desperate need for expansion. The parking lot is a gridlocked swamp of road rage, a demolition derby of Priuses and rusty old Volvos vying for parking spots.
The produce section is often described as the "Cairo of shopping carts," as dozens of very focused and aggressive gourmands fight over the purple potatoes and fresh water chestnuts. The checkout lines can be staggering, like something out of East Berlin.
"We get pretty crowded, with the traffic and parking and whatnot," said the store's general manager, Dan Kataoka. "We wanted to try and alleviate some of that."
The owners hope Berkeley Bowl West is the answer. The new store will have 211 parking spaces, about twice what's available at the Oregon Street store, and wider aisles. The produce and bulk foods sections will be larger and the lines should be shorter, thanks to 16 checkout stands.
The new store will include a 96-seat cafe and expanded kitchen, providing a wider array of prepared food. It also features a 3,000-square-foot community room, underground parking garage, staff rooms for wine tasting and cheese preparation, spacious offices and a warehouse serving both stores. The entire project is about 140,000 square feet, making it one of the largest grocery operations in the East Bay.
Berkeley Bowl West will be the only large grocery store in West Berkeley, but it joins a crowded field in the city at large. Berkeley, home to the gourmet ghetto and birthplace of California cuisine, is rife with food stores, ranging from specialty shops to full-service groceries.
In addition to the original Berkeley Bowl, the city of 100,000 hosts a Grocery Outlet, Wild Oats, Whole Foods and four Andronico's. Also, the Safeway on Shattuck Avenue is undergoing a major renovation, and a Trader Joe's is slated to open downtown within the next year or two.
But Bowl managers are confident the new store will have a solid base of customers.
"I think Berkeley Bowl has created its own niche with our produce and reasonably priced groceries," Kataoka said. "But it's been an uphill battle all the way."
The delays in construction were due to myriad obstacles, including Berkeley zoning laws, the economic implosion and opposition from neighbors, who thought the project was too large and would bring the Bowl's legendary parking nightmare to their quiet streets.
"The last thing we need here is huge traffic jams," said John Curl, chair of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies, which fought for the store to be smaller. "With its cachet, we expect this store to draw people from around the region, and we don't know what that's going to do to traffic and parking around here."
The store is set to open June 4. Neighbors, who at one point hired their own traffic consultant to contest the city's traffic study, are now resigned to the store finally opening. Entrances will be on Ninth and Anthony streets, a block off Ashby Avenue.
"I stopped shopping at the other Berkeley Bowl because of the traffic jams," Curl said. "But if
there's no traffic at this one, I'd be happy to shop there. They have great produce."
source:
Berkeley Bowl, the landmark grocery famed for its fresh produce and gourmet fare, is slated to open its sprawling sister store next week. Berkeley Bowl West will be a larger, more spacious version of the original, offering everything from organic soybeans to 24-ounce cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
The $30 million store is located at Ninth and Anthony streets, a block off Ashby Avenue and just west of San Pablo Avenue on the site of a former roofing company. "In a way it's really gratifying to see it finally open, but it's sad, too," said architect Kava Massih. "We've all been working on this for so long; it's like seeing your kid go off to college. You just can't believe it's over."
Owners Glenn and Diane Yasuda began planning for the new store in 2002, just three years after moving from their original digs at a former bowling alley into a renovated Safeway on Oregon Street.
Anyone who's shopped at Berkeley Bowl on a weekend can attest to the store's desperate need for expansion. The parking lot is a gridlocked swamp of road rage, a demolition derby of Priuses and rusty old Volvos vying for parking spots.
The produce section is often described as the "Cairo of shopping carts," as dozens of very focused and aggressive gourmands fight over the purple potatoes and fresh water chestnuts. The checkout lines can be staggering, like something out of East Berlin.
"We get pretty crowded, with the traffic and parking and whatnot," said the store's general manager, Dan Kataoka. "We wanted to try and alleviate some of that."
The owners hope Berkeley Bowl West is the answer. The new store will have 211 parking spaces, about twice what's available at the Oregon Street store, and wider aisles. The produce and bulk foods sections will be larger and the lines should be shorter, thanks to 16 checkout stands.
The new store will include a 96-seat cafe and expanded kitchen, providing a wider array of prepared food. It also features a 3,000-square-foot community room, underground parking garage, staff rooms for wine tasting and cheese preparation, spacious offices and a warehouse serving both stores. The entire project is about 140,000 square feet, making it one of the largest grocery operations in the East Bay.
Berkeley Bowl West will be the only large grocery store in West Berkeley, but it joins a crowded field in the city at large. Berkeley, home to the gourmet ghetto and birthplace of California cuisine, is rife with food stores, ranging from specialty shops to full-service groceries.
In addition to the original Berkeley Bowl, the city of 100,000 hosts a Grocery Outlet, Wild Oats, Whole Foods and four Andronico's. Also, the Safeway on Shattuck Avenue is undergoing a major renovation, and a Trader Joe's is slated to open downtown within the next year or two.
But Bowl managers are confident the new store will have a solid base of customers.
"I think Berkeley Bowl has created its own niche with our produce and reasonably priced groceries," Kataoka said. "But it's been an uphill battle all the way."
The delays in construction were due to myriad obstacles, including Berkeley zoning laws, the economic implosion and opposition from neighbors, who thought the project was too large and would bring the Bowl's legendary parking nightmare to their quiet streets.
"The last thing we need here is huge traffic jams," said John Curl, chair of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies, which fought for the store to be smaller. "With its cachet, we expect this store to draw people from around the region, and we don't know what that's going to do to traffic and parking around here."
The store is set to open June 4. Neighbors, who at one point hired their own traffic consultant to contest the city's traffic study, are now resigned to the store finally opening. Entrances will be on Ninth and Anthony streets, a block off Ashby Avenue.
"I stopped shopping at the other Berkeley Bowl because of the traffic jams," Curl said. "But if
there's no traffic at this one, I'd be happy to shop there. They have great produce."
source:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)