Bay Area radio station KCBS (106.9 FM and 740 AM) does a fairly decent job of covering some interesting local food stories. They interviewed Soleil Ho for about 3 minutes when the Chronicle 100 Best came out and a few weeks ago had Janelle Bitker, also of the Chronicle, talk about a dust-up at Swan’s Market in Old Oakland.
Last weekend they aired their long-form series In Depth for a 28-minute piece about the growth of meat alternatives, whether they can be widely accepted and possible effects on the environment. The show consisted of interviews with 3 experts, some background music and narration by Keith Menconi who, according to his bio, is a Cal graduate, anchored news in Taipei and is fluent in Mandarin.
Here’s the audio of the piece that aired twice each on Saturday and Sunday
In that way, these peanut butter cold noodles are a great example of what San Francisco Chronicle food critic Soleil Ho has called “assimilation foods”—the kinds of half-improvised dishes that immigrants make when they’re far from home, using whatever ingredients they have on hand to help re-create familiar tastes: fried rice with ketchup and kielbasa, or Thanksgiving turkey stuffed with sticky rice, or my father-in-law’s greatest culinary creation, “Campbell’s soup mian.” What greater testament is there to immigrant resilience and ingenuity than to use a jar of Jif and a packet of supermarket ham to make something that still somehow tastes purely Chinese in spirit?
Before joining The New Food Economy, Jesse Hirsch was an investigative food editor at Consumer Reports , where he tackled stories on food safety, health, and nutrition. He has also worked for GOOD magazine, EdibleBrooklyn/Manhattan , and VICE Munchies. Jesse was a founding editor at Modern Farmer magazine, and he was restaurant critic at The San Francisco Examiner and The East Bay Express in Oakland, California. @jesse_hirsch
My name is Elena Kadvany; I’m a local food writer who recently launched a newsletter devoted to restaurant news and culture on the Peninsula. It comes out every other Wednesday and includes the latest openings and closings, what I’m eating that I’m excited about, interviews with chefs and deep dives into the issues and trends affecting restaurants in this area. I’m covering the entirety of the Peninsula, from Santa Clara to Daly City and out to the coast.
I love Hungry Onion and often come here to learn about new or interesting places to eat. If you’re interested in my newsletter and would like to sign up, you can do so here: https://paloaltoonline.com/express/foodist
A veteran of San Francisco magazine and the East Bay Express is now the editor of Eater SF
Tsai replaces former editor Ellen Fort, who moved on to a new job at Sunset magazine a few months ago. He joins reporter Becky Duffett and our incoming to-be-announced senior editor.
Boulevard took its name from “the Boulevard,” the bayfront road liberated after the elevated Embarcadero Freeway was demolished following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Gone were the perpetual gloom, echoing thwock of car tires over roadway seams, and sex workers who lurked in this Blade Runner streetscape of woe. In their place, designer and partner Pat Kuleto gave Boulevard the sensuousness of Maxim’s in Paris while chef Nancy Oakes used the menu to show how farm-to-table (said without wincing) didn’t have to fall in line with the simplicity of Chez Panisse: It could flaunt artifice, give us the three-inch-thick brined pork chops and seared halibut steaks we all secretly wanted, yet feel bubbly and operatic, flecked with conserva, shimmering with espuma. The food still manages to read like a manifesto on the supremacy of Northern California’s supply chains while declaring that San Francisco, now and forever, is the capital of the Barbary Coast.— John Birdsall, Oakland-based food writer
What we would love more than anything, then, is to expand this website’s definition of what kinds of restaurants are deserving of coverage. Consider this an open call for pitches, then. We are actively seeking ideas from journalists and food writers — but also academics and filmmakers, and anyone else who has deep knowledge of particular food cultures that tend to be overlooked in the Bay Area media landscape. We are especially interested in working with those whose voices are often underrepresented in media.
… By that same token, we are looking to expand our coverage geographically. We know that much of the most exciting food in the Bay Area is being served not in San Francisco proper, but in the East Bay. In particular, we would like to pay a lot more attention to the South Bay and the Peninsula, especially given the wealth of exceptional restaurants that serve the various immigrant communities in those areas: Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Filipino, Samoan, Indian, Chinese, and so on. If you’re someone who is tapped into those vibrant food communities, we would love to hear your ideas for breaking news, feature stories, and curated maps.
We feel incredibly lucky to announce that Eater SF’s new senior editor is Eve Batey . A veteran blogger and reporter who co-founded SFist in the early 2000s, Batey brings a deep institutional knowledge of San Francisco to Eater SF, having lived — and eaten — all over the city, across five neighborhoods, for 22 years. She co-wrote the book 100 Things to Do in San Francisco Before You Die, and she has a particularly sharp eye for noteworthy businesses in the city’s oft-overlooked southern and western reaches.
Batey replaces Caleb Pershan, who has moved to New York after spending the past two-and-a-half years breaking restaurant news for Eater SF.
Janell Bitker (formerly of the East Bay Express and SF Eater) writes in the SF Chronicle:
excerpt:
In Chinese culture, the transition to the afterlife is memorialized in tomb-sweeping festivals and food rituals. But what happens when years of migration cause treasured family traditions to vanish?
There are hints that famed restaurateur Michael Mina could be involved in the opening of a new, private club inside San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Eve Batey, senior editor at Eater San Francisco, spoke with KCBS Radio anchor Rebecca Corral and says, so far there has been no official confirmation despite a few hints of the venture online.
