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Leena Cooks: Ruth Reichl’s Mushroom Soup

Leena Cooks: Ruth Reichls Mushroom Soup

A little Berkeley, a little mushroom--the perfect compliment to a chilly winter day!

Let me be crystal clear here–Ruth Reichl is my Tom Cruise, my Justin Timberlake, my Barbara Streisand. Very few people make me lose my shit. Ruth is one.

She is the godmother of modern food writing who lived in the Bay area for part of her life (like me!), loved the world of food and writing about it (like me!), and was the last editor of the iconic Gourmet Magazine before it closed down (one day!).

The fact is, while there are millions of food writers today in the world, it is difficult to find good examples of food writing career paths for people just starting in the field. Especially just ten years ago, when I was first starting. I immersed myself in the world of Ruth Reichl’s stories of a life filled with food, each accompanied by a recipe from that time. I literally and figuratively ate it up!

More story, food porn and the recipe after the jump!

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Leena Eats: Dareye–Finally, good East Bay Ethiopian!

Leena Eats: Dareye  Finally, good East Bay Ethiopian!
Our spread at Dareye restaurant, trip #1. Delicious mesir watt!

The East Bay is home to a LOT of Ethiopian restaurants. You might think this is a good thing, but it literally took me eight different restaurants before I was able to find enjoy. After two visits (one good, one not so good), I’m ready to make a bold statement–I like me some Dareye Ethiopian.

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Leena Eats: A damn good sandwich at SLOW in Berkeley

Leena Eats: A damn good sandwich at SLOW in Berkeley
A sandwich worth searching for: pulled pork shoulder with slaw, pineapple chile compote and aioli at SLOW in Berkeley.

Is there anything more perfect to eat than a sandwich? Created by John Montague, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, so that he didn’t have to leave the table and stop gambling, this simple meal of two slices of bread with a filling is both compact and easy to eat. Up the quality of the filling, and you got yourself a damn fine meal.

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Leena Eats: Slow in Berkeley- Fancy food for cheap!

Leena Eats: Slow in Berkeley  Fancy food for cheap!

Puffed bread topped with olives, cheese and arugula. Delicious!

I stumbled across Slow restaurant in downtown Berkeley when I was on the hunt for a cheap but delicious pre-movie meal. The restaurant had opened a few months earlier, and boasted a “SLOW” cooked menu at an affordable price.

Although portion sizing can run a bit small on the mains, we were pretty impressed at what we found at Slow. Really good food, served to you fairly quickly at a decent price.

More food porn after the jump.

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Leena Eats: More cupcakes from Love At First Bite!

Leena Eats: More cupcakes from Love At First Bite!

The toasted coconut cupcake from Love At First Bite. A vanilla cake with a marshmallow frosting topped with toasted coconut. Ridiculously rich and delicious.

I heart cupcake pron. What else do you need to know? Love At First Bite is in North Berkeley, around the corner from Chez Panisse.

More cupcake pron after the jump.

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Leena Eats: Gather in Berkeley

Leena Eats: Gather in Berkeley

The vegan charcuterie platter at Gather in Berkeley.

Leena Eats: Gather in Berkeley

The list of vegan charcuterie served that day at Gather in Berkeley. I really like the mushroom tartare.

Gather is a “new American” style restaurant in Berkeley, California that dabbles a bit in vegetarian and vegan foods, as well as food for meat lovers, so when my parents came into town (one is a vegetarian, the other a meat lover), I knew we had to try it out.

We started with the vegan charcuterie, an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one, but surprisingly delicious. I really liked the mushroom tartare (front and center in the top photo) and the carpaccio of heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers and “tonatto” sauce (a play on an Italian tuna sauce). I wouldn’t say they could replace meat on a regular basis in my life, but I definitely did not miss meat while eating them.

More food porn after the jump!

Leena Eats: Gather in Berkeley

Gather restaurant in Berkeley.

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Leena Eats: The Big Cheese Penis, Day Two (Chez Panisse)

Leena Eats: The Big Cheese Penis, Day Two (Chez Panisse)

First course: cherry tomato salad with ricotta salata. Light and refreshing.

I recently had the pleasure of dining at Chez Panisse Cafe, and not nearly a week later, I was invited to go try the restaurant downstairs out with new friends. What are the differences, you may ask? Well, the cafe is upstairs, less formal, and has an a la carte menu. The restaurant is downstairs, more formal, and has a set four course meal the chef changes daily. Cafe more affordable, restaurant more expensive.

The first course of the evening was awesome—a refreshing and light tomato salad with ricotta salata and cucumbers. The tomatoes were juicy and tasted as only a tomato can taste in season, at it’s ripest, simply perfect. The salad had a cooling effect, which was great, especially considering that Berkeley was having a freakishly and untypically hot 100 degree F evening.

More food porn and info on the meal and sticking to seats after the jump.

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Leena Eats: The Big Cheese Penis, Day One(Chez Panisse Cafe Photo Essay)

Leena Eats: The Big Cheese Penis, Day One(Chez Panisse Cafe Photo Essay)

My goat cheese salad at Chez Panisse Cafe. The cheese was breaded and baked, which helped it stay ethereally light.

Chez Panisse. The big Cheese Penis in Berkeley. Run by one of the America’s culinary greats, Alice Waters, this place has been on my radar ever since I picked up a Ruth Reichl book (my food writing idol,Ruth Reichl, worked at Chez Panisse in the 70s when it first opened). Chez Panisse, and it’s slightly cheaper but equally tasty counterpart, the upstairs cafe, pride themselves on serving simple, local, seasonal food.

The concept is almost overdone in restaurants today, but for good reason—it tastes great, and Chez Panisse was certainly one of the first to cook by such a credo in the U.S. But the Cheese Penis, it don’t come cheap, so it had to be saved for a special occasion.

So. Much. Food Pron. And yes, I mean food pron. After the jump!

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