Anna Mindess

-- A guest post by Anna Mindess
Like many freelance writers, I lost work when the pandemic hit. My articles were cancelled or postponed. A magazine that I contributed to regularly went out of business. There was so much uncertainty. I felt useless. But today, it’s different. I feel inspired and empowered. I’ve put myself on a path to help struggling restaurants. This focus has become one of the most satisfying projects I have ever undertaken as a writer...

A sea of little bottles in aqua, pink and sea foam green line the long bar of On the Bridge in San Francisco Japantown. Chef Mitsuhiro Nakamura is proud of his ability to choose the perfect sake from his collection to match the taste of any diner. But when the shelter in place started last spring, the restaurant Nakamura and his wife Yolanda had run for 30 years immediately lost 90 percent of its business due to its location on the narrow, enclosed bridgeway...

There is something hypnotizing about watching Rebecca or Dj Dahmani create your crepe at La Crepe a Moi. A quick ladle of brown-flecked batter meets the hot griddle, a fluid swirl of the wrist with a little wooden spreader produces a perfectly smooth circle. Suddenly, you are hit by the enticing aromas of sizzling butter and nutty buckwheat. A long spatula allows a deft flip of the crepe exposing its toasty side, then a shower of cheese, perhaps an egg or some ham and the tasty package is folded into a long cone and scooped onto your plate.

You might do a double-take when you spot the large red-and-white sign atop Syma’s Grill that proclaims Mexican and Persian food. “What is this?” you wonder. “Two separate restaurants sharing one sign? Perhaps a new kind of fusion cuisine?” Neither.
Sima Dehestani, who was born and raised in Iran and came to love cooking Mexican food, offers a generous array of dishes from both cultures (on separate menu pages) at her cozy spot in Albany.

After a 14-month hibernation, the Indigenous Red Market, a celebration of Native artists, vendors, music, dance, and food came roaring back to life this month at the Native American Health Center parking lot on International Boulevard in Fruitvale. The rich culture and community connections offered by the event, which took place on May 2, were sorely missed, judging by the long lines of community members who waited to get in.

In 2018, Ellen Doren and Bulat Nasybulin named their new Russian food truck Kolobok after a Russian folklore character. In the classic tale, Kolobok, a cherubic ball of dough (pictured on the couple’s bright red and yellow truck), escapes the oven, then cleverly keeps rolling on, enjoying adventures in the forest. “He has many stories of endurance and perseverance,” the Kolobok owners explain on their website. Little did the couple know how that image of a plucky survivor would be eerily apt...

When he was eight years old, Peter Kemel’s grandfather began teaching him the skills that a cobbler needs to learn, including cleaning, gluing and dyeing shoe leather.
“It was fun, I loved the hammering best,” says Kemel, who, for the last 21 years, has used those skills to give new lives to the shoes of grateful customers at his shop, Model Shoe Renew. Kemel is the third owner of this shoe repair outpost, which opened in Berkeley over 70 years ago...

Four years ago, in January 2017, just days after Berkeley’s 1951 Coffee Company opened its Channing Avenue cafe staffed entirely by refugees, President Trump enacted his travel ban barring immigrants and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries and suspending the entire refugee resettlement program. Doug Hewitt, 1951 Coffee’s co-founder and CEO, recognized a bright side to that calamitous decision. ...

When you imagine Japanese delicacies, cheese may not be the first food that comes to mind, but cheese in Japan has been rapidly growing in popularity over the last 10 years. In 2019, when Japan first entered the World Cheese Awards, over a dozen of their cheeses went home with an award. In addition to mastering the classic European styles of cheese, Japanese cheesemakers seek to make their own imprint on the cheese world, often with ingredients and inclusions that are most familiar to their customers...

One month into shelter in place, I was shocked to stumble upon an open store on Solano Avenue. And not any store, but a favorite shop that can sometimes seem like a time machine channeling the 1950s. As a writer, I often came to Payn’s Stationery to find the perfect notebook for a new assignment. Since the pandemic, I had lost most of my writing jobs, but I still jumped at the chance to wander through its rainbow of pens, playful stickers, fortress of folders and vintage cards. Then I spotted...

Let’s face it, this year’s romantic Valentine’s dinner will likely not take place in a cozy corner of our favorite restaurant. But all is not lost. We can still pamper ourselves (and our sweethearts) by sharing luxurious, indulgent treats and even discovering new sensuous pleasures. To be precise, I’m talking about pairing a variety of cheeses and chocolates--perhaps unlikely partners, which actually can bring out the best in each other...

Looking back, March 1, 2020 was probably not the best date to open a restaurant. But Wenyan Petersen, who with husband Tom, co-owns Noodles Fresh on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, still exudes a positive spirit and sees the advantages in these challenging times.
Petersen is proud that she kept the full menu at Noodles Fresh for takeout dining. “People will taste our freshness and uniqueness,” she asserted. Instead of focusing on the distinctive cuisine of one of China’s many regions, Petersen chose her menu to represent the specialties of many different areas...

India is the world's largest dairy producer, with 22 percent of global production. But most of it was destined for milk, yogurt, butter, and non-melting paneer, until perhaps 10 to 20 years ago, when the art of artisanal cheese started slowly spreading throughout the country but with its own twist, the use of local ingredients and inclusions...

In the good old days, when my husband and I would go out to Japanese restaurants, we would always order a bottle of cold sake to drink with our meal. We would ask the servers for suggestions, they would bring something that we usually liked, but, somehow, we never made a note of its name. I always told myself that--this time--I would remember the name or make a note of it, but once the sake started to have its desired effect, those thoughts seemed to slip my mind, like an eel slithering silently away...

Sanela Mlivo grew up on a farm in Central Bosnia, where her family grew all of their own vegetables, raised sheep, cows, and chickens, and made bread, stews, and soups. They lost everything in the Bosnian War, and in 1998 the family came to Oakland where Mlivo worked in a series of restaurants—Italian, Bulgarian and Palestinian. Now, Mlivo dreams of doing just that at her own farm-to-table restaurant that would sell Bosnian street food like ćevapi, a popular dish that pairs spiced sausages with homemade pita bread.