Edible San Francisco

ThirstyBear brewer Rich Higgins eyes a glass of Irish Coffee, a bourbon-barrel-aged espresso stout. Photo: Bart Nagel At ThirstyBear Brewing Co., organic craft brews match beautifully with Spanish-style cuisine. There are many stories of beer-guzzling bears. In 2004, a marauding black bear dow…

Lauren Kiino (Cane Rosso, and the upcoming Bracina) There are a ton of local purveyors I love (most involve cheese and salumi!) but one that stands out is Hodo Soy. Yes, the tofu place. I know it’s a bit odd coming from someone who loves her meat, but I really feel like their soy things are prett…

The smoldering remains of one chicken hoop house. How the Bay Area food and farming community helped Soul Food Farm recover from a devastating fire. Around 1:30 a.m. on the night of September 3, ­engineer-turned-chicken farmer Eric Koefed awoke thirsty, then saw a terrifying orange glow through t…

More and more concerned citizens are actively working to improve San Francisco school food. From parent meetings to Commonwealth Club conversations to new coalitions, the conversation is a hot topic—and an incredibly complicated one.

Several companies have sprung up to offer healthy, fresh lunches to Bay Area schoolchildren. San Francisco is a foodie paradise—a place where the values “sustainable, organic, local” are ubiquitously cited on restaurant menus, a city within a few hours’ drive of the farms and ranches that feed the…

Photos By Bart Nagel Edible gardens in San Francisco’s schools teach kids to embrace nature—and their leafy greens Dropped in the middle of this annual Country Fair, you’d probably think you were in the country. A few sheep stand about nakedly, their wool having just been shorn, gathered, and brou…

Fish today may crisscross the globe like so many transcontinental business flyers, but it wasn’t that long ago when most of the seafood Americans ate was locally caught. And it still can be—if we’re willing to limit our choices, and commit to the extra effort required to source local seafood.

By Wayne Garcia & Sheryl Rogat One of the quintessential San Francisco dishes, cioppino is a fisherman’s stew traditionally made from whatever catch happened to be available. In that spirit, this ultra-simple version uses what we had on hand on the March day we sourced clams from Hog Island’s …

"Veteran seafood forager Dennis Judson" By Katharine Norwood • Photo by Brittany Powell Mastered eating seasonally and locally? The next step for many Bay Area residents is foraging for wild foods, from fruit-tree-laden neighborhoods to the cold Pacific itself. Veteran seafood forager Dennis Jud…

San Francisco chefs tell how the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch guide has affected their purchasing decisions. By Marcia Gagliardi Greg Dunmore, executive chef of Ame I look at the guide first for any fish I get and cook. I used to use hamachi a lot, but the quality was slipping a…

When it comes to saving sushi for future generations to eat, Bay Area restaurants employ different strategies…or none at all. By John Birdsall • Photos by Bart Nagel One day in 2007, Kin Lui was taking a break from his shift at the upscale Japanese restaurant Kyo-ya. A piece in the San Francisco Chr…