Food

Saturday’s celebration combined the re-opening of Phat Beets Produce farmers market at its new location, the opening of a new on-site community kitchen collective and the observance of Juneteenth, a US holiday honoring African American heritage and commemorating June 19, 1865, the day many slaves in Texas learned they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

The Oakland Unified School District has proposed a new plan that will expand its healthy meals program by updating meal service facilities on campuses throughout the district, allowing schools to increase the number of campuses that can serve freshly prepared food.

As part of a program called Rethinking School Lunch in Oakland, OUSD Nutrition Services Director Jennifer LeBarre and Zenobia Barlow, executive director of the Center for Ecoliteracy, created an outline of options to expand and improve the overall district-wide food service

From Tuesday through Friday, Oliveto Café and Restaurant in Rockridge will offer four nights of notable seafood dishes for its 11th Annual Oceanic Dinner. The meals will include historic San Francisco seafood recipes like cioppino made from local fish and shellfish, Crab Louie, Hog Island Oyster Po’Boys and salt-roasted black sea bass with Romano beans. The focus on seafood is a part of the restaurant’s continued interest in expanding the use of locally sourced products. The large menu, with over 20 options, is transparent, listing where every fish was caught and how.

The ladles were out at Issues—a magazine store known for its comprehensive international selections—for their 5th year anniversary party that featured a chili cook-off.

The Institute of Urban Homesteading, which offers classes that focus on living in an urban environment and in “rescuing” the lost arts of gardening, work in the kitchen and other work performed by hand, will host its second annual Urban Farm Tours day on Saturday, June 9 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Seven homes will be featured in guided tours through small medium and large lots in Glenview, Montclair, Oakland and North and West Berkeley.

Bittersweet settles into its new location in downtown Oakland, as the café becomes one of the new businesses to enter the revitalized area of the East Bay.

Sal Bednarz, the owner of Actual Cafe, will be opening a new food joint slated to open next fall at the intersection of San Pablo and Alcatraz called Victory Burgers serving, you guessed it, hamburgers.

Two local businesses—Linden Street Brewery and Chop Bar—came together in Oakland Sunday for their annual pig roast celebration, held on the third Sunday of every month between April and September. Dynamic, an Oakland based band, performed throughout the evening. The four pigs they roasted came from Langley Farm in Petaluma, about 50 miles north of Oakland. Chefs at Chop Bar received the hogs two days before the roast, putting them in big white coolers while brining then for two days…

Bites off Broadway is back, and maybe this time, thanks to a new food truck ordinance in Oakland, it’s here to stay for the summer.