Food

Genova’s: A day at the deli

Since opening in 1926, Genova’s Delicatessen has served pasta, soups and traditional deli sandwiches to residents of North Oakland’s Temescal district.

Kuro mame, A Japanese delicacy for New Year’s

This Kuro mame (black beans) recipe comes from a program the Buddhist Church of Oakland (BCO) held 12 years ago, highlighting food for the Oshogatsu (New Year’s) celebration. New Year’s is an important time in Japanese culture. Many of the foods served on this occasion are symbolic and come from the Buddhist tradition. Mame translates to “beans,” but also means “health.” When the black beans are combined with chestnuts (kuri, symbolizing success) and kelp (kombu, symbolizing joy), the dish symbolizes…

Three ingredients travel across the country

A container of pasta. A 10-pound tube of ground turkey. A can of tomato sauce. It was a Monday in November at a central kitchen in East Oakland and dozens of cardboard boxes were being unloaded, revealing the three main ingredients for a pasta and meat-sauce dish that would be served to elementary school kids in the Oakland Unified School District that Thursday. In a matter of hours, stainless steel racks filled with clumps of pasta, each in open-faced cardboard…

How three well-traveled ingredients end up as lunch in Oakland’s public school cafeterias

The lunchroom at Hoover Elementary School has a long metal counter built into the wall between the lunchroom and the kitchen. There’s an industrial-looking sliding metal door that can be opened for serving food directly from the kitchen, but this serving arrangement is no longer used. In terms of food preparation devices, the kitchen now boasts only a refrigerator and an “oven” that is not equipped to do anything old-fashioned, like bake; it only reheats trays of already-cooked meals. Despite the fact that there is no cooking at Hoover, there are still 325 mouths to feed at breakfast and lunch every day.

It’s on College Avenue, it’s delicious and cheese is its main ingredient

It rode on the back of a bike for a mile, it survived numerous left and right turns on the way to its final destination, and in the end this Zachary’s deep dish pizza loaded with spinach, mushrooms and cheese was well worth the wait. Though the staff at Zachary’s on Sunday night wouldn’t allow OaklandNorth to take pictures of their restaurant interior or their delicious pizzas as they slid out of ovens and into cardboard to-go boxes, raising the…