KICKAPOO CUISINE In April, Slow Food East Bay started out the Cultural Food 
Traditions undertaking, a dinner collection that invites neighborhood cooks from diverse backgrounds to show off the traditions of their culture thru food. The next dinner in the collection will feature chef Crystal Wahpepah, who makes a specialty of indigenous American cuisine. Although of Kickapoo heritage (a Native American way of life with tribes in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas), Wahpepah grew up in Oakland amongst others in a bigger city Native American network, from whom she discovered a variety of cooking patterns. After graduating from Oakland’s Bread Project software and La Cocina, she based her personal catering enterprise in 2012 referred to as Wahpepah’s Kitchen, which offers dishes like buffalo blueberry stew, Kickapoo chili, and a roasted pumpkin salad. In 2016, Wahpepah has become the first indigenous chef to seem at the Food Network’s series “Chopped.”
For the Slow Food dinner, Wahpepah will put together a meal served on the rooftop of Cal’s Garden Village apartments. In addition, the evening will function a dialogue approximately the records of indigenous delicacies and approaches in which food has been used to suppress and damage local groups. Cultural Food Traditions dinners usually pair a chef with a nonprofit, and for this particular event, that institution might be Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led, East Bay-based indigenous community employer working to reclaim get right of entry to for local groups on conventional Ohlone lands. The dinner takes area from five-eight p.M., June 30. Tickets are $45-$ eighty-five sliding scales ($30 for kids below 12), which incorporates dinner, drinks, and dialogue. Garden Village, 2201 Dwight Way, Berkeley
CASTRO VALLEY MARKETPLACE UPDATE In January, Nosh cited a large gourmet marketplace establishing soon in Castro Valley and these days, we’ve got some greater info to percentage. Taking over the former Daughtrey’s department save, The Castro Valley Marketplace will be a new sort of multi-degree artisanal meals vacation spot in the East Bay. Nosh spoke with Craig Semmelmeyer, one of the marketplace partners and founder of Main Street Property Services, the actual property agency behind the undertaking, to hear more approximately what’s to come.
According to Semmelmeyer, the Castro Valley Marketplace may be “more than your not unusual meals corridor.” Rather than only a grouping of eating place stalls sharing a common dining space, it targets to be more of a “metropolis rectangular,” and will include introduced additives for greater interaction between clients, market companies and other local meals makers, that speaks to a developing interest in sourcing, training, and experiential activities. So in conjunction with getting prepared-made eats from restaurants like Akemi Japanese Cuisine or at Cannery Kitchen & Tap, customers can buy elements to take domestic from vendors like Baron’s Quality Meats and Seafood, Oaktown Spice Shop and the marketplace’s anchor tenant, Castro Valley Natural Grocery.
“This is a place wherein you could buy the substances, now not just purchase the completed product for take-out… You might be in a class on cheesemaking with Farm Curious, be taking a pickling elegance with Oaktown Spice,” Semmelmeyer said.
Castro Valley Marketplace will also house a cooking college, business kitchen and occasion space, and a collaborative workspace for brand new retail and meals organizations. These facilities can be rented by way of market providers to host activities, demonstrations, and collaborations. “The diverse partnerships, our traders, are the drivers for us. We want them to be promoting their commercial enterprise,” Semmelmeyer defined. “It’s pretty thrilling to say, ‘Here’s Baron’s Meats’ and feature them next door to Oaktown Spice Shop and feature them do joint classes on making bone broth.”
Many of the companies that have signed up for Castro Valley Marketplace have other locations in different components of the Bay Area, but Semmelmeyer stated many even have a connection to Castro Valley. The owners of San Leandro’s Cordial Bottle Shop, Stacey and Simon Tingstrom, as an instance, had been born and raised in Castro Valley. They’ll be at the back of the market’s basement-stage wine shop and wine bar.
Edward Yoo and Sandy Liu, proprietors of Oakland’s Blind Tiger and Gogi Time, are bringing Night Owl, a cocktail bar, to Castro Valley Marketplace with a view to link to a business kitchen area. There, they’ll host cocktail instructions and pa-up occasions with a rotating series of cooks.
For now, the list of confirmed tenants includes Castro Valley Natural Grocery, Cannery Kitchen & Tap, Baron’s Quality Meats and Seafood, Oaktown Spice Shop, Akemi Japanese Cuisine, AKA Coffee, Seven Hills Baking Company, Night Owl, Pop Out Kitchen (cooking college and industrial kitchen), Lab 200 (collaboration and occasion space), and Good Common Sense Naturals (a hand-crafted, organic skin care employer). The market ambitions to open in overdue October. The Castro Valley Marketplace, 3295 Castro Valley Blvd., Castro Valley
