Hello All,
Most of the news in the media nowadays is about people endlessly complying with
every rule and regulation
shoved down their throats by the State.
With that reality in mind it is a breath of fresh air to read about some people
who buck the States endlessly meddling authority.
Below is an article detailing one such case:
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Speakeasy cuisine
Guided by word-of-mouth, diners flock to unlicensed restaurants for good food
at bargain-basement prices
- Janine DeFao, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Four diners gave up their reservations at the venerable Chez Panisse on a
recent Monday night to sit on the floor in a dimly lit house in Rockridge and
bump knees with strangers. A cook from Chez Panisse was there, as was the
executive chef of San Francisco's Mecca.
They were at Ghetto Gourmet -- one of the hottest restaurants in the Bay Area
that you have never heard of. And that's by design.
Ghetto Gourmet isn't listed in the phone book. Nor will you find it by
cruising Rockridge's restaurant row on College Avenue in Oakland. Ghetto
Gourmet has no sign. It has no wine list. It doesn't even have chairs.
What this unlicensed, underground restaurant does have is a pit bull named
Shinobi, a cramped kitchen with appliances in various states of disrepair and a
gregarious host named Jeremy Townsend who, in his untucked shirt and jeans,
will dance with his guests, jam on his harmonica and invite patrons for a
post-dessert nightcap at a nearby bar.
Townsend is not alone in looking for new ways to captivate a public who,
having made Zagat a household name, are finding its food savvy turn into ennui.
Culinary speakeasies like Ghetto Gourmet are popping up in cities in the Bay
Area and beyond, across the country and around the world.
Part of the thrill, of course, is the hipness factor, the ego-inflating
I-know-something-or-somebody-you-don't-know feeling that comes with being on a
VIP list. But underground diners also can find surprisingly good food at
bargain-basement prices.
In two years, Townsend has attracted a steady following at Ghetto Gourmet,
which he runs out of his rented Craftsman home on occasional Mondays. Word of
mouth, and sporadic Craigslist postings, have brought out friends, friends of
friends and adventurous diners eager to fork over $30 for four courses of the
likes of pan-seared duck and chevre crepes.
The health department -- and fear of salmonella -- be damned.
"It's sort of an anti-restaurant," said Townsend, 29, a poet, promoter and
former boilermaker and South Pole tunnel digger who has amassed an e-mail list
of 1,200 interested parties. "The restaurant experience is very stale. People
are usually disappointed, or at least not awestruck."
That goes for chefs as well, some of whom moonlight at these illegal ventures
for either a creative escape from restaurant rules or a way to fulfill their
dreams of opening a restaurant -- without actually doing it.
"It's literally like playing restaurant. You can create the event, and then
it's over," said Veva Edelson, who ran a weekly underground restaurant out of
her home near Humboldt State before opening Firefly in Noe Valley, which she
co-owned for 10 years. "When you have a business, you create the event over and
over, day in and day out -- and you have to."
Edelson, who recently relocated to Penland in rural North Carolina to study
ceramics, has just started another underground venture, with a friend who had
his own underground brunch restaurant in Santa Fe. Shady's Cafe offers weekly
family-style vegetarian meals. Diners are asked to pay what they think the food
is worth, or what they can afford.
"There's a spirit of generosity involved," Edelson said. "Everyone has a
little more liberty to be playful than they would in a real restaurant."
Underground restaurants are mainstays in Cuba, where home-based paladares
started off as illegal ventures but are now state-sanctioned businesses. Hong
Kong's si fang cai, or speakeasies, are known as some of the island's best
eateries.
Homegrown supper clubs have gotten press in Paris and Prague, and one of the
best known in the United States -- Ripe in Portland, Ore. -- has since parlayed
its organic, 30-person "family suppers" into one of that city's best -- and now
legal -- restaurants.
Closer to home, Mamasan's Bistro in the Mission has been dishing up
Asian-Latino fusion cuisine at an underground hip-hop supper club in an
unmarked Victorian flat for six years. Two Sonoma County chefs run a roving
restaurant called the Blind Pig, a nickname for Prohibition-era speakeasies.
There is, of course, no Zagat Survey of underground restaurants, and no way
to quantify just how many there are.
Some underground restaurants are more protective of their locations, and even
their existence, than of their secret recipes -- allowing in only those
newcomers who are accompanied by a previous guest or a friend of the owner.
Others, like Ghetto Gourmet, operate just under the surface, with Web sites,
e-mail lists and fairly liberal admission policies.
"People e-mail and ask, 'What do I have to do to get on your guest list?' "
Townsend said. "I reply, 'You've done enough.' "
Except for that time when the e-mail came from someone in the Alameda County
district attorney's office.
"I said, 'If you're coming to bust us, you probably shouldn't come. If you're
coming to eat, that's cool,' " he recalled. The writer never responded.
The danger, of course, is getting busted. While local health departments
don't have teams of sleuths digging up underground restaurants, officials point
out that eating establishments are regulated for good reason.
"You take your chances that you won't get sick if you eat food from a
facility that's unlicensed," said Susan Strong, a retail food program
specialist for the state. While restaurants are inspected by local health
departments, state law requires the use of commercial equipment, standardized
procedures for handling food, and a state-certified food safety manager on
site. Even caterers aren't allowed to work out of home kitchens.
"The whole point of this is to give the consumer peace of mind that food is
coming out of a commercial kitchen, prepared with the right equipment and
handled properly," said Strong, adding that risks include salmonella and
potentially fatal E. coli.
While individuals are allowed to hire home chefs to throw dinner parties,
underground restaurants don't meet this exemption because the host "does not
necessarily know the people coming through the door," Strong said.
And while health departments say they'll typically go looking for an
underground restaurant only if there are complaints, it is possible to get
caught.
Such is the cautionary tale of Digs Bistro, a monthly restaurant Jesse Kupers
ran out of his home near Oakland's Lake Merritt for two years, regularly
selling out two nights a month for $35, five-course, prix fixe dinners.
"We were very nervous in the beginning," recalled Digs chef Justin Sconce,
32, whose real job is cooking at the well-respected Rivoli in Berkeley. "But
then we were selling out and riding high on the popularity. We started to think
we were untouchable."
Following a neighborhood dispute unrelated to Digs, Kupers, 30, received a
notice in October from the city of Oakland to shut down his "illegal cabaret"
-- complete with a $3,000 fine. He doesn't believe it was a coincidence.
While Kupers, who, ironically, works as an inspector for the city, had taken
preventative steps in case he got caught -- getting a business license,
increasing his insurance, billing the dinners as "art shows" with free food --
he decided not to fight it and was able to have the fine reduced to $300.
Digs served its last meal just before Halloween, impressing both regulars and
newcomers with a butternut squash soup garnished with coconut milk and sriracha
chile sauce, duck confit in scallion crepes with grilled persimmons, and a
fried sage and pecorino souffle served atop diced apples and cucumbers in a
balsamic reduction. And those were just the starters.
The monthly dinners took longtime friends Kupers and Sconce two days to
prepare, and included $400 shopping trips to the Berkeley Bowl, boiling
chickens for soup stock, ironing tablecloths and stowing the living room couch
and media center in the two small bedrooms in the Craftsman flat.
But the duo, and their friends, managed to create the illusion that Digs was
a real restaurant, with black-shirted waiters attentively serving guests,
votives on the tables and original art propped between the picture rail and
box-beam ceiling of the dining room. The vibe was somewhere between Chez
Panisse and a rave, with a racially diverse crowd of diners ranging from
twentysomething hipsters to fiftysomething suburbanites.
"I think the food is amazing," said Phyllis Krekel of Piedmont, who, on Digs'
last night, dined with friends from Walnut Creek, all in their 50s. "I love the
intimate setting."
"And the imminent danger," quipped her husband, Kevin.
At a nearby table, Juwen Lam of Berkeley was celebrating her 30th birthday
with friends who were raving about their Hoffman Farm quail and wild mushroom
ravioli. Lam called it "just one step down" from San Francisco's Gary Danko.
"It's the perfect place," said Lam, who initially found Digs though a
food-loving friend. "It's better than going to a restaurant. It's more
comfortable and homey. ... Every mouthful is kind of a surprise. It seems like
they take more risks than a regular restaurant."
Meanwhile, in the kitchen Kupers remodeled to be able to feed 75 people in a
weekend, he and Sconce were celebrating the passing of their enterprise with
their staff of former housemates and friends -- and no small amount of Jameson
Irish whiskey -- as Stevie Wonder's "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" blared on
the CD player.
"I'm almost glad we're being shut down. It spurs us in the direction we want
to go in," said Kupers, who dreams of opening a real restaurant. But that won't
happen any time soon. While the duo each earned about $500 a month from Digs,
it takes thousands to launch a restaurant. Instead, they may start an upscale
takeout joint.
But "it won't be as wholly a labor of love as this was. It will become a
job," Kupers said. "I'm sure we'll look back and say these were the best times
of our lives."
While Digs masqueraded as a restaurant, Townsend's Ghetto Gourmet describes
itself as a modern-day salon where interesting strangers can meet over meals.
Townsend sometimes breaks the ice with Mad Libs, or composes haiku about his
guests.
"You can smoke or make out on the front porch or back porch, but we have to
keep our voices down," Townsend told a recent Monday gathering, setting the
tone for the evening.
Thirty-nine people sat on pillows around knee-high tables and did their best
to cut through lamb chops with butter knives while making small talk with
strangers. No one complained. The photocopied menu -- featuring a skull and
crossbones in a chef's hat -- warns diners to hold on to their forks.
"Every time I come, I have a great time and meet new people," said Serge
Santiago, executive chef of Mecca. Townsend started Ghetto Gourmet with his
brother, Joe, who cooked under Santiago. Joe no longer lives in the area, and
Townsend brings in different chefs on different nights -- including a Mexican
herbalist who once served up rabbit adobo and fried grasshoppers.
"It's very off-the-cuff, very casual," Santiago said. "It fits with San
Francisco. It's very unique."
Ruth Stroup, 44, of Oakland, was on her first visit, but that didn't stop her
from creating a makeshift dance floor with Townsend while a blues guitarist
played.
The stockbroker and financial planner came for the food, but admitted being
intrigued by the illegal nature, and not at all concerned about food poisoning.
"I think the pursuit of pleasure is not an acceptable activity anymore,"
Stroup said. "To me, it's not illegal. It's about freedom."
While an underground restaurant such as Townsend's may not be too hard to
find, don't despair if Google searches come up empty for most. Even those in
the know sometimes don't know where to look.
"I feel really cool running the underground restaurant in Oakland," Townsend
said. "I always said I'd feel even cooler if I got invited to one of the other
ones.
"I never did."
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©2006 San Francisco Chronicle
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