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Alameda Chefs Speak Out

Raising the Bar on Island Cuisine

    Call it Mayberry, the land that time forgot or just a good place to raise a family, but Alameda has never been known for the quality of its food. Yet that appears to be changing. Several local chefs are raising the bar on Island cuisine. I spoke to five of them, and this is what they had to say about the state of culinary arts in Alameda and beyond.

John Thiel

Pappo

    When Pappo opened late in 2005, it became an immediate hit because it filled a void in Alameda. Inspired by the seasonally driven cuisine of Alice Waters and Paul Bertolli, Pappo is an unpretentious yet elegant bistro that serves an ever-changing menu of simple, satisfying food in an intimate dining room with a warm neighborhood vibe. Thiel, a veteran of Bay Wolf and Delfina and an Oakland native, calls the quiet streets of the West End home.

What is Alameda cuisine, and how does Alameda fit into the Bay Area food scene?
    I think it represents the cultures that live in town. The food scene is growing. It’s budding. It’s starting to get a little more recognition. I think now there are more people moving into Alameda that are used to different types and styles of dining experiences.

What makes your restaurant unique?
    Our commitment to the guest experience in regard to food quality, ingredient quality, service—and our consistency. One of our strong points right now is that we are committed to putting out a consistently quality product so that diners feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.

What inspires you as a chef?
    Hunger. Nature. The seasons. Weather. The weather has a lot to do with what I like to eat and what I like to make. Going out to a great meal is always inspiring as well; eating something simple and well prepared always gets your mind thinking about new stuff.

What dining trends do you like and dislike?
    I dislike everybody doing pulled-pork and Cuban pork sandwiches. I don’t really like trends that much, but I understand why they happen and the potential for success if you adhere to them. I tend to stick to the classics and tried-and-trues and twist them a little bit. I would say the small-plates trend is one that has grown on me. I think it’s a fun way to go.

Where do you eat on the Island?
    I usually go for sushi, if I’m sticking around town. Either Sushi House or Yume.

Who or what has influenced your cooking?
    I would say Bay Wolf and Chez Panisse. I definitely learned a lot about food working at Bay Wolf and eating at Chez Panisse and reading books by Alice Waters and Paul Bertolli.

What’s the most difficult aspect of your job?
    Working on my feet all day long and managing staff.

What do you enjoy most about what you do?
    The people I work with. They’re great people. Really the best part is to see the guest having a good time. You can cook somebody a meal and you can see whether they like it right away. The instant gratification of someone enjoying your work is very appealing to me.

Saboor Zafari

Angela’s Restaurant

    A native of Afghanistan, Zafari moved to the United States 30 years ago and found himself waiting tables and then cooking in Italian and French restaurants. He developed a love for Italian food and has been cooking it ever since. At 5½-year-old Angela’s Restaurant, Zafari cooks California-inspired Italian and Mediterranean food for a loyal clientele.

What is Alameda cuisine, and how does Alameda fit into the Bay Area  food scene?
    The climate and the cool nights here are good for home cooking, risottos and short ribs. You can do that year-round, and I like doing that kind of stuff. Compared to fine restaurants in Berkeley and San Francisco, I think we do a pretty good job. They just pay a little bit more for it in Berkeley and San Francisco.

What makes your restaurant unique?
    I think I am the only one, initially, when I started, using fresh ingredients. We’re a small restaurant. We don’t have a freezer. We don’t have huge walk-in coolers. So we buy fresh as often as possible. We’re open six days a week, and I go to the farmers markets about four and five times a week. And the good thing about here is four of [the markets] are within a mile.

What inspires you as a chef?
    I think most of what I do has to do with the farmers markets. It’s so much fun going and picking ingredients and walking around there. And also customers. The immediacy of it and actually seeing someone’s face [from the open kitchen] are great.

What dining trends do you like and dislike?
    For the past nine months, I’ve been very busy. I also do the cooking for the Encinal Yacht Club and train their chefs and do a lot of parties. I don’t know what the new trends are.

Where do you eat on the Island?
    I was at Gold Coast [recently], and it was great. I like to go out, but I don’t get the chance very much.

Who or what has influenced your cooking?
    When I first started, I was a waiter, and I would end up in the kitchen talking to the chef. I worked with a very good chef, a Sicilian guy. Later we opened up our first restaurant in Madison [Wis.] in 1983, and it ended up being one of the top three restaurants in town. Initially when we first started, I thought I was going to work up front, but I ended up in the kitchen because I liked it so much.

What’s the most difficult aspect of your job?
    The most difficult aspect of my job is finding good employees.

What do you enjoy most about what you do?
    I enjoy the business a lot. It would be very tough if you didn’t like what you were doing. I meet new people. There are a lot of people who have been coming here for years. Every day at the end of the night, I sit down and talk to people for 10 or 15 minutes. It’s great.

Peter Kahl

Speisekammer

    Peter Kahl co-founded Suppenküche, a thriving German restaurant in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood 13 years ago, but with two young
children, he sold out to his partner. He and his wife, Cindy, decided to move to the quieter streets of Alameda. Still passionate about the food of his native country, he opened Speisekammer with his wife in 2002. It’s the East Bay’s only German restaurant.

What is Alameda cuisine, and how does Alameda fit into the Bay Area food scene?
    Alameda still has a long way to go to catch up with rest of the Bay Area, especially San Francisco. There are not attractive restaurants for people like me who like food and like to go out and experience something different. We have a lot of restaurants, but not a lot of unique restaurants.

What makes your restaurant unique?
    Obviously our German food. We’re the only German restaurant in the East Bay. We’re one of three really good German restaurants [in the Bay Area], and German food to Americans is unique. I think we do it pretty well.

What inspires you as a chef?
    My biggest inspiration is a busy restaurant and happy customers. That’s what I do it for. It really makes me feel good when I talk to people or meet people on the street and they say, “Oh, I know this restaurant, and it’s great, and I’ve been there.” And in general I like the business. I like people. I like the in and out and the hectic. I really do enjoy it most of the time.

What dining trends do you like and dislike?
    There was this very funny trend a couple of years ago [called] slow cooking or slow-kind of food, and I had to ask myself, “What the hell is that?” That’s pretty much what I’m doing here, I guess. Cooking meat slowly and braising it slowly and serving it with sauce. That’s pretty much the kind of cooking we’re doing here. … It’s very amusing to me. There is nothing new about it for a German chef or a French chef or an Italian chef.

Where do you eat on the island?
    My new favorite is Pappo. He [John Thiel] is a very nice guy. C’era Una Volta, and I still like Kamakura—it’s one of my favorite places.

Who or what has influenced your cooking?
    Obviously where I grew up. I’m here for 14 years now, and I grew up in Germany and came here when I was 27. Before I was here, I was in Germany cooking, and I went to school and studied everything about cooking. All the restaurants I worked at in Germany, they influenced me substantially, and especially all the great chefs I worked with. I was very fortunate that I worked with a lot of really good chefs who taught me a lot, and they still have a hand in
what I’m doing.

What’s the most difficult aspect of your job?
    Finding good employees.

What do you enjoy most about what you do?
I’m around food and all the things I really like to do. Eating and drinking with the food. Wine and beer. Cooking it and preparing it. I just like to eat.

Rudy Duran

C’era Una Volta

    Once upon a time, a Tuscan-born chef named Rudy Duran moved to Alameda to be with the woman he loved. But he missed the tastes of home, so he opened a restaurant specializing in the simple but bold flavors of Tuscany. For four years now, Duran and his partner and fiancée, Cheryl Principato, have been running C‘era Una Volta (“once upon a time”), one of the Island‘s most distinctive Italian restaurants, where they showcase Duran’s cooking and an
all-Italian list of more than 100 wines.

What is Alameda cuisine, and how does Alameda fit into the Bay Area food scene?
    Alameda is completely different from the other cities in the way that it’s a more cozy island; it’s more family oriented. Compared to San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, it’s a little bit better because it’s easy to park. It’s so easy for the people to be here and walk and go back home, like in Italy. It’s very quiet, and the people are very nice around here. It’s like being in Italy. At night you get dinner, stop, walk back home—everything’s fine.

What makes your restaurant unique?
    Well, first of all, I choose all the products—organic. I go shopping every morning at an Oakland market run by an Italian family, and they grow all their own herbs, salads, tomatoes, all these things. I go there. Talking. Choosing. Looking. That’s it. That makes the difference. I’m 50, and I started when I was 20 to do this job. In Italy it’s very important that we shop daily because we don’t have a huge refrigerator like here. But here we have 90 seats, and to shop daily for 90 seats … [laughs]. But I like it to be fresh. Two to three days maximum before we change again. That’s it. That’s very important.

What inspires you as a chef?
    Family. Making families happy. When I was in school, my philosophy professor said, “Food is not just food. It’s giving people something to relax; it’s a very important moment.” You can’t just give them food; you need to know how to give this moment—the most important moment of the day—to people. That’s my inspiration.

What dining trends do you like and dislike?
    I remember back in school when we studied [Pellegrino] Artusi, who was one of the best chefs in Italy. He said it’s very tough to maintain simplicity. Everybody goes crazy and makes a lot of things; makes them in a French style. But the ingredients in Tuscany are very simple. It’s the food of the poor. I don’t like the trends.

Where do you eat on the Island?
    I like Italian, but I discovered sushi, and I met a guy, and we became friends. He is the chef of Yume. It’s a very nice place where you can go and relax. 
 
Who or what has influenced your cooking?
    I am from Livorno, and my family comes from Elba Island. The Italian style is to be simple. I remember my grandfather. He would go to the fishing boat and buy some octopus. He’d put a little stove in the middle of the street, cooking the octopus. That’s it. Just to be simple.

What’s the most difficult aspect of your job?
    There isn’t really a hardest part, but thank God I have Cheryl [Principato], my fiancée and partner. She takes care of payroll and these bureaucratic things.
 
What do you enjoy most about what you do?
    The smile on the people.

Takao Minatoya

Angel Fish

    For 15 years, Takao Minatoya has presided over one of Alameda’s top sushi bars and izakaya (small plates) restaurants. Trained in Japan as well as top Bay Area restaurants such as Oliveto, Mintatoya remains as committed to first-rate food as when he started cooking some 30 years ago. Just don’t bother him at the 3 o’clock hour in the afternoon. That’s when he’s grabbing a nap in the office of his Bay Farm restaurant, Angel Fish, as he gears up for another busy night.

What is Alameda cuisine, and how does Alameda fit into the Bay Area food scene?
    Compared to the other cities, we don’t have a lot of good restaurants, not like College Avenue or Piedmont Avenue. Alameda is also pretty conservative compared to the other side of the bridge. That’s changing, but I don’t think Alameda has much impact on the Bay Area food scene [laughs].

What makes your restaurant unique?
    I don’t compare with other Japanese restaurants. They all have different styles and approaches to the business.

What inspires you as a chef?
    I started when I was 18, and I was working at a hotel in Japan. And I’ve been cooking almost 30 years. Long time. What inspires me is my regular customers. They’re always asking for something new. That keeps me going.

What dining trends do you like and dislike?
    The type of restaurant that follows trends gets the customers that like to eat that kind of food. Each has to have its own personality.

Where do you eat on the Island?
    I stopped by Dragon Rouge the other day. It’s a new Vietnamese restaurant. That was very interesting, but it’s noisy.
 
Who or what has influenced your cooking?
    I got a lot of influence from Paul Bertolli when he was at Chez Panisse and Oliveto.

What’s the most difficult aspect of your job?
    The time. I spend a lot of time. Long hours.

What do you enjoy most about what you do?
    The relationship with my customers. I like to watch people eating. You can really tell if they’re happy or not.