Friends, NCJ Burger Week, our annual 10-day, countywide frenzy with a side of fries, has ended. As W.B. Yeats wrote more than a century ago, “Everything that’s lovely is/ But a brief, dreamy kind of delight.” Granted, he was offering argument for his admonishing poem “Never Give All the Heart,” but it’s just as solid […]
On the Table
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A Renaissance Baker
When Tony Cogliati says, “Making bread is my prayer, and when you eat my bread, that’s the sacrament,” he is serious. But there’s more than a single kind of serious. One is earnest and heavy; another is equally earnest but with the fun intact. Cogliati, is the latter. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, he arrives […]
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Nobody Wants Your AI Food
Not the sunrise-tinted sandwich with its eerily symmetrical drippings of melted cheddar. Not the glossy, alien billboard burger or the frothy not-beer a program spit out. And for the love of all that occurs in nature, not the unholy crustacean nightmare ring I encountered in a local ad. There are so many reasons to reject […]
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Cooking While Traveling, Summer Edition
My favorite place to be in the summer is Humboldt County, both for the amazing produce our farmers bring to the markets and farm stands, and the fog that keeps us comfortable. This year, however, partly to celebrate my retirement, at the end of June we put our bicycles in the car and headed north […]
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A Historical Beerfest and My Old Ale as White Whale
If you haven’t paid close attention, you may have missed a cool beer festival that was added to our local scene a few years ago. With the minimalist name Beer Fest, it’s a benefit for the Humboldt Historical Society and the Clarke Historical Museum, held this year on Aug. 1 at Dell’Arte, a great venue […]
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What’s Good: The Brunch Club
Brunch is the most social of meals, built for leisure and stretching out the day. It may be the most challenging to eat alone, though I’ve done it happily. (When you focus on your French toast completely, it’s a different experience, and eavesdropping on the next table is juicier after a night out.) Now that […]
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A Dream Realized at Powers Creek Brewery
I’m sitting across a bar table from Dylan Schatz, chief cook and kettle washer at Powers Creek Brewery. He’s recounting a time he talked his way into some event at the revered and now lamented Anchor Brewing Co. He told his host about the bottling line he worked on at Mad River Brewing Co., which […]
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Matcha Pavlova, A Delicate Drama Queen
Who doesn’t love a dramatic dessert? Pirouetting near the top tier of the over-the-top dinner finales, just below things that are set aflame, is the Pavlova. There is dispute over the birthplace of this airy, fruit-laden miracle, just as rumor surrounded the birth of the Russian prima ballerina, choreographer and ballet company founder for which […]
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Oyster Fest in Photos
The Arcata Plaza was once again thronged with shellfish aficionados, day drinkers and music lovers for the 36th annual Oyster Fest. While the crowds reveled at the zero-waste party in the sunshine, judges, including yours truly, held their bivalve conclave, emerging to declare Mainely Lobster winner of both Best Oyster and Best Raw with a […]
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Brews for a Cause at the Homebrew Festival
In the years before the pandemic, the festival filled Arcata’s other, much larger, community center. This felt intimate and back-to-basics with maybe 20 brewers, several dozen brews of various kinds, with hard-driving band The Mojovators performing multiple sets. It’s like the difference between a recent Platinum Edition Ford pickup and an F100 from back in […]
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A Cauliflower Dish for Spring and Beyond
While spending Holy Week in Italy, I encountered hard-boiled eggs at several tables and was reminded of the Easter breakfasts of my childhood. Every year my father recalled his childhood’s version of the meal which included eggs blessed at the church before consumption. My mother made hard-boiled eggs regularly and I often asked to […]
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Greghini’s Brings Philly to the Wild Hare
In the Wild Hare Tavern’s windowfront kitchen, the flat-top grill hisses against a layered rectangle of mortadella, Genoa salami and capicola (or “gabagool,” as the cured pork neck and shoulder is known among Sopranos fans and spanning the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border). Flipped onto a split Amoroso roll with mayo and circles of provolone, shredded lettuce, […]