The Kind of Difference YOU Can Make

Reader Contribution by K.C. Compton
Published on November 18, 2010
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On a recent trip to Northern California, I had one of the best meals of my life. It was a shared dinner with my daughter and son-in-law, which certainly added to the overall wonderfulness of the experience.

But what’s more pertinent to GRIT readers is the food itself and the restaurant’s approach to local, organic ingredients.

A telling moment occurred earlier in the trip when my kids and I were looking for a lunch spot and I said, “I’d rather have someplace that does local and organic, if possible.” They looked at me with kind-hearted incomprehension, then my daughter said, “Well, around here they’d just about all be organic. And I don’t think any of the food comes from very far away.”

Oh, yeah. Northern California. I guess the choices are fairly prodigious thereabouts. In fact, thanks to Alice Waters and others, the Bay Area has been at this “local, organic” paradigm somewhat longer than the rest of us, so some restaurants have had time to hone their kitchen craft to the level of art. Gather is one of those restaurants.

Located at 2200 Oxford Street in Berkeley, Gather supports local food producers and chooses only foods that are cultivated “safely, justly and sustainably.” Lest that description makes you think the food is some sort of boring take-your-medicine-it’s-good-for-you fare, let me tell you the precise opposite is true. Co-owners Ari Derfel and Eric Fenster have mastered the nourishment paradigm from soup to nuts. And, oh my, those desserts.

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