With minimal fanfare, Draeger's San Mateo is closing for good.

 

Now I don't live in San Mateo any longer, but I'm not at all surprised to see this happening: SFGate: Gourmet Bay Area grocery store closing after nearly three decades
 There were rumors during the plague that the plot of land had been sold -the buyer varied depending on who you talked to-, but the flux of the pandemic let a lot of useful intel slip by unnoticed.

Let me add that I no longer have skin in the game as far as Draeger's goes. I was one of their cooking school's lead instructors for most of the 2010s, and enjoyed myself thoroughly there. An almost-independent department, we were a solid moneymaker, and what we brought in from private events and classes subsidized the in-house restaurant 'Viognier' quite well. The pandemic closed the cooking school for what we all thought was for good, (Worth mentioning that the restaurant permanently closed at the same time. The story in SFGate talks about a decline in fine dining... but that dining room was empty more often than not.) and so the Scions of the Draeger's Cooking School scattered. 

I'll miss that place. We had a lot of good times there, as a department. Abby ran a delightfully tight ship, and had the most incredible Customer Service mien I've ever seen in action. Oliver and the wine crew were extraordinary, and the housewares department was something out of legend. Jorge was a wizard with that stuff- truly incredible sense of style and a knack for placement that managed to make egregious expense avoid looking tacky. No small feat.

Heading back to downtown San Mateo is going to be a very different thing as the next few years go on. I wonder how this supposed mixed-use space is going to look... "Developer Lane Partners is planning to erect around 100,000 square feet of office space and 10 below-market-rate units, with around 17,000 square feet dedicated to an unnamed grocery store, according to the San Mateo Daily Journal"

That's corporate construction speak for "We want to pretend we're making this a more livable space while gouging the city and the locals". It's also interesting that the grocery store is unnamed, because one of the rumored buyers of this location was Target. Their grocery would do some most unpleasantly tacky things to the look of downtown, and I do hope that's not what ends up in the location. Blech.

I have contacts down there still, so hopefully there will be more information as things develop. Assuming they do, of course. We'll see.

Modern Media's Communication Crises

    

    It's rarely pleasant but always interesting and informative to see what happens to social circles when communication hubs change.

I restarted this blog in part to ensure there was some sort of nominally independent, vaguely stable location where I could be found or contacted, as well as ensure I had a place to write without overmuch bother. Not that I really cared about being bothered before. Moderating my Twitch stream is an exercise in real-time manners management, so comments I can take my time to respond to are easy.

But that's not what I consider a concern. It's that the vast majority of the Internet's everyday interpersonal communication has been slowly, deliberately guided into very narrow channels, and funneled through a shrinking number of websites and services. Nominally for user convenience, but underneath it's mostly for data mining and ad placement. These things happen slowly, and companies tend to willingly do it at a loss for a long while- because they can afford to. Eventually the public stagnates sufficiently to become a captive audience, at which point comes inferior service, ad farms, and price gouging. Case in point: the car services and bnb-makers. The notion of "XYZ-as-a-(expensive subscription) service" for something that used to be a product is another major worry. I need look no further than the OS on this machine to see the problem with that- fundamental components like a word processor now require logins? Authorizations? It's a terribly unethical attempt to gouge the consumer, and that's on every PC around the world! 

Now the bird is circling the train, but Discord still exists, the mammoth is slowly growing, and Jack's second try seems to have gained an unfortunate amount of momentum. They're all rather fragmented though, and don't seem to be able to offer as much of the streamlined contact and information transfer that's been de rigeur all through these Years Of Plague. Worse yet, so much of modern life is internet-adjacent, what happens when a major online nexus withers and dies? The potential loss of past archives would be immeasurable... and would make for obvious easy ransom demands from the ethically bankrupt tech sector- whoops, tautology!

The idea of reestablishing a social media presence is nothing new, but there's also a lot of potential social baggage involved. Will you remember everyone? Can you contact them? Will you contact them? The machinations can become very complicated very quickly, even for those not 'aggressively online'.

Perhaps someday I won't be the one that reaches out first to reconnect.

Would much really change, I wonder?

Cookbook Review: "Flavors of Oakland", by Anya Ku and Elazar Sontag

One of the interesting things about living in the East Bay is how much local history can be found preserved in some crack or crevice. In a larger city, such places are much more transient, and thus harder to define. Oakland being smaller and more close-knit than, say, San Francisco, has a deep-set community with all sorts of intriguing checkered history, with many stories shared by longtime residents to any who will hear them. Thus, we have 'Flavors of Oakland'.

      

This oddly shaped volume is penned and put together by Anya and Elazar, a pair of (at the time) high schoolers steeped in that rich, communal, multicultural environment. It appears an earnest effort to take those stories straight from the mouths of the community, and offer them up alongside recipes- whether of their experience, their heritage, or even their church potluck. Given that the book was crowdfunded, clearly the people being represented very much liked what what was being done, so that's a strong positive right at the start.

The locals highlighted in this book come from what seems like everywhere (Oaxaca, Eritrea, Venezuela, Vietnam, Goa, and more beyond). To call such varied backgrounds 'local' sounds odd at first, but that's part of why it's so important to do it. When you take the time to make a neighborhood your home, the give and take helps build a community full of diverse experiences and insights that meld to become a still-greater whole.

Whether from a casual glance or a thorough, dedicated read, that ethos comes through in spades as one turns the pages. Every face within the book seems to shine with the earnestness that comes when someone really cares about what they're doing and why they're doing it. They all want to be there, to share their food and tell their story. 

Just as important is the feel that that's where their ambitions end- a welcome and refreshing feeling in the age of the aspiring short-term celebrity. It's not just about the individuals, but the many differences between them, and the shared desire to express a special something about the place they all call home.

As far as the recipes go, they're as diverse as they come, but each still has that home-cooked comfort food vibe. None are wholly alien to me, though a few I haven't yet eaten in some form or other. The recipes use home kitchen notions, and measures rather than weights- which in this case is a deliberate stylistic choice rather than a black mark, noted in a 'How To Read This Book' page. The only issue I have with that is the vagueness that can come with measuring flour, but it's no big deal here.

While a few of the recipes benefit from a stand mixer or food processor, most people will have little trouble preparing any recipe they take a liking to in this volume as long as they can get the ingredients. The recipes don't mention cleanup though, and a few of them are likely to have you lamenting the state of your kitchen afterward, so be sure to read them through and think about them before going shopping. I'm not spoiling that for you though!

Now we get to the interesting bit.

The locals' stories shown here are supposed to feel familiar, like everyday people. The writing style helps sell that feel to some degree- the prose is simple and repetitive, but surprisingly well edited to maintain brevity without loss of impact or purpose. 

When it comes to 'home cooks in home kitchens' though, the story changes. Most of them are- but looking a little deeper, enough are caterers, chefs, or parts of restaurant families that one has to wonder at who knew who to help make this book happen. Compounding that, the preface was penned by Oakland's then-mayor, and the foreword by Charlie Hallowell of Pizzaiolo. No small ask, to have them step in and cosign. And given what's happened for the authors since, I suspect their careers got one hell of a push.

Still. While the hometown pride aspect may have been punched up a little to better camouflage the professionals mingling among them, that doesn't make it less effective or lower quality, and in fact does a fine job at telling the story of Oakland while sharing its salt, smoke, spice, and special sense of self. As someone who lives walking distance from a number of the restauants and places mentioned, I very much respect their attention to detail and absolute fidelity to the neighborhood. 

For the east coasters (New Yorkers in particular), it's reminiscent of the vaguely lauded Red Rooster in Harlem, where Marcus Samuelsson works to prop up a community by creating a space for its history, food, and culture... except Oakland is being much more subtle about it.

This is a difficult concept to frame and express. 'Flavors of Oakland' does an excellent job.

Got a few more local restaurants for my list to go have a taste of too. Perhaps reviews of those are soon to come- let's go exploring!