Civil Eats

Noted Bay Area chef Niko Manetto was celebrating his return from Croatia on Saturday night (3/28) at Dave McLean’s San Francisco hotspot Alembic when a brawl erupted that left him and three others in the emergency room. Mr. Manetto was showing a ziplock bag of seeds of the rare broccolucciolini variety of bitter herbs he had found while trekking in the remote Croatian highlands to a group of friends with him at the bar, when one made a grab for it, a brawl erupted. One of the hospitalized chefs – who preferred to remain anonymous – stated “Croatia is totally the next Italy, when we saw those bitter herb seeds we all had menu descriptions dancing before our eyes and totally went crazy.” The seeds themselves appear to have been lost in the kerfuffle.

Anya Fernald was most recently Executive Director of Slow Food Nation, and has just launched a new venture - Live Culture Co.