Civil Eats

When Chez Panisse board members met to talk about expanding its Edible Schoolyard organic garden and kitchen program, board member John Lyons immediately volunteered: “I know just the place!” Lyons began volunteering at Brooklyn’s Arturo Toscanini Elementary School (PS 216) five years ago as a Pencil Principal For A Day, where he became acquainted with the principal, students, and the school’s quarter acre-sized parking lot–perfect for a school garden. Read More

A conservative town San Francisco is not, but even the among the most open-minded veterans of Bay Area culture, a short intake of breath was heard on Saturday night when into the foyer of the SF Museum of Modern Art rolled a bicycle trailer hauling a whole, spit-roasted cow.

The bovine beast was the centerpiece of an evening with OPENrestaurant, a collective of young Bay Area chefs who stage performance installations that revolve around food, farming, and the politics of the two. This time the theme was futurism—specifically, the Futurist Cookbook, written in 1932 by pioneering Italian futurist, F.T. Marinetti. The event was part of SFMOMA’s exhibition honoring the centennial of the futurist movement, entitled Metal + Machine + Manifesto = Futurism’s First 100 Years. OPENrestaurant founders Sam White, Stacie Pierce and Jerome Waag brought together a formidable group of local chefs and designers to recreate the wild mechanical inventions and adapt the even wilder recipes from the famously radical book. Read More