OAKLAND Spotlight: Dorsey’s Locker

DORSEY’S LOCKER
5817 Shattuck Ave
(between 58th St & 59th St)
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 428-1935

Hey sister, go sister, where all my soul sisters?

The answer to that question is….not in San Francisco.

With the closing of the famed SF soul food spot, Powell’s Place, us San Franciscans are experiencing a dearth of good and inexpensive soul food in our dear city, and had to travel outside of SF to find anything noteworthy. One evening, as we had a miserable dinner at PF Chang’s, we asked our server, “Where do YOU go to eat when you’re not working?” His answer: Dorsey’s Locker. I gathered up a large group of hungry people and made them all drive to Oakland on a Sunday afternoon. Wanna see what we got to eat?

The seafood combination, yummy yummy sides, and the short ribs platter

They do all the classic soul food favorites: fried chicken, catfish, snapper, gumbo, short ribs, pork chops, liver & onions, …and the sides: collard greens, black eyed peas, rice with gravy, mashed potatoes, fries, yams, red beans, green beans, corn, and mac & cheese (only available on Fridays and Sundays). Service was spectacular and entertaining, the food came in copious amounts, and we all left extremely full and satisfied. I think that Dorsey’s is actually vastly better than Powell’s Place – even in their presentation of the food. (Sorry Powell’s…I loved you, but you have been replaced.) Think I’m exaggerating on how good the food was? My friend Joshua, who had the pork chops, cleaned his plate.

SF BAY AREA SPOTLIGHT: Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market (San Francisco, CA)

It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing to be able to wake up at 7:30am on a Saturday, grab my canvas shopping bag, and drive down to the Embarcadero (praying for parking) for the Ferry Building’s Farmers Market, a mere three miles from my apartment. The experience of the Ferry Building’s Farmers Market is far from ordinary, as we San Franciscans are lucky to be in fairly close proximity to a mecca of agricultural bounty – the outlying cities of Petaluma, Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Healdsburg, Sebastopol, as well as the Central Valley, are full of produce, dairy farms, artisanal cheeses, wine, you name it – it is made somewhere nearby. The quality and variety of produce is unparalleled, in my book. The best part of the Ferry Plaza market is that the merchants are hand selected – operated by the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) – all of the vendors are local and most of them are organic.

This morning, a good friend and fellow food-lover and I, wiped the sleep from our eyes and walked from our (metered) parking space straight to our first stop, Blue Bottle Coffee Co., located outside of the Marketplace. The line was already long at 8:30am, but we waited patiently for the $3.00 cup of iced coffee with vanilla soymilk that is pretty close to the nectar of the Gods where coffee is concerned. For the regular drip coffee, each cup is brewed to order – hence the wait, and the priceyness…but it is so worth it.

We decided to stroll the stands and actually made a beeline for one of our favorite vendors, Marin Gourmet. They have samples galore at their tent, and they MAKE you try them (you can get full just by standing there for a few minutes). My favorite product they have is Affi’s Aubergine Pesto, a very flavorful mix of roasted eggplant and garlic, great to eat with pita chips or on bread. Luckily, if you can’t make it to the Ferry Building, you can get their things at Whole Foods & Andronico’s. Next door was the Della Fattoria tent, showcasing baskets and baskets of bread of all varieties, definitely worth checking out. After an amuse bouche of aubergine pesto, we were ready to get our grub on – we needed breakfast. Next stop: Hayes Street Grill.
It’s pretty impressive that these guys can run a pretty organized line in a makeshift kitchen. In place of dupes on a slide (thank you, Kitchen Confidential), they use bright orange post-it notes stuck to the end of the counter. I ordered the chorizo scramble, and my friend ordered the Hobbs bacon, tomato and eggs on a baguette. The Early Girl tomatoes topping my chorizo scramble were, I kid you not, the best freaking tomatoes I have ever had in my entire life. I would say it was close to a religious experience. HSG makes pretty hearty fare, and it gave us energy to keep powering through the farmers market, which was beginning to get packed (and it was only 9am).

Here are some more photos:

left to right: A bounty of peppers, baby artichokes, and Early Girl tomatoes

See what I mean? Produce that not only looks amazing, but is absolutely fantastic. How do I know? Because most of the vendors will let you sample what they have. I ended up picking up some really robustly flavored Early Girl Tomatoes at Dirty Girl Produce based out of Santa Cruz. Their little booth was quite busy, because of the cases of dry farmed Early Girls and the selections of beans, haricots verts, carrots, and mixed greens.

I also ended up buying some more tomatoes – this time, Green Zebras and Lemon Drops, from Devoto Gardens (Sebastopol). I wanted to buy a bag of mixed greens too, but seeing as this weekend is a busy one for me, I wasn’t sure when I’d get to use them, so I will probably have to come back next weekend if I have the time.

We stopped by Marin Sun Farms (Point Reyes) to check out the meat, per a recommendation from my friend AJ – they have a pretty impressive assortment of cuts. And they sold the avant garde as well….goat spare ribs, chicken heads….not my cup of tea but I’m sure someone out there eats that. A quick stop by G.L. Alfieri Farms (Escalon) yielded a sampling of nuts and almond brittle – they specialize in fruits & nuts. My friend bought some honeycomb from Marshall’s Farm American Honey (American Canyon), then of course, we had to stop at Cowgirl Creamery for some cheeses to go with the honey. One final sweep around the plaza, mostly for more photo opportunities, and we decided to head home – it was starting to get hot, and some of the tents were already running out of stuff to sell (and it was barely 11:00 am). Armed with a bagful of ripe tomatoes, some goat cheese from Bodega Goat Cheese, a hunk of cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, and inspired by all of nature’s bounty on display, I think I’m going to have to cook for a few people tomorrow…now what should I make?

Here are a few more photos worth sharing:

Left to right: Della Fattoria breads, a gaggle of grapes, Dirty Girl’s Early Girls, and a variety of eggplant

For additional photos by yours truly, please click here!

For more information, please visit http://www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com or http://www.cuesa.org.

BOOKS: I Am Almost Always Hungry by Lora Zarubin

I picked this book up on sale at a local book shop here in Pacific Heights after seeing it in a few of the fancy boutiques on Fillmore and Polk Streets. It did not disappoint!This beautifully photographed cookbook is composed of innovative seasonal recipes. Although some of the recipes are definitely not for beginners, there is a certain simplicity to her cooking that preserves the flavors and essence of the season she is cooking for. Each chapter is actually a menu of three to four courses, and she makes everything from soup to grilled lobster to risotto, to panna cotta. She also gives a little commentary on why she chose the particular menu to write about.

My lucky (or unlucky?) friends will be the “guinea pigs” that I will test more of these recipes on. If you are fortunate enough to have a good farmers market nearby (like the one at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza), you will be inspired to start cooking seasonally after you peruse Lora Zarubin’s book, and rightfully so!

APPRECIATION: Food Styling by Heidi Gintner

My aunt Heidi is an AMAZING food stylist. You can see her photos here at HeidiGintner.net. Her work has been on catalogs and cookbooks for Williams-Sonoma, Safeway, and magazines all over the place. Here are a few samples: