Rao was so impressed by the food at Cafe Ohlone that it's now one of her "Critic's Picks." She said Medina and Trevino interviewed tribal elders and studied recipes that had been documented in the 1920s and 1930s. "What they found was an earlier incarnation of California cuisine, fittingly fresh and local, farmed and foraged, diverse and polished," Rao writes in her review, published August 12. Dishes are based on traditional Ohlone foods like acorn, fish, venison and chia. Cafe Ohlone is accessed through the University Press Books in Berkeley, whose name in the Chochenyo is xučyun. It is open for evening tea hour on Tuesdays, lunch tastings on Thursdays, dinner on certain Saturdays and brunch on some Sundays The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and other media outlets also have visited Cafe Ohlone. Soleil Ho of The Chronicle called meals there "an education in American Indian cuisine, and value in dining." “Farm-to-table is nothing new here,” Medina said, Ho wrote in March. “To not acknowledge that is adding to our erasure.”
Read More on the Story
California Cuisine, Long Before Chez Panisse
(The New York Times August 12, 2019)In Berkeley, Cafe Ohlone brings back the Bay Area’s first foods (The Los Angeles Times May 15, 2019)
The Bay Area’s most intriguing new pop-up highlights precolonial California cuisine (The San Francisco Chronicle March 28, 2019)
Cafe Ohlone Gives Diners A Taste Of California’s Oldest Most Traditional Foods (Mitu March 28, 2019)
Cafe Ohlone: Bringing Native Culture to the Table (The Bay City Beacon February 19, 2019)
From Acorn Bread to Chia Cake, This New Cafe Serves Only Indigenous Foods (Bon Appetit November 13, 2018)
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