SPICE UP YOUR FOOD:Recipes for Strawberry and Tomato Season — and more

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Recipes by Erica Perez and John Beaver unless otherwise noted.

Curated and adapted by Gary Meyer

(updated August 30, 2025)

Spices from the Oaktown Spice Shop can take a very good dish to new levels.

C.J. Hirschfield wrote about Oaktown as they have adapted during the pandemic to provide their goods to home chefs around the world. EatDrinkFilms has chosen some recipes and comments from their website (plus one of our own) to get you started.

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There is a full meal starting with Bloody Mary cocktails, a zucchini salad, strawberry spaghetti, and chewy molasses cookies for dessert; plus great popcorn idea to eat while watching an after-dinner movie.

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Nous: A new Alsatian Restaurant to Complement the Ashland Shakespeare Festival

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By Julie Lindow (June 16, 2025)

Are you planning to attend a play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this summer? It is a terrific season with classic works like Julius Caesar, The Importance of Being Earnest, As You Like It, and The Merry Wives of Windsor to contemporary shows including August Wilson’s Jitney, Shane, Fat Ham, Quixote Nuevo, and Sondheim’s Into the Woods. The season runs through October 26. If you don’t have plans yet, I highly recommend you make them and along with a reservation at the dreamy new restaurant, Nous (pronounced new).

Nous revisits the cuisine of the Alsace region of France with a blend of Germanic and French culinary traditions and an outstanding selection of wines and that are stunningly paired with the dishes.

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A Feast of Cinematic & Culinary Delights

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A Marcella Hazan tribute dinner, 17 food-related films, and Michelin Chef Yoshinori Ishii’s masterclass on Japanese cuisine highlight a wine country festival starting Wednesday with 90+ events.

By Geneva Anderson

(March 16, 2025)

The Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF), March 19-23, offers an extravaganza of groundbreaking cinema, food, and fun spread over five days in glorious Sonoma, the heart of the wine country. All films are screened at venues in or within walking distance of the historic town square making SIFF one of the country’s most laid back and enjoyable festivals.  The full line-up includes over 90 films.

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Partners in Food and Film: An Interview

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An Interview with SIFF27 Culinary Excellence Award winner, Chef Susan Feniger and filmmaker Liz Lachman.

By Geneva Anderson

(March 20, 2024)

When Los Angeles filmmaker and Emmy award winner Liz Lachman (“Pin-Up,” “Getting to Know You”) set out to make her first feature-length film about partner, Chef Susan Feniger, opening her first solo restaurant in Los Angeles in 2009, she already had lots of footage.  The idea of capturing Susan’s journey in realizing “Street,” a dining concept that would bring a variety of global street foods together under one roof and doing this without her longtime business partner and co-chef Mary Sue Milliken, had been simmering for 13 years. Continue reading →

The Pleasures of an Omakase Movie

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By Gaetano Kazuo Maida

“It’s never finished. It’s always in movement.”—Michel Troisgros

Okay, so let’s say you’re like me and you don’t customarily (like, never!) spend $1000 for lunch for two, and it happens that you don’t live in France, and yet you have good taste in food, you know what it is to enjoy a fine wine occasionally, you’re curious about the synergies between sustainable agriculture and restaurants, and at the moment are feeling a bit peckish. Well, the universe is generous, and Menu Plaisirs Les Troisgros offers a reasonable facsimile of enjoying one of the world’s top haute cuisine institutions from the comfort of your own seat or couch for four hours, about the duration of a really nice long lunch, albeit without the tasting bit. Continue reading →

Fabulous Food and Film Await at CAAMFest 2023

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By Geneva Anderson

(May 12, 2023)

 

When it comes to Asian-focused cinema, nothing beats the Bay Area’s CAAMFest.  The 11-day festival, which prides itself on culturally relevant stories that you won’t see anywhere else, offers 55 events grouped under film, music, food, and ideas.  For the first time since 2019, CAAMfest will be a fully in-person experience and the programming reflects the reality that people have been changed by the pandemic; that they think, feel and engage differently. Browse the program and let yourself be moved by the call to gather and “to lift each other up after in the audacity of our stories.”  

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Six California Kitchens-Recipes for Sally Schmidt’s Portuguese Duck & Sausage plus Apricot & Cherry Clafoutis

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“Six California Kitchens is the quintessential California cookbook, with farm-to-table recipes and stories from Sally Schmitt, the pioneering female chef and original founder of the French Laundry.

Sally Schmitt opened The French Laundry in Yountville in 1978 and designed her menus around local, seasonal ingredients—a novel concept at the time.

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THE AUTOMAT–Recipes, In The Movies & More

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Assembled by Gary Meyer

(Updated November 21, 2022)

The theatrical release of a new documentary by Lisa Hurwitz, The Automat, has taken me back in time with its wonderful clips from classic movies and discussions of food favorites of our youth from Baked Macaroni and Cheese, Chicken Pot Pie to Custard Cups and Pumpkin Pie. It is essential viewing for those interested in the history of restaurants in the 20th Century, the combining of technology and home-cooked meals and a trip down memory lane even if you were born too late to actually visit one. But we also cover contemporary attempts at automated food. We have included many photos, film clips, recipes, music, and related links to supplement your enjoyment of The Automat now playing in theaters and at film festivals—only on the big screen. 

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How the Bay Area Got Hooked on Fish Tacos

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By Nancy Friedman

September 20, 2022

Fish have been swimming onto San Francisco Bay Area menus ever since there were people around to catch and cook them. And Mexican cuisine has been represented in the region ever since Alta California was part of Mexico. But until 1992, although dozens of Bay Area restaurants served a steady tide of petrale sole, halibut, salmon, and sand dabs—not to mention McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, invented in 1962—and although there were plenty of places to enjoy burritos, enchiladas, and quesadillas, one Mexican fish dish was still just a wish: the fish taco. Continue reading →