edible san francisco THE SKIN ISSUE SPRING 2026
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4 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 Photographers: Camille Cohen, Kim Wejendorp, Tri Nguyen, Albert Law, Line Klein Buried, p24 Full marks, p11 CONTENTS ON THE COVER 10 COVER ARTIST: LI HUI Capturing unconscious body language THE SKIN ISSUE 11 SIX RESTAURANTS GETTING IT RIGHT Noteworthy spots showing their work 14 AGAINST THE GRAIN A Bay Area guide of sculpting spas 16 EATING THE BOUNDARIES The intimacy of crossing from outside to inside 20 INVISIBLE CONNECTIONS The microbes that bind us 24 OUT OF BODY Experiencing three raw states of being 34 CULTURAL SHEDDING What gets saved when institutions shed their skin 38 MORE THAN SWEET Two recipes from Marie Frank's kitchen 41 FORTHCOMING What to expect from our summer issue BACK COVER: Bardia Moghadam A multidisciplinary artist trained in architecture in Iran, now working across photography, video, editorial, and AI-generated media. With Persian New Year on March 20, we chose his work for our back cover for the way it holds weight and joy in the same frame: a quiet homage to what his homeland has endured, carried with the defiance of celebration. Bygones, p34 Soft center, p38 A strange brew, p20
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8 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 edible san francisco PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Melody Saradpon PUBLISHER Tony Garnicki ART DIRECTOR/DESIGNER Melody Saradpon Chloe Kam COPY DIRECTOR Doug Adrianson ADVERTISING SALES info@ediblesf.com CONTACT US 584 Castro Street, Suite #508 San Francisco, CA 94114 Edible San Francisco is published four times a year and distributed throughout San Francisco. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Every effort has been made to avoid errors, misspellings, and omissions. If an error comes to your attention, please accept our sincere apologies and notify us. Member of Edible Communities @ediblesf EDITOR'S LETTER I started 2026 in Tepoztlán, a small town south of Mexico City, looking for a change. A temezcal sweat lodge ceremony gave me something better: clarity. I was done being distracted by noise. Every year, I start with a word to set a theme for the upcoming months. This year: pioneering. Not by forcing, but by clearing the path. With that intention set, people arrived by pure happenstance, not effort. Creative collaborations, once lofty goals, took shape on their own. Edible San Francisco is becoming more artistic, something I've wanted to make but had not trusted to do until now. One issue before our one-year anniversary marks a beginning: newer voices, clearer vision. Our opener is Li Hui, a photographer I've admired for many months. Her work sets the tone: an intuitive observation of unspoken body language. Carolyn Tillie brings a historical and poetic voice to edible skins and casings. We dive deeper into microbes and the things we leave behind upon a touch, and follow a body experiencing three states of being in a single day. Welcome to the Skin Issue. It's called this because that's what it took to get here: stripping away what was no longer needed and showing up in nothing but our own skin. Exposed. But moving forward anyway. Melody Saradpon Editor-in-Chief & Publisher Onward,
ediblesf.com | 9 CONTRIBUTORS Camille Cohen Carolyn Tilie Julie Zigoris Tri Ngyuen Flora Tsapovsky Larissa Zimberoff Maria C. Hunt Daisy Barringer Camille is a French-American photojournalist based in the Mission. She documents people, politics, and plates. camilleelizecohen.com Carolyn Tillie, co-founder of Bay Area Culinary Historians (BACH) and member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, busies herself as a culinary historian, author, food art creator, and curator. Julie Zigoris is an award-winning journalist in San Francisco whose writing has appeared in many Bay Area and national outlets. juliezigoris.com | jzigoris.bsky. social | @jusudra Tri Nguyen was born in Vietnam, raised in New Jersey, and landed in San Francisco 12 years ago. He studied chemistry in college, started a competitive BBQ team, loves Negronis, collects vintage tube amplifiers, and hoards cookbooks. Photography is his passion and full-time career. tringuyenphotography.com Flora Tsapovsky is a food and culture writer living in the Bay Area. She covers emerging trends and fascinating people. Her work has appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, Vogue, Wired, Elle, Food & Wine, and many more. @bicoastalista Larisa Zimberoff is a freelance journalist and author covering the intersection of food and technology. Her book, “Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change What We Eat,” covers what we eat is rapidly changing and the startups behind it. @technicallyfood Maria C. Hunt is a Californiabased journalist, brand storyteller and author specializing in cultural stories around food, wine, travel, and women’s health. Daisy Barringer is a journalist covering food, travel, and culture. She grew up in San Francisco and has an MFA from UNC Wilmington—or, as she prefers to say, a three-year stint at creative writing summer camp. @daisysf
10 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 A Small Planet Between Us, 2020 What's the title of this image and what inspired you to create it? A Small Planet Between Us. I often collect translucent objects. This one felt like a small blue planet holding an ocean inside it. It made me think about my own scale within the environment I live in, and about the distance between what is visible and what remains unknowable. The image became a symbolic space, suspended between intimacy and infinity. You photograph everyday body compositions—resting elbows, a leg crease, relaxed hands—that we experience daily but never observe. You've talked about being drawn to unconscious body language. How does that interest shape the way you capture these ordinary moments? I’m naturally shy, so I tend to observe. This draws me to unconscious gestures and unguarded body language, where emotions appear before they become words. In my work, I try to create a space where these quiet signals can surface. They may appear as overlooked details or as symbolic forms, but they carry a sense of sincerity and exposure. By paying attention to these unconscious movements, I hope to let ordinary things become something slightly unfamiliar, charged with metaphor and a deeper emotional meaning. You've mentioned music and film are your biggest influences. Both unfold over time—your photographs have to carry all that meaning into one image. How do you compress all that metaphorical language into a single shot? I don’t really think about translating meaning in a technical way. Music and film mostly teach me how to sense atmosphere and rhythm. When I photograph, I try to hold onto a moment that already contains emotion, like a scene that could belong to a story. One image becomes a small vessel for time, gathering light, gesture, and mood together, and allowing viewers to imagine what came before and what might follow. There's a delicacy to your work that makes me aware of my own body (my skin, my limbs, how they're folded). Is that intentional? What do you want people to feel physically when they encounter your photographs? I want my images to carry layered emotions and a sense of synesthesia—both bold and gentle, intuitive yet full of metaphor. They are often moments I observe and then hold still, a way of recreating what I’ve seen while allowing imagination to enter. When viewers encounter the work, I’d like them to feel it physically, as a quiet awareness of their own body. The photograph is not an answer, but a mirror, open to personal reflection and meaning. COVER ARTIST: LI HUI Writer—Melody Saradpon A conversation with photographer Li Hui and the art of capturing emotional bodies Li Hui is a photography artist working with light, bodies, and fragments of daily life. Her images move between reality and imagination, creating quiet narratives filled with emotion, memory, and subtle tension. huiuh.com | @huiuh_
ediblesf.com | 11 SIX NEW RESTAURANTS GETTING IT RIGHT There’s a certain clarity to San Francisco’s newest restaurant openings: an emphasis on food that shows its work. Not in the way your algebra teacher required, but in batter that’s fermented and fried, eggs set just right, skin crisped over flame. Familiar forms—bistros, pubs, tasting menus, cocktail bars—handled with care, where execution matters more than novelty. The common thread isn’t concept, but how the food is cooked, handled, and eaten. Writer—Daisy Barringer Wolfsbane marks a welcome return for Rupert and Carrie Blease after Lord Stanley, this time in Dogpatch, with a restaurant that leans into seasonality and texture. Dishes arrive with small moments of ceremony, from tableside pours to playful presentations, without tipping into fussiness. The experience can unfold as a multi-course tasting menu or be approached à la carte, with standout dishes ranging from the beloved buttermilk cabbage with uni bottarga to delicately layered shellfish and carefully handled duck. The room balances refinement and warmth, pairing high ceilings and sculptural lighting with an unhurried pace. The full bar hums without pulling focus, making the whole place easy to settle into. wolfsbanesf.com WOLFSBANE A WOLF WITH TABLE MANNERS Photo—Joseph Weaver Photos—Albert Law, Adahlia Cole
12 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 EQUAL PARTS Tucked into a storied North Beach address long associated with red-sauce Italian dining, Equal Parts feels deliberately out of step with its surroundings, in a good way. The space nods to Mexico City and Tulum through arches, greenery, and warm, natural textures. In the kitchen, Melissa Perfit, a “Top Chef” alum, leans into seafood-driven California cooking, with dishes like green cioppino with pan con tomate, roasted branzino with brown butter, and lamb ribs finished with tomatillo and mint. Cocktails—built around tequila, mezcal, and house infusions like grilled pineapple or brown butter bourbon—follow suit. Designed for flexibility, it works just as well for a drink at the bar as it does for a full meal. equalpartssf.com NORTH BEACH, IN GOOD MEASURE LA CIGALE At this tiny Glen Park restaurant, dinner unfolds around an open hearth. Chef Joseph Magidow cooks Occitan-inspired dishes over said hearth for a single communal table, using medieval-style tools, like a flambadou and raclette over flame, and ingredients foraged close to home. There are no reservations, tips, or surprise fees, just a $140 tasting menu that slowly becomes a long procession of dishes, from smoky sausages and hearty stews to beautifully handled duck and seasonal vegetables. It can take patience to get in, but once you do, the experience feels intimate, Old World, and deeply satisfying. la-cigale-sf.com OLD-WORLD COOKING, HERE AND NOW RT BISTRO If any restaurant in San Francisco needed a spinoff, it’s Rich Table, long one of the city’s hardest reservations thanks to its ingredient-driven cooking and deep attention to detail. RT Bistro, from chefs and owners Sarah and Evan Rich, is the answer: a more everyday place to eat their food, set in a warm, compact dining room that still feels unmistakably Rich Table, without dialing back what makes it special. It feels like a neighborhood spot, even if reservations are already a required part of the routine. The menu is concise and seasonal, built around crudos, pastas (including an unexpected—but obviously delicious—one-layer winter squash lasagna baked in the wood-fired oven), and a short list of mains that change with the market. The burger, charred over a wood fire and served with triple-cooked fries, was once capped at a dozen a night at Rich Table. Here, you’ll spot one on nearly every table. The dish you’ll keep dreaming of, though, is the porcini donut with Kaluga caviar, and arguably even more craveable than the famous one next door. Save room at the end: The Meyer lemon icebox pie is not to be skipped. richtablesf.com/location/rt-bistro THAT’S RICH—A BISTRO NEXT DOOR Photos—Melissa Zink Photo—Seth Boor Photos—Robbie Gomez Photos—Melissa Zink
ediblesf.com | 13 DINGLES PUBLIC HOUSE Dingles Public House brings a proper British pub to Hayes Valley. Tucked into the former Pläj space at the Inn at the Opera, the room feels immediately familiar, with British racing green walls, dark leather booths, quirky artwork, and a glowing fireplace. The menu does exactly what a pub menu should, starting with Scotch eggs with tender whites and jammy yolks, moving through flaky sausage rolls and fish and chips with tartar, curry sauce, and mushy peas, and landing on a deeply rich beef-and-Guinness pie finished with bone marrow. Sundays come with a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding included, as they should. With a proper pint in hand and a bar that encourages a second round, it’s unabashedly English and all the better for it. dinglespublichouse.com A PROPER PUB, DOWN TO THE MARROW From the team behind Dalida, Maria Isabel brings a contemporary Mexican point of view to Presidio Heights, grounded in chef Laura Ozyilmaz’s roots along Mexico’s Pacific coast. The menu draws from regions including Guerrero and Sinaloa, moving between seafoodforward coastal dishes and richer, chile-driven plates. Set in the former Ella’s American Kitchen, the space is split between a brighter, lively dining room and a darker, more intimate bar, offering two distinct ways to settle in and introducing a confident new voice to the city’s Mexican dining landscape. mariaisasbelsf.com MARIA ISABEL ALREADY ON OUR RADAR Photos—Jesse Cudworth Photos—Isabel Baer, Postcard Communications
14 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 AGAINST THE GRAIN Sculpting bodies with wood—a Bay Area guide On a sunny corner of Valencia Street in San Francisco, Shaped is quite possibly the most Instagram-friendly Bay Area spot to seek wood therapy (facials and a head spa are also available). Behind the welcoming reception area curtained-off treatment rooms await, designed to evoke Tulum vacation vibes that contrast the treatment nicely. That’s because the vigorous succession of movements performed by my experienced practitioner, who had taken classes from the Brazilian lymphatic drainage guru Renata França, were anything but chill, in the best way imaginable. Rather, during the full-body session, my thighs, belly, arms, and backside are positively tenderized by the various wooden tools, in addition to gentle tapping on lymph nodes, soothing manual massage, and machine-operated suction cups that help mobilize the cells. By the end of the treatment, my stomach has a nice, desirable dip, and my legs and arms feel as light as a feather. shapedaf.com Nourishment: As you’re asked not to eat before treatment due to the pressure on your stomach and organs, you’ll naturally get hungry after. The nearby Japanese café Bon, Nene is the perfect accompaniment to my newly found weightlessness—get the pristine Maguro Bowl for a zen lunch. Price: $250–$300 per session SHAPED AF 956 Valencia Street 1 You think you know all there is to know about wellness, but then you find yourself in a boat pose (for those lacking yoga lingo, essentially a V shape with legs and shoulders raised), laughing uncontrollably as your stomach is being scrubbed by a wooden roller composed of cubes. Welcome to 2026, the year of wood therapy—a brand-new experience that’s been hiding in plain sight, and just the right thing to shake things up a little, quite literally. I discovered the treatment as I searched for a transformative, energetic way to enter the new year and feel actual, tangible renewal. Rooted in ancient Asian practices and popularized in ’90s Colombia as a tool for body sculpting, wood therapy utilizes various wooden tools—rollers, suction cups, “mushrooms” with rounded spikes, and even a wavy paddle resembling a boomerang, to break down body fat, smooth contours, and stimulate lymphatic drainage. The promise? A smoother, toned body; better overall sensation; positive effects on energy levels and metabolism. If that sounds too good to be true, consider this: The lymphatic system, practitioners told me, can be viewed as the body’s “garbage disposal,” filtering out toxins and reducing water retention. Wood therapy, with its various shaping, scrubbing, and pressure techniques, aims to get rid of our body’s junk faster. It is also a metaphor, if you will: Who doesn’t want to release toxic stuff that gets under one’s skin? Growingly popular in the Bay Area, it is also a whimsical, surprising, and curiously personal practice that stands out in the sea of relaxing, meditative treatments. Am I looking all contoured up? Perhaps. But more than that, I wanted to be moved, in more ways than one; stirred into existence, and I found just that. You can, too. Here’s how. Writer—Flora Tsapovsky
ediblesf.com | 15 Nestled above a busy commercial street in the Marina, Serenity is a discreet, straightforward wellness spa that includes wood therapy—titled Manual Lymphatic Drainage—among its many offerings. In the cozy room, to the sounds of classical music, my practitioner tells me she’s from Miami, where body sculpting is extremely popular, as she asks me to stiffen my core in the aforementioned boat pose as she starts rolling me with a cubed massage roller “to hit deeper tissue.” Then comes a wooden cup moved around my stomach and sides, after I assume the fetal position. The roller, I’m informed, helps break fat while the cups aid drainage. The treatment is accompanied by generous smears of a velvety countering concentrate that promises to guard my skin’s collagen, which makes me look and feel like a svelte glistening seal—a sensation I didn’t exactly have on my bingo card, but nevertheless is timely and empowering. serenitysf.com Nourishment: It’s advised, I learn, to consume leafy greens and healthy fats after a treatment, to further “flush” the lymphatic system. Conveniently, less than a block away is Wildseed: a vegan haven where salads and green bowls abound. Munch on a kale Caesar while you contemplate how novel it feels to have your belly—yes, that part of your body toned and sucked in endlessly— pinched and confronted in such unapologetic ways. Price: $169–$209 per session SERENITY WELLNESS SPA 2087 Union Street #2 2 If wood therapy has let’s-get-down-to-business appeal, this tucked-away gem offers a slightly more holistic approach and a spa-like vibe. Vilansse, hiding in plain sight on a downtown Richmond block, is a well-known mecca for all things beauty and wellness and within it, Da’Shanti Bernstine offers wood therapy and lymphatic massage sessions that start with an inhale of fragrant geranium oil. They then focus on the desired parts of the body, going over them with textured rollers, mushrooms, and suction cups, using varying pressure and intensity. Here we focus on the stomach and the back of the legs, two areas Bernstine reports as popular among her clients, who are looking to reduce fat cells and cellulite. One thing to remember: While wood therapy can get, as practitioners put it, somewhat “spicy” on the body, the special tools also have powerful massaging effects. Upon my request they are applied to my tense ankles, and as a result I walk out of Villanse floating on a cloud. heartyourcurves.glossgenius.com Nourishment: A nice surprise, the nearby Naturally Herbs & More is more than meets the eye. The wellness store is a great place to grab a healthful lunch box filled with proteins, grains, and veggies. Price: $89–$125 per session HEART YOUR CURVES AT VILANSSE WELLNESS 3728 Macdonald Avenue, Suite B, Richmond 3 Care for more options? Try FitWise Pilates in Mill Valley, where the treatment can be paired with a Pilates class, and Revive Body Therapy in San Jose, where you can sneak in red light therapy while there.
16 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 EATING the BOUNDARIES Cradling a soup dumpling in a tong gung and lifting it toward your mouth, anticipation builds as your lips first meet the edge of the spoon, then the warm flesh nestled within. There is a moment just before the dumpling gives way, when your teeth press through its pale, elastic skin, releasing what was hidden. Resistance is quiet at first, then comes the release: unctuous fat and salt, steam fogging your glasses, the rich interior spilling into your mouth. In that moment we have not merely eaten. We have crossed a threshold. Confession time: Who has not purchased a Costco roast chicken solely to strip off its golden, crispy dress—not to expose the nudity of the flesh beneath, but to revel in the shattering of that skin? We’ll deal with the naked meat later, perhaps folded into a Chinese chicken salad or enchiladas for the weekend. Sausages snap. Grape leaves give up their grip. Ravioli sigh at their demise. Unguarded and ready, we could eat soft things, yet again and again, across cultures and centuries, humans have chosen foods that shield themselves. Withholding just long enough to make the act feel deliberate, we find ourselves drawn to eating the boundary. Long before shrink-wrap and vacuum seals, food was encased in something far older and more intimate: skin. From intestines to stomachs, bladders to membranes, humanity’s first food technology came from the resourceful use of every part of the animal. Encased foods traveled more easily, stayed safer, lasted longer. No one chose the intestine for its beauty. It was necessity that taught us not to waste, and the membrane that once held life now held dinner. Over time, the casing stopped being invisible and became integral. As early as 1480, the city of Nuremberg legally regulated what could be called a bratwurst, treating sausages Writer—Carolyn Tillie Artist—Melody Saradpon On skins, casings, and the intimacy of crossing from outside to inside
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ediblesf.com | 19 as civic goods subject to inspection, fines, and expulsion from the guild. A sagging or bursting casing was not a flaw of taste but a failure of craft. In northern Germany, this reverence is preserved in language itself: Knackwurst, first recorded in the mid-16th century, takes its name from knacken, “to crack,” a reference to the audible snap of a taut natural casing. Here, the skin announces quality before the filling ever touches the tongue. What was once merely a container became a sensory promise. The boundary was no longer just functional; it was part of the pleasure. Around the globe, this transformation took similar forms. Foods that are filled and folded appear in almost every culinary tradition: Chinese jiaozi, Italian agnolotti, Jewish kreplach, Turkish manti, Argentine empanadas, Polish pierogi, Korean mandu. All begin with thinly rolled dough, strong enough to secure what is hidden within: meat, cheese, vegetables, or something sweet. Their kinship continues in the sealed edge, crimped by machine or by hand. These are not simply foods containing fillings. They are a mystery, a bite of suspense. Will it be wet or dry, sweet or savory? The flavor does not arrive all at once. First there is resistance, then rupture, and finally release. The experience is temporal. It unfolds. The most fragile wrappers—rice paper, phyllo, warka—join this dance between restraint and exposure. They tear easily, but not before announcing themselves. Translucent spring rolls are like veils: sheer enough to tease what lies beneath. Baklava’s honeyed layers whisper as they separate. Fine shards of hot, golden dough rain down at the first bite of an egg roll. These coverings are not neutral. They assert themselves through texture and sound. Intimacy deepens with protein skins. A natural sausage casing is literally part of the animal itself. That Costco chicken skin is a suit of armor lacquered gold. Pig skin, pulled from hot oil, transforms from thick rubber into airy chicharrón. These are not wrappers borrowed from plants or constructed from grains. They are the animal, transformed yet still recognizable. To eat skin is to accept that food once had a body. In modern Western cooking, shaped by industrial processing and advertising, many consumers have grown suspicious of skins, fat, and connective tissue. We are taught to want our meat boneless, skinless, and extra lean, trimming away what reminds us that dinner was once alive. In 1993, Perdue Farms introduced a line of skinless chicken with a now-infamous television ad in which Frank Perdue theatrically “took it all off,” framing skin as something to be stripped away for virtue. In 30 seconds, the boundary was reframed from flavor and protection into a problem. There is a telling reversal here. Earlier eras often left the poor subsisting on skin and bones, coaxing sustenance from what others discarded. Then came World War II, when meat rationing forced Americans to rethink what counted as “good” food. Government materials urged families to cook with “variety meats”: liver, sweetbreads, kidneys, brains. In the postwar glow of abundance, however, the national ideal shifted toward pre-cut, prepackaged, sanitized flesh. Decades later, the pendulum swung again. The 1990s nose-to-tail revival—popularized by Fergus Henderson—recast offal and skin as markers of culinary respect and sophistication. Who could forget Chris Cosentino’s candied cockscombs at Incanto? What was once necessity became luxury. Some skins, however, are created expressly to be eaten. Tofu skin, known as yuba or fupi, forms when soy milk is heated and a delicate membrane rises to the surface. It is lifted, dried, and eaten as its own ingredient. It hides nothing. The skin is the dish. Yuba is both process and product, coming into existence at the moment liquid becomes solid. To eat it is to consume a transformation. And to encounter skin on the plate is to be reminded of our own surfaces, our own vulnerabilities. We are drawn to it and unsettled by it. Texture scientists tell us that contrast is central to pleasure: crisp against soft, smooth against rough. Skins do more than provide contrast. They offer resistance. There is something quietly transgressive about breaking a boundary. We pierce, tear, split, and breach, but do so in a controlled, consensual way. The food offers itself to be opened. The skin is not an obstacle. It is an invitation. In a culture increasingly obsessed with transparency, skins remind us that not everything must be visible at once. Mystery can nourish. To bite through a skin is to acknowledge before and after, separation and joining. We could live on soups and purées, on foods that offer no resistance. But we do not. We crave the snap, the tear, the yielding.
20 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 1 INVISIBLE CONNECTIONS The microbes that bind us Writer—Maria C. Hunt Photography—Will Basanta, Azikiwee Anderson, Kim Wejendorp, Sarah Lyon 1
ediblesf.com | 21 4 They weren’t actually trying to make a kombucha that tasted like skin. But if you wanted to make a spontaneous kombucha SCOBY, what would it take? Kim Wejendorp, a research and development chef in Copenhagen, devised an alchemical mix of ingredients: a dried sunflower, a dead bee, raw honey, green tea, and a piece of his skin. The mixture fermented into kombucha, and formed a pellicle (the fibrous layer that floats over a kombucha) that made more batches of kombucha served at the former Amass. “The thing with fermentation is the results are often magical, but it isn’t magic,” Wejendorp says. It’s just science that highlights the role of invisible microbes that shape our culinary world, creating flavors and textures we love in wine, kimchi, and sausages, while also supporting our health. Wejendorp chose the ingredients for his weird brew because they all carried tons of microbes. Flower pollen is laden with microbial communities, and they receive more from visiting insects. Food-seeking bees buzz from rose bush to berry patch to backyard barbecue leaving microbes behind. They’re also fermenters, creating a nourishing fermented mix of honey, pollen, saliva, and wild yeast called bee bread. Raw honey carries dormant microbes that come alive in liquid, and human skin carries a microbial signature. “This is not magic, but…this was destined to happen,” says Wejendorp, head R&D chef at BRITE (formerly Sustainable Food Innovation Group). “If…all the kombucha in the world disappeared today, it would probably turn up again.” The experiment proves fermentation can happen anywhere microbes gather. Which means that even refined drinks, like wine, are just controlled wildness. Intentional winemaking in qvevri clay amphorae dates back 8,000 years in Georgia, where Eastern Europe meets Western Asia. But the first wine was almost surely an accident, since the grape is a perfect fermentation vehicle, says Chenoa Ashton-Lewis, winemaker and co-owner of Ashanta Wines in Sebastopol, California. “Grapes are incredible. They actually want to turn into wine very quickly,” she says. Crush grapes slightly, the sweet juice flows, and wild yeast microbes on the grape skins and in the air gobble up the sugar, producing alcohol, heat, and carbon dioxide gas. Ashton-Lewis shapes her fermentation by making sure she’s sourcing fruit from a healthy vineyard that’s teeming with beneficial microbes. That’s why she avoids vineyards sprayed with pesticides or weed killers that destroy the microbial ecosystem. To expand the range of textures and flavors, Lewis co-ferments red and white grapes together, like the Merlot, Chardonnay, and Pinot Gris mix in her wine called Saudade. Some of the fruit comes from a vineyard her grandfather owned in the 1980s, so the Portuguese word for nostalgia was a fitting name. She also makes still and sparkling wines with grapes or apples mixed with foraged fruits like feijoas, wild elderberries, or plums. These diverse fruits bring their own microbes plus novel flavors to the mix. Discovering fruit that’s just waiting to be picked feels like a gift from nature; and reminds Ashton-Lewis of when people home-brewed fruit wines to share with their family and neighbors. “When you work with a different fruit that’s wild and feral and abandoned, you’re tapping into a different part of you,” she says. “This species has been making some sort of fermented beverage for so long. It connects you back to humanity, your culture and community.” Fruit trees and vines aren’t the only natural actors sharing gifts with hungry and thirsty humans; even ants make important contributions to fermentation. Want to make yogurt but don’t have any starter? Just find some ants. Ant yogurt is a favorite old-school recipe for Balkan and Turkish shepherds who start craving yogurt while stuck in the wilderness tending their flocks in spring. In 2023, University of Copenhagen researcher Veronica Sinotte 4 The experiment proves fermentation can happen anywhere microbes gather. Which means that even refined drinks, like wine, are just controlled wildness. 2 3
22 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 took researchers to the Bulgarian countryside to see if tales about ant yogurt were true. Her colleague Sevgi Mutlu Sirakova grew up near there and knew that people still told stories about fermenting yogurt with ants, according to the published study in Cell Press. Locals led researchers to a mound of Formica rufa, commonly called red wood ants. The researchers added four live ants to a jar of warm milk, covered it with cheesecloth, then buried the jar in the ant mound to keep it warm overnight. The next morning, the milk had started becoming yogurt. Research chef David Zilber, who was on the expedition, noted the milk “had a slightly tangy taste with mild herbaceousness and pronounced flavors of grass-fed fat.” After making more yogurt with live, frozen, or dehydrated ants, they put a bug in the ear of R&D chefs at Restaurant Alchemist, a two-star Michelin in Copenhagen. The chefs fermented goat milk mascarpone with the pungency of pecorino and an antwich —-sheep’s milk ant ice cream sandwiched between ant-infused tuiles. Feeling thirsty? Then try the ant-milk-washed apricot liqueur and brandy cocktail. For years scientists assumed it was formic acid—popularized in the 1954 giant ant horror movie Them!—that enabled ants to ferment milk. But now we know it’s the ant’s holobiont: its body and microbes. And can you believe that the Bulgarian yogurtmaking ants were carrying lactobacillus San Francisensus—the very same microbe that gives San Francisco’s famed sourdough bread its distinctive tang? Biting into a warm, crusty, tangy piece of sourdough bread gives people pleasure, and creating that makes Azikiwee Anderson happy. When he started messing around with sourdough bread during the pandemic, he gifted loaves to friends. The bread was really a vehicle for creating connection. He expanded to selling loaves to his circle and social media followers. Eventually he opened San Francisco’s Rize Up Bakery in 2020, as a way to create community and healing the wake of racial injustices like George Floyd’s murder. Anderson liked nurturing his sourdough starter like an edible Tamagotchi, and creating cross-cultural loaves flavored with purple ube yam, gochujang chili, and curry leaves. But he didn’t like touching the yeasty dough. “I was icked out by it,” he recalls. “I ain’t touching those creepy crawly things. I don’t want that stuff on me. The idea of putting my hands in it freaked me out.” But he realized he already had plenty of creepy crawlies of his own. Walt Whitman got it right: We contain multitudes … of microbes. The average person is made up of 30 million human cells and 38 million microbes, according to a 2016 paper led by Ron Sender of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Anderson thinks about how each of us is engaged in a tug of war: Is our human self directing our decisions and moods, or is it the microbial community? Either way, every baker brings something singular to their bread. “What makes our bread uniquely our bread is what I call love, but you literally leave a piece of you,” Anderson says. “Every time you touch it, you give a piece of yourself to it.” That’s not just baker woo-woo. Researchers in the Rob Dunn Lab at North Carolina State University gave bakers identical sourdough bread starter recipes, and then analyzed the microbial content of the batches. They found each baker’s starter mirrored the microbial community on the baker’s hands. And the finished loaves tasted different, with varying levels of tartness. It makes you want to buy bread from a happy, well-adjusted baker. Anderson believes the best-tasting bread comes from people who have their stuff together. “Happiness comes from the inside, and all that kind of starts with your relationship with yourself, your relationship to your environment,” he says. “You get an intuitive relationship with all the things around you and try to give the best you can give.” Thanks to invisible microbes, sharing any fermented food—a loaf of sourdough, a jar of kimchi, or homemade kombucha—is a way of sharing yourself, and bringing more people into a circle with the natural world and a process as old as time. For Sarah C. Owens, a James Beard Award–winning author and instructor of Ritual Fine Foods in Sonoma County, her passion for fermentation started in her garden. Cultivating roses was an antidote to her stressful work life in Brooklyn, and she poured herself into it. She even traveled to the coast to gather seaweed that she mixed with sourdough starter, nettles, and molasses to make a preparation to feed her plants and soil. Fermentation broke down the nutrients in the ingredients, making them more available. At the time, Owens had digestive issues that forced her to give up eating bread with gluten, as well as commercial gluten-free foods. She realized her sourdough garden tea might provide what her body was missing too. “I was making compost tea and was brewing microbial teas to help plants get what they need from the soil,” she says. “Well, a sourdough culture is the same thing for humans and the digestive system.” Owens started experimenting with long fermentations of whole-wheat dough to break down the gluten proteins and make them more digestible. Slowly, her body started to heal. Her exploration led her to baking with other grains such as teff, spelt, barley, and millet, and going beyond European loaves to fermented flatbreads. Her book Sourdough shares recipes for fermented dough desserts like lemon madeleines and chocolate buckwheat cookies. As a rosarian and a lauded sourdough baker, Owens says the two pursuits are interwoven. Every loaf she makes evokes her connection to other people and nature, especially when she uses flowers to make a starter. “When you’re using flowers to create a culture, whether it’s a sourdough starter or jun, you’re nurturing that relationship with the flower and the bees,” she says. “It’s a beautiful potential we have to create connections in a world where our attention is so preoccupied with screens and telephones.” "What makes our bread uniquely our bread is what I call love, but you literally leave a piece of you. Every time you touch it, you give a piece of yourself to it."
ediblesf.com | 23 On previous page 1.Chenoa's grape preparation 2. Bee scoby 3. Chenoa Ashton-Lewis 4. Fermentation This page 5. Azikiwee's famous ube dough 6. Sarah Owens' garden 7. Slicing 8. Foraging 5 6 7 8
24 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 out of body Writer—Larissa Zimberoff Photography—Camille Cohen
ediblesf.com | 25 6 under my skin It’s late winter. I’m ready for days to grow longer. We drive north 47 miles. Eventually hitting winding roads that telegraph we’re somewhere else. Trees blur by. I don’t know where we’re going until a handful of minutes before we arrive. I read various phrases online. A bathing ritual, an enzyme bath, a therapeutic body treatment. Am I dressed right? It doesn’t matter because soon I won’t be wearing anything at all. Soak. Heat. Immerse. Cover. These are some of the words that drift by when I recall my experience bathing in wood. But this further obfuscates. I didn’t bathe in wood. I wasn’t clean when I finished, and wood, the word, evokes hard edges when instead it’s soft. Cozy. Cocoon. Envelop. Shroud. The material, the mass, the stuff I climb into is made of ground cypress, rice bran, and enzymes occurring naturally. Young cypress trees are shaped like a pyramid. Later, they turn into majestic columns. Cypress needles, when crushed, evoke Hinoki, a prized Japanese tree. How could I forget scent? The aroma of wood shavings is universal. So evocative of context. Can you hear the blade grinding away? Other thoughts waft through my nose like astringent and pungent. Rice bran is the edible husk of brown rice. Enzymes are fundamental to life. We have enzymes in our bodies, bark, and leaves. Once blended, the mass will ferment and heat up. Sam, my bath attendant, shapes my “curated seat in the bath” with a decades-old redwood paddle. This indentation is what I lower myself into. I use my hands to move the heavy material onto my body to cover myself up. Sam finishes the task using her hands, which are expertly manicured. She buries me. I’m at Osmosis Spa in Freestone, California, a former stone and logging town in Sonoma County. Inspiration for this enzymatic “bath” traveled here from Japan. It came out of monasteries, but it also popped up at the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics. Over 2,000 athletes, some with medals, and various officials simmered their bodies in wood. Can you think of anything nicer than following an intense competition with a dunk in hot fluff meant to calm nerves and equalize neurons? The enzymes are a catalyst to change, and my internal temperature gradually rises. My core ignites but not from my usual workout. Core, a word with many definitions including “meaning the heart or inner part of a physical thing,” but also “the center, the most important.” Slowly, I get hot. Then, hotter. When I breathe, the reddish-brown mass billows up and down. Sweat drips down my face and I repeat a Zen mantra I learned from Michael, the founder of Osmosis: “When you are cold, be a cold Buddha; when you are hot, be a hot Buddha.” After 20 minutes, Sam tells me it’s time to get up. With difficulty I move the material off. I didn’t think it could get hotter but as I do this the heat intensifies. Finally out, I exit to the garden and stand blissfully naked on a wooden platform. Before I scrub my body down, I breathe in the cool air. Now I am a cooling down Buddha and everything is perfect.
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ediblesf.com | 29 in my bones I’m 116 miles from home. Needles, twigs, cones, and seeds scatter under my feet. This forest detritus is called duff. I shed my bags inside a green teepee that will be home for the next two nights. A 200-acre “home” that was once a Boy Scout camp. Images on my phone labeled September 2018: Me aiming a bow and arrow at a hay bale with a bullseye. Me sitting in class learning to make kombucha. A woman with a baby owl on her shoulder. Friends walk precariously over a log on a stream. Batik handkerchiefs sway on ropes strung tree to tree. While writing this I listen to a 20-minute sound bath on YouTube. Brass bowls rubbed with a wooden beater sing through my speaker. In another, a white-haired woman strikes a soft mallet across several golden gongs at once. Their radiating vibrations seep into my bones. I’m at Camp Navarro for the weekend. A busy calendar of activities inspires. I pick “forest sound bath” at 2pm. My legs take me along paths carved slowly over 100 years since its inception as a lumber camp. A dozen of us mill around the clearing. Ancient oaks and redwoods encircle us. We float blankets in the air. To the Earth. And lie down. There’s talk. Murmurs of conversation. Caress of air. Instructions. Eyes closed. Sound baths use sonic frequencies to soothe our central nervous systems. Steady the breath. Quiet the mind. When awake our brains are active in beta waves. Probably overactive. We long for peace, which sound baths facilitate by ushering our brains to calmer states such as theta and alpha. Stress biomarkers reduce. Anxiety clears. Energy field balances. A practitioner walks slowly in circles around us. Sounds of instruments surround and enter my body. I hear but don’t see them. A mystery of tones with no corresponding visual. Later I learn some names: Tibetan sound bowls, xylophone, Koshi chimes, rain stick, water rattle. Sometimes my limbs jolt. Natural spasms of stored emotional energy. A wave drum with a thousand metal balls rolling together makes my brain tingle. Reverberations course through my bones. The joy that fills me is immeasurable. Eventually it quiets. All I can hear are the trees. My eyelids flutter. I rouse from stillness. Stand. Stretch. Absorb. And walk back along those same established paths a different person.
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ediblesf.com | 33 out of my mind Today isn’t about the miles I drive or the map I follow. I could be anywhere but I’m here. Where doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll drop a pin to locate me? I’m a fast walker but today I slow down. In place of my mental chatter, I count my breaths. Inhale, exhale, repeat. Closely watching where my feet strike. Notice surroundings. Step down 79 stairs. Cross a wooden bridge. Listen to the plink of a tiny waterfall. My struggle isn’t finding beauty around me, it’s not forming the words when I see it. The effort to quiet my mind is a constant ebb and flow. Thoughts form and I ask them to recede. Push, pull. A wave of thoughts. Wild purple irises along a barbed wire fence. Circular threads of a spider web. Angular roof tips of houses. Squeaky brakes on a truck. When my thoughts overtake me once again, I go back to counting my breaths. The liminal space between knowing and unknowing. Be in the physical world. Arms swing subtly at my side. Head balancing on shoulders. Feet take me where? It doesn’t matter. How often do I take this for granted? Movement, breath, life. “We can’t be grounded in our body if our mind is somewhere else.” Zen teacher and poet Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about his reverence for walking meditation: “We don’t rush. The Earth is sacred, and we touch her with each step.” I repeat his words on my walk: “Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I bring peace into my body.” I hear the ocean before I see it. The roar grounds me in its totality and banishes my thoughts. Step slowly down. Count out 141 stairs. Beyond them are rocks to step on. Then sand. Dried tubes of kelp. A dead crab and a reflecting pool left behind from high tide. Blue mussels coat massive boulders by the shore. These images are burnished in my mind, yet I attempt to unsee them. Later, I’ll learn that mussels are ecosystem engineers. They filter out toxins and flush nutrients back into the waves pounding on them. Like my own skeleton, a scaffolding that holds up fat and muscles and skin that allows me to move, the collective of mussels, with their oblong blue and iridescent shells, create an aquatic ridge that stabilizes the shoreline. I stop to listen again. The repeating sound of the ocean is a natural reset. I turn around and go back. My days are so full of doing but today it’s not like that. “Walking is for nothing. It’s just for walking.” I don’t think, I don’t see. I filter out my thoughts again and again like waves coming back in perpetuity to wash over the mussels.
34 | EDIBLE SF SPRING 2026 The 22-year-old Prelinger Library in San Francisco’s SoMa District takes what other institutions shed—the cultural exfoliation of collections that can’t be kept. “We’re not out to rescue print,” said Megan Prelinger. “We’re out to stage an intervention into historical amnesia.” She and her partner Rick Prelinger, the library’s co-founders and selfdescribed independent scholars, recently coordinated a large donation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency— around three carloads of materials—after the federal organization lost about half the space for their library due to funding cuts. “They are getting rid of some unique things,” Megan Prelinger said, “and those materials are going to be discoverable here but probably closed to researchers.” Of particular interest to Edible SF readers would be the library’s sponsored cookbook collection. These are recipe books for brands or products—ways to cook with Karo Syrup, Gebhardt’s chili powder, or French’s mustard. Karo has recipes for candied bananas, a spiced ham slice, and “Two-Tone Divinity” with its signature corn syrup. “Gebhardt’s Mexican Meals for American Homes” includes a recipe for deviled eggs in aspic (it calls for ¼ teaspoon of Gebhardt’s chili powder). The slim tomes reveal the historical proclivities of their time; a cocktail book doubles as a day planner and is filled with misogynist toasts, such as “Here’s to a man: he can afford anything he can get; Here’s to a woman: she can afford anything she can get a man to get her.” One can find booklets with recipes both for promoting cooking with electric (in 1960) and gas (in 1967). “The sponsored cookbook collection expresses an intersection between commerce, industry, and food,” Megan Prelinger said. While they’re not consulted often, she said, the researchers who do so are particularly enthusiastic. The compact food section of the library includes titles like the 1944 Men in Aprons and bound volumes of the trade journal The Ice Cream Review. Old library seals or collections stamps indicate the provenance of an item on the shelves: a browser might spy “Seattle Public Library” embossed on a tome or a “University of San Francisco Documents Collection” stamp. But not every donation is accepted. “We say no much more than we say yes,” Megan Prelinger said. Materials can’t be checked out, but many have been digitized and are accessible as downloads. The sloughing off is not only in terms of material collection; an intellectual molting also occurs within the Prelinger Library walls. Researchers come in with one idea of their project and then, after experiencing the unique collection within the walls at 301 8th St., their assumptions are challenged. Transformation ensues. It happened with Severine von Tscharner Fleming, who credits the library with inspiring her to imagine a new version of the traditional Farmer’s Almanac. It also happened to Jenny Odell, the local writer and artist, who reoriented her relationship to time thanks to the collection. The library’s Stacks Explorer—created by an “artisanal computer programmer,” as Megan Prelinger described it—allows for serendipitous encounters, and the experience of being there—where everyone is offered sparkling water or hot tea upon arrival—encourages browsing and surprise discoveries, revelations not possible through screen-based research. “It’s about shedding the previously held assumption about what a roomful of books is,” Megan Prelinger said. “This is the library as a space of production.” To that end, Rick and Megan Prelinger selectively accept orphan materials with a curatorial leaning towards those that can become raw material for future work. This inclination, perhaps, comes from the pair’s experience in the stock footage trade, the income from which allowed the Prelingers to set up the organization. Rick Prelinger, who specializes in archival film footage, is the brain behind the Lost Landscapes series—an event in which curated film stock is projected silently, with a live audience calling out locations and filling in the gaps. It’s wildly popular. The Jan. 30 event sold out tickets in 15 hours; a second date was added. The Prelinger Library, in turn, has shed its early identity. No longer simply a side project or quirky ephemera collection, it’s a financially stable repository for federally defunded organizations and a safe space for queer and trans youth during a time of increased fear. The library, lean from the beginning, has been able not only to survive but thrive—even in the current landscape, when so many small cultural organizations are closing. The Prelinger Library’s SoMa home feels apt, even if the location was originally selected because the rent was cheaper than storage. Housed across from San Francisco’s pole dancing studio where physical clothes are shed, all kinds of transformation stand side-by-side, ready for revolution between sips of herbal tea and a throbbing beat. CULTURAL SHEDDING A 22-year-old institution fights against “historical amnesia” and aims to turn raw materials into future work Writer—Julie Zigoris Photography—Tri Nguyen Art Direction—Melody Saradpon
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