18 | EDIBLE SF WINTER 2025 Photographer—Tri Nguyen Writer—Melody Saradpon Inside Green Gulch Farm's monastery kitchen, where they remember how you eat The man who made me cry is named after a tiger. Zenko Montgomery, the Tenzo (head cook) at Green Gulch Farm—his name translates to a zen tiger taking to the mountains—gestures toward the four large steel appliances, humming in the monastery kitchen. He introduces the convection oven as Efukū (“Nourishing Wind”) and the heavyset six-burner range as Seien (“Sacred Flame”) with the tender attention most people reserve for sleeping children. He smiles, nodding in reverence to the remaining two. I learn the griddle is named Tetsuryū (“Iron Dragon”); the four-burner range, Kōki (“Dazzling Works”). Zenko lives here, in this valley 30 minutes from San Francisco near Muir Beach, where the Zen center has been making people cry for 50 years. I’m here because I was one of them. Four weeks ago: tortilla soup, third spoonful, sudden tears in the dining hall. Gentle, but insistent, the kind that made me grateful for the ritual silence and corner window seat. Now I’m back, trying to understand what kind of cooking can do that to a person. Turns out, I’m not special. When I tell Zenko about the soup incident, he laughs with the hearty ease of someone who’s seen this before. Then he grins—warm, knowing, the kind that suggests he’s about to share something slightly absurd but absolutely true. “The dish that’s made people cry the most,” he tells me, “is rolled oats, applesauce, cheese cubes, and toasted almonds. It’s like apple pie with cheese, basically deconstructed.” The simplicity throws me. Cafeteria food, essentially. “How long have you been serving this?” “It’s a recipe from the early ’70s when THIRD SPOONFUL 2 1
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