Taste North Berkeley from Chez Panisse to the Cheese Board
Three hours along one stretch of Shattuck Avenue, where a restaurant, a worker-owned cheese counter and a coffee roaster changed how America eats. A guide walks you down it and you taste as you go.
North Shattuck Avenue is a short run of storefronts in Berkeley that carries a lot of history. Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse here in 1971. A few doors along sits a cheese shop that sold itself to its own employees, with its bakery at 1504 Shattuck and its pizzeria at 1512. It still bakes bread and still makes one pizza a day. Around the corner at Vine and Walnut is the store Alfred Peet opened in 1966.
People here called the stretch the Gourmet Ghetto for years. Edible Excursions used to call this walk the Gourmet Ghetto Food Tour and now calls it the North Berkeley Food Tour. The route is the same one.
Your guide meets you at the wooden gate outside Chez Panisse and spends three hours working down the street. The tour does not eat at Chez Panisse. That address is where the story starts and where you stand to hear it.
Departures are Thursdays and Saturdays at 11am, and the whole thing runs to about 2pm. Every tasting is covered by the ticket. Gratuities and any hotel transfer are on you.
Best of North Berkeley Food TourEdible Excursions · 3 hours · Thursdays and Saturdays, 11am · guide and all tastings includedwww.viator.comThree Hours, Six to Nine Tastes, Carried Down the Sidewalk
This is counter food eaten standing up. Edible Excursions says on its FAQ that its tours generally run to six to nine tastes of varying sizes, and that most guests reckon it is more than enough food. The company also says people often walk away with leftovers.
The shape of it changes. Both the platform listing and the operator carry the same warning in almost the same words, that stops are subject to change depending on availability, so a published roster tells you the likely shape of a day and nothing firmer.
What tends to hold is the character of the block. A window operation selling fried potato puffs with a pot of dipping sauce. A soup counter with the day's pots labelled in marker. A gelato case. Plan on a moderate amount of walking and wear shoes you can stand around in for three hours. The company's own advice adds a bottle of water and a bag for whatever you buy along the way.
The Deli and the Butcher at the Working End
Saul's is the Jewish delicatessen on this stretch, and the pastrami sandwich is the thing it is known for. Edible Excursions names it on its own tour page along with the house soda.
The Local Butcher Shop is the other anchor. It sells meat raised nearby and breaks down whole animals in house, which is how a shop that size ends up making its own sausages and charcuterie. On a tasting walk that shows up as a sandwich of the day, cut into pieces and handed round on a tray outside the shop.
Both are ordinary working businesses on a Thursday or Saturday lunchtime. You are eating in their doorways while their regular customers queue past you, which is most of the appeal.
The Coffee Store That Came Before the Coffee Chains
Peet's marks 1966 as its founding year on its own site, and the store that opened that year still stands around the corner at Vine and Walnut. Alfred Peet was Dutch, and the roast he sold was darker and stronger than what American grocery shelves held at the time.
The tour stops here for about ten minutes. That is enough for a cup and the story, and not enough to linger, so if you want to sit with a second one, come back afterwards.
Back on Shattuck, the other survivor on this block is collectively owned. The Cheese Board opened as a cheese store in 1967, and in 1971 its two owners sold the business to their employees. It has been a hundred percent worker-owned since. It now stocks close to four hundred cheeses, by its own count, and the pizzeria two doors south has been selling a single vegetarian pizza a day since 1985. The recipe is unchanged and the pizza never has meat in it. The line does stretch down the block, and there is usually live music while it moves.
Booking, Minimums and the Things That Are Final
Four things are worth knowing before you pay.
- Minimum party. The tour needs four guests to run. Edible Excursions will tell you several days ahead if a departure falls short and will give you a full refund or a seat on another date. Its own pages quote the notice period differently in different places, so plan on a few days of warning and leave the exact figure alone. Do not book a non-refundable flight around a single departure.
- Tickets are final. All sales are final, and a ticket cannot be exchanged or rescheduled. It can be transferred to somebody else, and the company asks you to flag any dietary needs for the person taking your place.
- Dietary needs. The operator says it can handle vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian and gluten-intolerant diets, and asks for seven days' notice on its tour page. Put it in the special requirements box at the moment you book. The platform's own copy quotes a much shorter window, and the operator's is the one that governs the kitchen.
- Ages. Anyone aged three or over is charged as an adult. Under-threes travel free, and an adult has to be on the booking.
Rain is not a reason to rebook. The company says its tours run rain or shine and tells guests to bring an umbrella if the forecast calls for one.
Your guide's name, photo and phone number arrive by email at least two days ahead, along with directions and the parking and transit options near the meeting point. Check the spam folder if it has not landed. Tipping is not built into the price, and the company says guests commonly tip the way they would a server.
The walk ends near where it began, at the top of the same block, a little after two. The bakery counter is still open at that hour and so is the pizzeria, which is a good reason to double back for the thing you liked most before you head for the BART station.