California tastes & memories: real food.

This blog is about food and eating in California, both today and over the years. There will three contributing writers and we will write about the taste of California both today and over the past fifty years or more. We will offer memories and some recipes from our grandmother's kitchens and from our kitchens today. We will write about meals at restaurants both today and a long time ago -- in the next week we will put up posts about a dinner at Bakersfield's Noriega Hotel last month and a dinner at San Francisco at Jack's in the summer of 1965.

We have some biases. We are not foodies although we respect young cooks who have the imagination, skill and vision to try something new, even radical, if they respect their ingredients and our taste buds. We like and revere the ethnic traditions of California. We enjoy good restaurants like Campanile, but we also like red check table cloth Italoamerican family places and family run Mexican places that remember their roots in Jalisco or Sonora.

The three of us went College near San Francisco in the early 1960's and still have golden memories of the time, when San Francisco still had a strong local flavor and there were wonderful restaurants across the spectrum from great restaurants like Paoli's, Jack's, the original Trader Vic's in Emeryville to the cheap homey places in North Beach like the New Piza, La Pantera, the San Remo. All of them are only memories.

Your comments and your take and your memories are welcome.