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What San Diego restaurant staffs eat, dumpster diving for dinner
How food critic Naomi Wise started her life in San Diego, how food critic Eleanor Widmer ended hers
What Insiders Eat
- Travis Murphy, also a cook, planned the staff’s daily dinner. At Nine-Ten, he said, the hardest part of arranging the staff meal, also called the “family meal,” was “to find something to use. The biggest challenge is protein. I have to improvise with what’s extra. Basically, we have to scavenge around. The family meal is…what’s the word I want? Spontaneous.”
- By Shari McCullough, Jan. 22, 2004
The Late Long-time Queen of the Cafe Critics
- One of the ironies of Eleanor Widmer's life is what she ate in her last months. Widmer had become a restaurant critic in 1974, back when brunch at La Valencia featured molded Jell-O "Seafoam." In the following years, Widmer had dined on Japanese donburi and barbecue ribs, Peruvian anticuchos and French quenelles, Turkish baklava and Indian raitas. But toward the end, confined to her bed in La Jolla, she wanted only chocolate.
- By Jeannette DeWyze, Nov. 23, 2005
The Well-Traveled Tomato
- On a hot day in late November, I'm all set to enter Vons: my role for the day — food archaeologist. Janice Baker, a registered dietitian, certified diabetes educator, and medical nutrition therapist, is my guide. My goal is to learn what food we San Diegans buy.
- By Thomas Larson, March 8, 2007
Cornucopia: Stephen Facciola's Edible World
- “You’re eating bug excrement.”
- Stephen Facciola and I are standing in the parking lot of a Middle Eastern grocery in disheartening Anaheim. The streets are eight lanes wide. The blocks, a mile long. The air is hot, humid, smoggy. Strip malls and traffic stretch on and on to the hazy horizon. Facciola has just handed me a chewy white square of Iranian candy that tastes mostly of rose water.
- By Abe Opincar, Nov. 22, 2000
Dumpster Diving for Dinner
- Half of a “nutrition bar” sat before me on the wobbly café table. I couldn’t eat the rest because it was oily yet granular but also couldn’t force myself to throw it out. I had arranged to meet freegans at the Other Side coffeehouse on 30th and Lincoln. If they saw me toss out good food, they’d probably think, yeah, another wasteful American.
- By Ollie, June 25, 2008
Happiness on a Plate
- My assignment, should I choose to accept it, was to come down from San Francisco (where I’ve been a restaurant critic since the Bronze Age) and eat out anonymously until I’d identified and interviewed San Diego’s ten hottest chefs.
- By Naomi Wise, Sept. 28, 2000