Shattuck Ave, Upper North Berkeley (North Shattuck / Gourmet Ghetto)

I hope this isn’t going to become a habit for me--as a former Stanford Cardinal--but I yet again found myself in Bear territory. This time it was with my mom who is here visiting and wanted to go to the famed Chez Panisse--Alice Waters’ renowned East Bay eatery. Unfortunately, as you may have heard, there was a fire that has basically shut Chez Panisse down for now--thus ruining our original plans. Mom was very disappointed--she has always wanted to go and my moving to this section of the Bay Area was her big chance, she thought.

We decided to come here anyway and check out some of the other offers of this stretch of the Gourmet Ghetto as it is affectionately called by Berkeley denizens.

Despite being a pretty busy street, Shattuck Avenue still has a fairly quaint feel to it because of all the stores and restaurants that line the sidewalks. It really does have a European feel to it.

We ended up going to Gregoire, an affordable French joint, where I had the honey bbq pork and moms had the crispy potato puffs. It was really great. We both loved it.

But this was only one of a number of places we could have gone on this strip of the Gourmet Ghetto. There are also a bunch of Asian restaurants like Taste of the Himalayas (an Indian place) and Cha-Ya, a Vegan Japanese joint. We also considered going to Tratoria Corso or to the other French place along this strip, the French Hotel.

The area is also packed with students and local families. On weekends you really do get a sense of being in a metropolitan center of the East Bay. (I still prefer Palo Alto, but I am beginning to see the appeal of Berkeley.)