It is with great amusement I have been reading this blog lately, and see that almost every post is about California, yet none of those posting actually live here. This is not at all meant to sound condescending, rather, just to place myself properly, as writing from somewhere other than that great place that I called home for almost 9 years, New York.

I write from the great gastronomical capital of Berkeley, California – or Oakland, rather, and I’m quite proud to live in Oaktown, its southern neighbor, thank you. I am just over two miles from the Berkeley Bowl, a former-bowling alley turned grocery store so legendary, I often take tourists there just to gawk at its 50 varieties of mushrooms and 30 varieties of potatoes. Am I exaggerating? Maybe. But you get my point.

There must be close to 40 different kinds of oranges right now, from the Satsuma tangerine to your commercially grown and organic navels and valencias, and then more specialty tangelos and blood oranges, both Cara Cara and Moro. (For a few photos, visit Yelp.com and search Berkeley Bowl. For some reason, I couldn’t paste the link into my browser right now).

I have a very vivid memory of my first time at “the Bowl,” as we like to call it. It was probably over 10 years ago. I was living in Manhattan at the time, and was used to the likes of Gristedes (which my first year in New York, I pronounced “Gristed’s”) or D’Agostino, where the shopping carts are in miniature to fit down the slender aisles with ease. I was invited to my childhood friend Sarah’s parents house for Chanukah dinner, and we needed to bring some applesauce to go with the latkes.

Now, as anyone who lives here knows, you never run into the bowl for just one item. This is not to say there are bouncers or velvet ropes or anything of that sort. But depending on what time it is, you might have to wait a good long time just to get a parking spot. I avoid the place on weekends altogether, and am so grateful my schedule now allows me to go at the perfect time: Tuesday mornings at about 10 a.m. But I digress.

In those days, when the bowl was still in its first bowling alley location, we were able to scoot right in. I remember Sarah, a foodie-in-training, going straight for the aisle with the applesauce. Not so fast. She soon realized she had a tourist with her; I could not just pass by the produce section. I had to take it all in. There were then – as there are now – so many varieties of fruit that even someone as well traveled as me hadn’t a clue what they all were. I still don’t.

And did I mention the shopping carts? Just as they are miniature in New York, they are oversize at the Bowl because a regular size one is often not enough to hold everything.

Even coming from New York, with its Zabar’s and Balducci’s and Fairway, I had never seen anything like this. I still remember how in awe I was. I don’t remember how long I made her stay there, and looking back, it must have been kind of funny for her to be hanging out with a friend she hadn’t seen in a long time, and she couldn’t get said friend to leave a place she probably spent way too much time in already.

I was just getting used to living in New York then. Even though I had visited it plenty as a child, I could not get used to how Jewish it was. I know that must seem strange when you take it for granted, but I had grown up in a place where I was one of two Jews in my elementary school. Forget about Jerusalem, I was sure then, as I am now, that New York was pretty much the Promised Land, or at least the Jewish capital of the world.

When we finally made our way to the aisle with the applesauce, it was cleaned out. I learned in that moment that there are enough Jews in Berkeley to buy all the applesauce at the bowl. Not enough to make a dent in Manhattan’s population, but still. I think we had to go to Safeway to get it.

I can’t say it was the bowl that made me move to the Bay Area six years ago, especially since I moved to San Francisco first. Besides, my consciousness about food was only then developing. My attending culinary school was the idea I had rejected as a teenager, and had never reconsidered. Yet.

Even when I moved to the East Bay, it took me awhile before I shopped there regularly. When I was growing up in Southern California, Trader Joe’s was a huge presence, and the fact that they have a decent selection of organic products – not to mention the cheap wine – still brings me there on a regular basis. Nearly 10 years I survived in New York without Trader Joe’s, and then six years after I left, it dared to open several blocks away from my last apartment. Go figure.

Still, there is nothing like the bowl. Now that I have it almost to myself on Tuesday mornings, I can’t believe I ever shopped anywhere else. Come visit the Bay Area, and maybe I’ll take you to Muir Woods. If you insist, I’ll take you to the Golden Gate Bridge. But don’t even think about leaving here without a trip with me to the grocery store.