The coolest kids on the farm

This piece was featured first on Oct 16 for One Good Thing, a weekly newsletter brought to you by Alexis Madrigal about his take on Bay Area art, culture & nature. Subscribe today.

Let me tell you about Fig Leaf Gardens, the kind of perfectly rambling urban farm I’d forgotten could exist. And let me wrap it gently in a story about creative culinary collaboration.

Fig Leaf Gardens sits over on 39th in East Oakland. When my family arrived on Sunday, we were beat from a weekend of activities. We’d done a pop up with Good Luck Bakery, and their team, Blair Cardigan Smith and Kelci Moran, invited us out for a party.

We had no idea what we were walking into. A small sign pointed us past a little house into the back. As the hosts greeted us, we looked down an impossibly long lot filled with trees and flowers and plants. A slight haze of smoke from an outdoor pit lent the scene the gauziness of a dream. People lay about on blankets, tucked onto benches, and under a massive fig tree, chatting and eating. Face paint. An icy tub filled with bottles from local wineries Oest, Hammerling, and Broc. Cold brew and beautiful tea from Song Tea & Ceramics. Children holding chickens.

Utopia, basically.

The party celebrated the prototype-release of a new magazine edited by Corrina Hui, Cold Summers, which documents a year in the life of this crew of fascinating chefs doing pop-ups across the Bay Area. After a hard-charging first career trying to imagine a different educational system, Hui found herself catalyzing and weaving together this deepening collaboration of cooks.

We got to the food table. My god. Duck yakitori with fig. Beef shank with homemade tortillas. Salmon roasted in leaves. Tiny chimichurris stuffed with kimchi, corn, delicata, and lentils. By the time we left, I’m pretty sure my daughter had eaten five of the mini chimis, and that was the right choice. It was a sliding-scale, donation-based event, and we gave with joy (and to cover those mini chimis).

The concentration of culinary talent, incredibly good vibes, and generosity was overpowering. Chef Oscar Molinar had built the fire pit, which he was working with extra charisma in a cowboy hat and perfect white work shirt. Good Luck had made these passionfruit ice cream sandwiches that I will dream about for the rest of my life. My older kid loved the quince linzer cookies from Patty Lu of Year of the Snake. There was honeycomb! From the Fig Leaf Gardens hives!

And as we ate, we wandered the garden, which inspired key elements of the party menu. Beyond all the impressive vegetables, I was struck by these marigold-orange cosmos, which seemed to glow from within, and of course, the fig tree, which was just perfect for climbing kids.

Looking at the zine and the scene, Bay Area chefs have something figured out about how creative work should be. They work together. They support each other. I’m sure they have their conflicts, but they are building an incredible, resilient network in this economy, in these times. And with help from Corrina to organize and dream together, now there is this incredible document of film photographs and reflections by a slough of chefs and space-holders on building this ecosystem, partly hidden and wildly potent. These are their own words and thoughts on what they creating.

And what better place to celebrate such an effort than the unlikely, magical Fig Leaf Gardens, which is, itself, a collaboration between chef Britten, gardener/educator Manny, and designer Max. You can visit, too, I hear, when they do events and workshops.

We’re gonna get through all this by building beauty and deliciousness and friendships, appreciating the rhythms and bounty of the more-than-human world.

This party was many good things, and it was that one good thing.

Here’s a little cheat sheet of the chefs/pop-ups who you are going to want to follow immediately: The mini chimis were imagined by Michael de la Torre of Xulo. The duck yakitori was from Carlo Espinas of Linger Longer. So many others helped throw the party, too, or were featured in the magazine: the Good Luck Bakery folks, Patty from Year of the Snake, Song Tea and Ceramics, Claudia Bistrain and Nayelí Ramirez-Perez of Manitas, Okkon Pop Up, and Good Hot in Richmond.

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Alexis Madrigal, Co-Host, Forum