Food and Beverage: “Hella Hungry in the Bay” by Alan Chazaro
When I think of food, I don’t necessarily think of literal ingredients. Instead, I imagine everything that goes into community nourishment — the cultures, histories, lessons, family lineages, beloved recipes, social migrations, and geographical influences, each a form of resistance. How it pressure cooks everyday life into a more flavorful sustenance — a livelihood and source of survival.
As a Bay Area food writer, I pride myself in capturing that local magic in such a diverse, vibrant, and fearlessly innovative culinary scene. The people. The struggle. Its imprints. How a group of high school kids line up at the local taqueria after class to buy a Hot Cheetos-stuffed burrito and two-pound milkshake. How a homegrown Filipino food maker carves magic from the bones of a city by renting a kitchen in the back of a Korean American-owned restaurant — with a secret mahjong room accessible only through a secret passageway behind the steam and stink of a day’s work. These are wordly discoveries to be found in each spoonful, in each bowl, mixed with flour and organic strawberry marmalade to make a Mexican pastel inside a shared bakery.
Below are just a few of my favorite photos of some of the food makers and food spaces I have the privilege of frequenting every day — each interaction its own kind of nutrient for my soul. If you’d like to explore more about Northern California’s food galaxy, check out my regular KQED Arts and Culture column, ¡Hella Hungry!, and/or listen to some of the regional food makers here. Peace, and keep eating around the world in more ways than one.
About Alan Chazaro
Alan Chazaro is the author of This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge (Ghost City Press, 2021). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and a former Lawrence Ferlinghetti Poetry Fellow at the University of San Francisco. He's currently an Arts and Culture staff writer at KQED and is reachable at @alan_chazaro on socials.