Berkeley, California

Though a fairly small city, the scope and influence of Berkeley's restaurant scene are positively outsized.

California Cuisine started here, after all. The effects of Chez Panisse and chef/owner Alice Waters' fresh food revolution are still being felt as far as Paris (where she has been asked to set up a restaurant at the Louvre). The East Bay's other top-flight "white tablecloth" restaurants are very much in Waters' vanguard.

Whether elegant or casual, it is simply impossible to find a more international selection of restaurants than in Berkeley. Within a few blocks of campus, one can dine inexpensively on the cuisine of at least 50 different countries. And, should the culinary climate inspire one to head to the kitchen, a range of cooking and specialty food stores stands ready to meet the most epicurean requirements.

U.C. Campus

35,000 hungry Cal students roaming the streets! It is not surprising that restaurants in the vicinity of the U.C. Berkeley campus tend to emphasize the quick and inexpensive. Certainly, burger and pizza joints can be found in abundance. This being Berkeley, however, it is just as easy to find Korean, Mediterranean or Ethiopian fare served with some flair and imagination.

Campus visitors may want to patronize one of the many food carts that set up shop on the sidewalk along Bancroft Street. Falafel, Asian noodle dishes, smoothies and the like make for tasty and quick snarfing on Sproul Plaza. Along Telegraph Avenue and the streets off it, Blondie's Pizza, Top Dog and Bongo Burger jostle with Asian eateries beyond number in an ethnic struggle over the student dollar. Smart Alec's and Cafe Intermezzo fill the bill for soups, salads and monster sandwiches. For the quintessential hippie/radical flashback, duck into La Mediterranee, order an espresso, and watch the show. A smaller restaurant row of almost identical composition can be found on the other side of campus at the corner of Hearst and Euclid streets.

Downtown

Similar choices await the diner heading west from campus along Addison Street, Central or University Avenues. The ambiance here edges up incrementally over Telegraph Avenue (perhaps due to the absence of sidewalk squatters). On bustling Center Street, La Cascada serves up a zesty gourmet twist on burritos and throws in a juice bar.

There is more of the same as one heads on to Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley's downtown. Noodle houses and Starbucks' are ideally suited to the movie crowd (more than 20 screens distributed within four blocks) that surges through the district at night. The brick garden court of the Jupiter brew pub attracts sun worshipers in the day and music lovers at night.

Pasand, Viceroy and India Palace, all found within blocks of each other downtown, only hint at Berkeley's surplus of Indian restaurants and chaat houses.

Berkeley's culinary eclecticism is carried west by the main artery of University Avenue. Long Life Vegi House, Au Coquelet, and the mellifluous Plearn Thai Restaurant all offer satisfying if casual sit-down meals.

West Berkeley & Fourth Street

Below Sacramento Street, one enters the commercial center of Indian Berkeley, and finds among the sari stores a number of Indian restaurants like Rice N Spice, all with a $7.99 lunch buffet. Chaat, which means snacks, more or less, in Hindi, is becoming a hot trend among world foodies here. Hence the long noon-hour lines at Vik's Chaat House, a big blue warehouse at 724 Allston Way around the corner from lower University Avenue, (try the Masala Dosas, served only on weekends). A few blocks down from University on San Pablo is Breads of India, whose inventive cuisine and lack of table space at dinner make for long lines in the cold outside.

Skirting the freeway ramp at the end of University Avenue and turning right, one comes to Fourth Street, with its yuppily bustling new restaurants and shops. Standing at the corner of University, however, is the redoubt of Spenger's Fish Grotto, a Berkeley tradition that has served up shark steak and other no-nonsense seafood standbys since the 1930s. More of the moment is the Asian-fusion spot O Chame in the heart of commercial Fourth Street. Nearby Cafe Rouge serves a continental/Californian menu in a casually glamorous setting. Bette's Ocean View Diner, not open for dinner, does breakfast and lunch—sit-down or take out—all week. It is an almost prohibitively popular weekend brunch spot.

Elmwood

The Elmwood Shopping District's mighty little commercial district, hugging the intersection of College and Ashby avenues, sports more good restaurants than many American cities. Italian and Chinese cuisine is particularly well represented here: there are three Chinese restaurants in the space of about a block—innovative and popular Shen Hua drawing the biggest crowds—and Italy holds its own with Trattoria La Siciliana and stylish deli A.G. Ferrari.

Other culinary traditions have their say in the Elmwood, too. Filippo's is a cozy and inexpensive Italian restaurant with live musical entertainment. Next door is the always crowded La Mediterranee. The hungry movie-goer late for the 7p show at the Elmwood Cinema can get a tasty burrito in about 45 seconds across the street at Gordo's.

North Berkeley

Chez Panisse, that landmark of contemporary American cuisine, looks regally out over North Shattuck and beyond to Solano Avenue. More and more nearby restaurants have been sharing its culinary glory, however. Besides Chez Panisse (two restaurants in one: Chez Panisse Upstairs and the more expensive, prix-fixe Chez Panisse Downstairs), there is Cesar next door, serving up tapas with a Californian accent; and Kirala, felt by many to be the best Japanese restaurant in the Bay Area. Quirky and wildly popular Cha Am is a first choice for Thai. Around the corner on Rose Street, the vegetarian potstickers and sweet and sour fried walnuts have a devoted following at humble Vegi Food China.

Among the many dining choices on Solano Avenue (a seemingly endless stretch of restaurants) are standouts like Rivoli —its courtyard is a favorite on late summer evenings. Nearby, on Gilman, Lalime's treatment of the California-Mediterranean theme rivals that of Chez Panisse, and Pyramid Brewery & Alehouse is a popular pub with a tradition of outdoor summer cinema.

The spectrum of unfused Asian foods is well represented on Solano, too. Ajanta, a creative departure from usual Indian fare, Thai stalwart Sweet Basil, and Muyiki are among the favorites. A taste of Italy, meanwhile, can be had quickly and inexpensively at Filippo's and Zachary's Chicago Pizza.

Faster and cheaper still, the Cal-Mex cuisine of Cactus Taqueria is but one of dozens of options for diners on the go.

Any large college town worth its salt features a constant variety of things to see, hear and do. Mix in the particular multicultural soup that is Berkeley, and you have a world-class entertainment scene, both on campus and off. Failing all else, of course, San Francisco's right across the Bay. But trust us, the traffic is a killer on Saturday night.

Sports

A founding member of the Pac 10 Conference, Cal fronts teams in every major sport played at the American collegiate level, or at least those sports not requiring the presence of ice or snow.

The California Golden Bears, as its teams are known, play football at Memorial Stadium and basketball at the Haas Pavilion. Pac 10 competition includes big names like UCLA, Washington, Arizona, USC and, of course, hated rival Stanford.

During Cal's long history, just about every team has won an NCAA championship at one time or another (or in the case of the football Bears, the Rose Bowl). There is one sport, however, in which Cal has always been dominant: water polo.

The East Bay is also home to several professional sports teams, including the Oakland Raiders football team, the Golden State Warriors for basketball, and the Oakland Athletics for baseball. All three teams play in the same sports complex, where you will find the McAffee Colisseum as well as the Oracle Arena.

Music

The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra is one of the best-kept musical secrets in the country. Conducted by rising star Kent Nagano, the Berkeley Symphony puts on an adventurous program of works by contemporary composers like John Adams, leavened with Brahms, Beethoven and Bruckner. Nagano's reputation attracts the highest echelon of soloists. The Berkeley Symphony performs at Zellerbach Auditorium and Hertz Halls on the U.C. campus, as well as in San Francisco. Further information can be found at www.berkeleysymphony.org/.

The Berkeley-based Chamber Symphony of the West performs a classical and baroque repertoire, often in conjunction with the San Francisco Choral Society and other area choruses, at the First Congregational Church on Channing Way. The First Congregational Church also regularly plays host to other top-notch regional ensembles, like San Francisco's noted Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Sonos Handbell Ensemble.

Emeryville's Kimball's East features soul-jazz, R&B and blues legends like Jimmy McGriff and Nancy Wilson. The Ivy Room (in Albany, just to the north of Berkeley) also books great local blues talent. Downtown Berkeley jazz clubs Jazzschool and Jupiter pack 'em in on weekends. Jupiter, with its garden court, is particularly popular on summer and late autumn evenings.

Berkeley has long been a mecca for folkies. In West Berkeley, The Starry Plough and the Freight and Salvage clubs feature acoustic talent from around the country. Nearby on San Pablo Avenue, Ashkenaz goes a bit more in the folk-rock direction, while Blake's On Telegraph offers the full range of rock, jazz-rock and folk-rock. La Pena Cultural Center books an eclectic mix of Latin rhythms, blues, and uncategorizable but always danceable sounds from all over the world.

Rock headliners play the Berkeley Community Theatre or the Greek Theater.

Theater

Many critics consider the award-winning Berkeley Repertory Theatre (or Berkeley Rep, as it is commonly known) to be the finest theater company in the Bay Area (some feel it is the best outside of New York). Since 1968, the Rep has been rewarding audiences with challenging, contemporary drama, and has become possibly the largest performing arts organization in Northern California.

Other, smaller ensembles round out the Berkeley theater scene: in North Berkeley, the Actors Ensemble Theater plays at the Live Oak Park Theater. The Aurora Theater's polished productions regularly sell out the Aurora Theater in the dowdy Berkeley City Club—the Aurora plans to move to a new theater of their own at 2071 Addison, near the Berkeley Rep, for the 2001-2002 season; newcomer TheaterFirst's recent stagings of Death and the Maiden and The Ladies of the Camellias have drawn good notices at the Julia Morgan Theater in the Elmwood; and the scrappy Shotgun Players have moved their high-energy repertoire out of cramped LaVal's Pizza and into new digs at Adeline and Alcatraz. U.C. Berkeley's Dramatic Arts Department stages student productions every year, as well.

Film

The Pacific Film Archive at the Berkeley Art Museum on Bancroft puts together often obscure but consistently riveting programs at their 234-seat theater, and has a great little cafe.

Berkeley is one city where downtown movie houses are thriving. The Fine Arts, the Landmark's Act One and Two, the California, the Shattuck, and the UA Berkeley form a four-block, 25-screen phalanx, but it's still not enough to keep shows from selling out. Quick and fun downtown eateries make it a great scene for a cheap date.

The Oaks Theatre and the Landmark Albany Twin are reliable old favorites for North Berkeleyites. The Elmwood Cinema has slightly cheaper tickets for last month's best movies and is located within a stone's throw of a dozen restaurants. The Dolbyized neo-Deco Emery Bay Stadium 10 , right off the freeway in nearby Emeryville, provides movie-goers with a mulitplex of dinner choices in the Emery Bay Market's international food court.

For a more unique cinema-going experience, the Parkway Speakeasy Theater in Oakland, and its sister theater, the Cerrito Speakeasy Theater offer up a selection of pizzas, salads and sandwiches along with draft beer as well as comfortable couches to watch your movie from, not to mention ticket prices being half what they are anywhere else. However, don't try to bring the kids along, these theaters are for ages 21+ (except certain showtimes, check website for details).