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BERKELEY’s BEST ●Restaurants ●Picnic Pick-Ups
The Cheese Board Collective 1504 Shattuck Ave./Vine St.; Gourmet Ghetto. One of the best cheese boutiques in the world, this shop has the largest cheese selection in the West. Because it is a collective, everyone is trained and knowledgeable about all their products. A spectacular selection of breads and pastries--including several types of scone, a fluffy, puffy pita, and a chewy gingerbread cookie—are also baked each day. I also like the house-made hummus and the green castel vetrano olives available in the cold case, and the “Killer Granola” is pretty good, too, but not as good as my own homemade “World’s Best Granola.”
Their next-door Pizzeria prepares one pizza every day--always vegetarian--and customers wait in a usually long line to purchase a slice to eat on the run or a box to take home. Live music often helps pass the time. However, not everyone likes every pizza every day. As San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik reported via reader David Miller in the Public Eavesdropping portion of her column, a teenage boy complained to his mother, describing the pizza of the day, "It has pine nuts, lemon, peaches and blue cheese. I hate pine nuts and blue cheese, and I don't like fruit on my pizza."
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