AlaMar’s Nelson German will be on the next ‘Top Chef’
East Bay “Top Chef” fans have a local chef to root for when the 18th season of the Bravo cooking competition series premieres on April 1. Oakland chef Nelson German, who owns popular brunch spot alaMar Kitchen & Bar and Afro-Latino cocktail bar Sobre Mesa, will duke it out against 14 other chefs from around the country.
The latest season was filmed last year in Portland, Oregon, in the midst of the pandemic, and while the “Top Chef” Season 18 trailer shows mostly maskless chefs, hosts and guests as if it were any other year, some of the appearances and challenges speak to the times, including a Zoom appearance from Alice Waters and a competition where chefs work with Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen to feed front line hospital workers. German is the third Oakland-based chef to compete on the series, the others are Tanya Holland and Tu David Phu (Preeti Mistry, of Juhu Beach Club fame, lived in San Francisco whe
There’s no denying 2020 was a very difficult year, filled with fear and loneliness, anxiety and stress. But amid the gloom there were bright spots. There were enough of them, in fact, for us to launch a popup newsletter, Best of Times in the Worst of Times, that came out weekly from March to May, highlighting uplifting and good things happening in Berkeley.
The community rallied in a crisis. Residents chalked messages of encouragement on sidewalks, put teddy bears and rainbows in their windows, volunteered at food banks, organized neighborhood support groups and live music and singalongs in the streets to cheer each other up. Individuals and local businesses, as well as restaurants, joined forces to offer mutual aid to those most at risk of contracting COVID-19. Responding to market need and quarantine restrictions, many businesses pivoted and started offering pandemic-friendly goods and services.
Grassroots organization HelpBerkeley delivers meals during pandemic
Dana Holtzmann/Courtesy
This holiday season, HelpBerkeley aims to help combat food insecurity by delivering meals free of charge. The volunteer-run grassroots organization has been working through the pandemic to provide low-cost and free meals to seniors and at-risk citizens.
HelpBerkeley, a volunteer-run grassroots organization, has been working through the pandemic to provide low-cost and free meals to seniors and at-risk citizens.
To support people who are immunocompromised and individuals over the age of 60 impacted by the pandemic, HelpBerkeley partnered with local restaurants to collect, process and deliver two meals per person for $10 primarily across Berkeley, according to HelpBerkeley CEO Michel Thouati. This holiday season, it aims to help combat food insecurity by delivering meals free of charge.
David Blake, a volunteer delivery driver for HelpBerkeley, making the first of several scheduled stops dropping off food to various COVID-compromised Berkeley residents. Photo: Pete Rosos
At the outset of the pandemic in March, residents in Michel Thouati’s Berkeley Hills neighborhood would meet up while out on walks, exchanging information and asking after others in the area.
“We started noticing some people weren’t there,” Thouati told me in a Zoom call. Assuming their fellow neighbors were sick or self-isolating, Thouati and the others wondered how they were feeding themselves, particularly the vulnerable older folks. Realizing food insecurity for certain populations was potentially a widespread problem, they thought about how they could help. Together, the group came up with HelpBerkeley, a service to get affordable food to people isolating at home, particularly seniors.