Restaurants We Shouldn’t Forget
Last issue of the Sun I offered a memory of restaurants that some of us knew and miss to this day. Most of us who are able to go out for meals often narrow our selection down to two or three restaurants that we frequent, and forget about all the others, while many people have different favorites.
Here are some of them we should remember, although maybe some don’t, and they’re all very much still open. Be sure to call to check their hours. Times are varying these days.
Scandia
Marcela Barreneche’s bakery serves sandwiches, soups, and salads at lunch and the best variety and prices for breakfast pastries, cookies, cakes, with fabulous special events cakes, such as Princess Cakes and coffees. 500 W. Napa St. to the right of Sonoma Market. (707) 938-5820.
Mamma Tanino’s
Great Italian food crafted by Gaetano Patrinostro, including chicken or veal scaloppini, eggplant and pastas. In the corner of the shopping center beyond Scandia. (707) 933-8866.
La Salette
Manuel Azevedo offers many of his family recipes from Portugal, the Azores, and Brazil, from oven roasted octopus, sardines and cod cakes, to a pulled pork sandwich, fish & chips with piri piri fries, salads, bacalhau, to Portuguese fisherman’s stew, pork & clams. Lots of sides and desserts along with ports and Madeiras. 452 First St. East in the Mercado (park in back), Sonoma. (707) 938-1927.
Plaza Bistro
Martin Chavez has improved the food tremendously at his Plaza Bistro, which has great Plaza views if you get a window table. Now he serves a good chicken picatta, steaks, pastas, salads and interesting fried calamari filets, plus burgers and more. Full bar. 420 First St. East, Sonoma. (707) 996-4466.
Verano Café
While it is a new restaurant at an old location, and is partly out-of-sight, out-of-mind, some people might not know about it. Recently I had a beautiful breakfast there at lunchtime, which is unusual in Sonoma. Beronica Peres’ and Carlos Rubio’s dinner menu has been praised widely and features housemade pastas such as mushroom or scallops fettuccini, prawn or seafood spaghetti, plus sole meunière, coq au vin, boeuf Bourguignon, duck confit, pork chops, salads and prawn polenta. And even French onion soup, Dover sole ceviche, bone marrow and fried calamari as appetizers. Good local wines and French Bordeaux. Just north of McDonald’s, 18976 Hwy. 12, Sonoma. (707) 931-6837.
Jacob’s Restaurant
Also owned by Beronica Peres and Carlos Rubio, who worked at Maya, and with the downtown La Hacienda, and now have two restaurants. Jacob’s, next to Train Town, serves pizzas, lobster or cheese ravioli, stuffed or eggplant Parmigiana, sautéed prawns, sandwiches, pizza, salads and offers family-style combo options. 1266 Broadway, Sonoma. (707) 996-5024.
An apology and correction
Something I forgot and thus made a mistake, with huge apologies to Dan Noreen, former proprietor of The Wine Exchange. Here is his correction/addition as sent to me.
“When Food City closed it was not followed by a massage parlor, it was in fact followed by The Wine Exchange of Sonoma, a premium wine, beer and gourmet food store. The Wine Exchange existed for 21 years in the former Food City space, from 1989 to 2010. It was extremely popular with tourists and our local clientele who particularly enjoyed our unique tasting bar. I was the original manager of The Wine Exchange and eventually became the sole proprietor. From its inception, The Wine Exchange was a pillar of support for our Sonoma Valley wineries, breweries and artisan food producers. The massage parlor came afterwards.”
Chemical warnings
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally banned the chemical Red Dye No. 3 in food, beverages, and drugs, a mere 30 years after it was proven that the substance caused cancer in male laboratory rats, according to the New York Times.
Red Dye No. 3 is found in lipstick, many candies (including Peeps), and even in some packaged mashed potatoes.
Also last week, the F.D.A. warned about what are called “forever chemicals” made of “sewage sludge” used in crop fertilizers and are showing up in new sewage and waste water. That means that they have filtered through our bodies after we eat some foods that have been grown or produced with those fertilizers.
Such sludge apparently can contain polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances used to make things like nonstick cookware and stain-resistant carpeting. Many products containing PFAS are said to possibly cause cancer. Some of it is used as fertilizer on farms, leading to contamination of soil, groundwater, crops and livestock, again according to the New York Times.
As you might remember, I have long questioned the “newish” and intense allergies to peanuts in this country, and have questioned whether these sometimes extreme allergies are due to the peanuts themselves or to what is put into the soil on peanut farms.
Polio, millions of others, and me
The first I remember of polio in my life was getting kicked out of ballet class in Berkeley because I just couldn’t do it right, even hanging onto the ballet bar at about age six.
Next came a year in bed with my mother tying hot water bottles to my legs with towels to help my pain. She also brought me a breadboard to use to color and do schoolwork that she picked up at Kensington School for me every day. Breadboards used to be built into kitchens and tucked into a slot under the kitchen counter.
Then there were sporadic emergency trips to our family doctors’ offices, and to the pharmacy for meds and free Tootsie Rolls. Twin doctors Jay and Bob Lewis even let my mother take me to their homes in Berkeley on weekends if I had an upturn in symptoms.
Maybe swimming would help. It took me a year to even put my head in the water at the Berkeley City Club. Eventually I joined the swim team and held some records in breaststroke. Our coach, the now-late Laurabelle Bookstaver, paced up and down the pool of the Julia Morgan-designed club yelling at me to kick harder until I cried when my head was in the water so they couldn’t see my tears. My brain told my legs to move, I thought I was kicking harder, but my legs weren’t moving at all.
When I was in middle school, my parents bought a house in Lafayette with a 75-foot long swimming pool, ostensibly for me to train at home.
One Monday after a swim meet my mother took me to the Drs. Lewis’ office. They called in the Cal football doctors to come to their office for some reason.
Three days before I was to leave for the Olympic trials the assembled five doctors agreed that I had to stop swimming competitively immediately – I couldn’t even go to practice later that day.
In high school I loved to play tennis, but was told I could not compete for medical reasons, which probably was a good move for the team’s overall scores. I seemed to be sick again. It turned out it was polio – again.
Fast forward to adulthood when people started to ask me why I limped, including Helen Fernandez, Marie Linne and their “Streetwalkers” walking group. I didn’t know I was limping. It got worse. More pain and pain memories. All that would help was my husband, Gerald Hill, rubbing my legs and tying hot water bottles onto my legs with towels. Sound familiar? Right leg first. Orthotics. Then one leg brace. Then two.
And now I am officially handicapped by Post-Polio Syndrome, according the State of California. But I am one of the lucky ones. Polio did not affect my lungs.
As my contribution to research on Post Polio Syndrome, I suggested to expert medical people two ideas: that Post Polio most likely affects those of us who had polio similarly to how it invaded us originally, meaning for me in my legs and hands, others with much more life-threatening attacks to their lungs, especially those still living who had been in horrendously life limiting (but expanding) iron lungs.
My second contribution was a memory from my Biology 101 class at U.C. Berkeley. I insisted to current researchers that nerves (even destroyed by polio) could regenerate. It turns out that our bodies do put out new nerves post polio, but they are finer and weaker than the originals and give out quicker, leading to Post Polio Syndrome.
Polio is not gone, despite the efforts and wishes of some governments and some non-profit organizations. It has been called “a dying diagnosis,” because for several years there had not been significant new cases, and those who had polio at its worst in the U.S. had aged out, meaning died.
Polio vaccines have saved millions of lives and kept many victims from crippling outcomes. Remember the recent case in Gaza, where one child was diagnosed with the polio virus, and where the World Health Organization and others swooped in and eventually gave two polio vaccinations to most young children there, with a result of no new cases. These vaccinations work.
Vaccinations among children under age two have declined 7.8 percent in the last couple of years, which have led to increases in measles, polio, and 13 other diseases around the world, according to a Center for Disease Control report from Sept. 26, 2024. Polio virus has been found in wastewater (sewage) both in the United States and other countries. Imagine where it comes from.
Polio Quebec reports polio currently in 18 countries with Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan leading the pack. Some cases have been caused by “vaccinations” using outdated or mutated vaccines, and many are “wild” cases, meaning from the virus itself. In Afghanistan, the Taliban recently said they would close all NGOs, including those distributing vaccinations, if women didn’t wear their scarves correctly. When George W. Bush was president, many people in Afghanistan and Pakistan declined vaccinations because they believed President Bush was trying to render them impotent.
I tell this very personal story because of Donald J. Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. I have met RFK Jr. twice and, in fact, interviewed and wrote about him for the Sun’s previous FineLife magazine. This Kennedy, who claims to have had a “brain worm,” used heroin to improve his study habits, and admits he dumped a dead bear in New York’s Central Park, has said that no vaccines are safe. Maybe he should say no vaccines are 100-percent safe.
Last weekend, the New York Times said in a front page story that RFK, Jr. even petitioned the FDA to revoke their authorization of all COVID vaccinations in 2021. Think about it.
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