Quote:
Originally Posted by jg6544
Berkeley remains one of the best food towns in the country. I think the only reasons it doesn't get talked about as much is that Chez Panisse has been cloned all over the country and there are so many excellent restaurants all over northern CA, Berkeley doesn't stand out the way it once did. Still a great place to find a meal, though.
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Part of it is there are now great restaurants all over America. The other piece is that back then a lot of the US's up and coming kitchen talent wanted to cook in the Bay Area to learn. Now you can learn just as well in about two dozen cities and the Bay Area is dauntingly expensive for young cooks so the pipeline that was delivering much of America's young cooking talent to northern California has shut down. Back when people were making culinary pilgrimages to the Bay Area (or New York) the food in most of the rest of the country was terrible. What we have had is a national leveling out of quality.