Mardi Gras is celebrated on the day before Ash Wednesday. It’s a wild party celebrated all over the world although we take our inspiration from New Orleans where it involves lots of costumes, parades and music. The cake was introduced to New Orleans in 1870 by the French and honors the 3 kings. The colors were created by the Krewe de Rex in 1872. Purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power. The tradition of the baby originally symbolizes the baby Jesus but also luck and prosperity. The tradition is to hide the baby in the cake and whoever finds it is crowned king or queen for the evening, but also is responsible for providing next year’s cake. We have the baby on the outside so that the person who buys the cake can hide it if they choose to.
Our king cakes are a brioche dough filled with a lemony cream cheese and decorated with colorful sugar icing.
Our king cakes are a brioche dough filled with a lemony cream cheese and decorated with colorful sugar icing.
The king cake will be available on Fat Tuesday, February 25th, starting at 8 am. Place your orders by noon on Friday, February 21st. Available at the bakery until supplies last.
Wine and cheese? NORMAL. Cheese and crackers? BEEN THERE DONE THAT.
East meets/versus west in this unusual pairing event. Learn about a selection of traditional Japanese food and why they make the perfect, albeit unlikely pairing for your favorite cheeses.
The goal is to broaden people’s perspectives of what works in pairing with cheeses outside of the typical European contexts of things like membrillo, fig preserves, mostarda, wine and so on.
Part of our bigger goal here is to bring Asian ingredients and foodways into focus in the so-called “specialty market” and out of the “ethnic market” calling attention to some similarities in production (lactic fermentation, curing, aging, etc) with the cheese category. Even where these ingredients are merchandised in the same place as European “specialty” foods, people consider the “Asian section” as some other entity within the market, it’s own world so to speak. We’d like to encourage crossover. This is definitely done on the menus of Bay Area restaurants so why not at home, too?
Ticket price includes Japanese food and sake + cheese pairing finished off with handmade mochi + green tea.
Mandatory: be curious and ready to have your mind blown. We offer two seatings, 11:00 am and 1:00pm. Buy tickets for JAPAN+CHEESE