From snout to tail, from root to shoot, from toes to nose, Revival Bar + Kitchen is going whole-hog on local, sustainable, farm-to-table cuisine.
Why whole-hog? Why not just cherry-pick ingredients labeled “organic” or “hormone-free” and call it a day? Because at Revival, we recognize that those labels don’t tell the whole story, and we like stories. So we cultivate relationships with producers – farmers, ranchers, coffee-roasters and winemakers – who are passionate about their products and have a good sense of how they fit in the community. Producers like Allison Evanow of Square One Organic Spirits, whose company is female majority-owned, who knows that being a social activist can go hand in hand with an active social life, and whose organic American rye vodka our bar coolly complements with fresh Armenian cucumber.
Or like Long & Bailey Farms, where we get our whole hogs. And yes, you’ll find most all of the whole hog – from trotters to pickled pig ears – on our menu any given week.
When it comes down to it, what we’re doing is conservative: we’ve got women in the kitchen making fruit conserves and pickling peppers, just like our grandmothers did, preserving seasonal produce and culinary traditions at the same time. But in an age of microwaves and mass production, making your own conserves, brightened with local Meyer lemon and slow-cooked to perfection, is revolutionary. And with a female owner, female pastry chef, and female chef de cuisine, sourcing ingredients from Farmer Jane and going against the grain of macho-male chef culture, we’re also going against the grain-fed, high-fructose-hyped industrial agricultural machine. We’re coming full circle, re-implementing the culinary techniques that make food last longer, taste better, and really revive us, in body and in soul. That’s revolutionary.
Downtown Berkeley, including the 1901 building Revival now calls home, used to be a vibrant cultural center. It can be that way again. It just might take a little culturing – the revelation in a bite of house-cured bacon, the piquancy of a pickled piquillo pepper – to get that revival revved up. There’s nothing like good old-fashioned fermentation to get a community in a ferment. And by complementing our menu with biodynamic wines from innovative local vintners and a seasonal selection of cocktails (traditional, original, and traditional-with-a-twist), we’re all about showing just how exciting sustainability can be. So come on in, and let us shake up a Violet Femme and serve you a restorative repast, like skewered beef heart with celery-heart salsa verde. We hope you’ll feel revived. And we mean that whole-heartedly.
