San Francisco Chronicle Food & Home - Spoken Edition

In the days before and after the Mantle family clambake, spring showers drenched the landscape. Cursing them seemed almost blasphemous, what with the constant threat of drought and the May super bloom at stake. But on the day of the event — a get-together inspired by the Sierra Nevada campouts of chef Ethan Mantle’s youth — blue skies and a summery warmth prevailed.

Turmeric seems to be all the rage these days in food and especially in a new generation of lattes and cocktails extolling its miraculous healing powers. Back in India, the closest I had come to drinking turmeric was in a flavored milk concoction. Even though it was sweetened with a little honey or sugar, I never liked it.

On April 30, 1975, Tuan Hua and his family got on a boat and left Vietnam, their homeland. Saigon had just fallen, officially ending the Vietnam War. The new Communist regime did not favor the ethnic Chinese population, and the Hua family was Teochew, Han Chinese from eastern Guangdong province. Ethnic Chinese dissent is a tale unfortunately familiar to Chinese immigrants across Southeast Asia, including my own family.

Hokkaido-based pastry chain Bake Cheese Tart, which has over 40 shops throughout Japan and Asia, has opened its first U.S. outpost on the bottom level of San Francisco’s Westfield Centre. Though it’s only a few days old, it’s already drawing long lines, with more than 50 people — both eager fans and curious passersby — waiting upwards of 30 minutes for one of the shop’s $3.50 tarts.

In 1965, Willie Mays had a .317 batting average, hit 52 home runs, won the National League MVP award, and made a 6-year-old San Rafael kid named Dave Martin fall in love with the San Francisco Giants. “The first game I ever went to that year, I got to see Willie Mays play for the first time. I remember just watching him run across the field,“ Martin said. “The grass was so green. It looked perfect. Honestly, I was pretty much hooked after that.

Oakland’s favorite son, Marshawn Lynch, appears to be quietly putting the pieces in place for his forthcoming Emeryville restaurant and lounge, Rob Ben’s, despite there months of silence surrounding the project. After posting last year about hiring waitstaff, experienced cooks and bartenders to work at the restaurant, the restaurant has apparently kicked up the hiring pace over the last few months.

When Gail Wilson’s husband Bob Kantor died unexpectedly in 2013, she had to quickly figure out what to do with Memphis Minnie’s, the San Francisco barbecue restaurant they had co-owned since 2000 in Lower Haight. “It was Bob’s baby, not mine. He built that place from the ground up,” she said. “He just loved being there. He loved feeding people. And I loved it because of him.

This is Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer’s column in which he revisits a restaurant. Here, he updates his previous review of Black Cat in San Francisco. Moving from the light-filled bar at Black Cat, with its storefront windows overlooking the urban scene on Eddy Street, to the downstairs jazz club and restaurant is like entering a dimly lit cave.

Two men pose for a photograph in front of a Hello Kitty Cafe van parked during the annual Cherry Blossom festival in Japantown in San Francisco, California in 2016. Two men pose for a photograph in front of a Hello Kitty Cafe van parked during the annual Cherry Blossom festival in Japantown in San Francisco, California in 2016. Lynn Lauger (left) and Rielle Torres snap selfies with the Hello Kitty Cafe food truck during the 48th annual Cherry Blossom Festival at Japantown in San Francisco, Calif.

Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood has quickly become a destination for day drinking beer-lovers and late night barflies over the last few years as new businesses flock to Telegraph Avenue and 40th Street. The latest addition to the scene is a familiar one (especially for local Golden State Warriors fans) — Halftime Sports Bar. If all goes as planned, the bar will take over the former home of Urbano Latino, the pan-Latin spot once located at 4307 Telegraph Ave.

Nigella Lawson first tasted Turkish eggs at the Providores, a global fusion restaurant in London. The combination of poached eggs served atop warm, lightly whipped garlicky yogurt and drizzled with chile-infused brown butter so enamored the cookbook author and television personality that she decided to create her own version. It’s one of many recipes geared toward home cooks in her latest cookbook, “At My Table” (Flatiron Books; $35).

Chen-Chen Huo, co-founder of the Marina’s popular mac and cheese shop Mac’d, doesn’t mind admitting he’s learning on the fly when it comes to running the restaurant. Huo opened the quirky, Instagram-friendly operation last summer with then business partner Jason Brown and it quickly became a runaway hit.

Now that you know about finger limes, here’s where to get them My April 8 column on finger limes created quite the stir, making it one of the most popular columns in my 12 years writing for The Chronicle. I received letters from readers all over the Bay Area captivated by this “caviar” of the citrus world.

Stock in Trade (2036 Lombard St.), the Marina’s late night spot for neighborhood bar hoppers in need of one last drink, some food and maybe even a boozy bocce ball session or two before heading home, will close its doors at the end of the month, ending a six-year run on Lombard Street. The Stock in Trade team, via Instagram, said the business was been sold, though they didn’t dive into specifics when it came to the new owners.

Following the sudden closure of Elmwood Cafe in Berkeley on Friday, the coffee shop’s owner Michael Pearce issued a statement admitting his business failed in its attempts to rectify a 2015 incident of racial bias and he planned to relinquish ownership of the location. In the statement, Pearce didn’t directly say whether the shop’s closure was a result of the backlash against his business, but he did mention the Bell incident.