Cafe Ohlone

A love song to Ohlone culture

Cafe Ohlone’s latest iteration, ‘oṭṭoy: A Collaboration Between Café Ohlone and the Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley, will open in August.

In the meantime, here is our vision of what will be a “love song to Ohlone culture”….

A gated entry to the open-air terrace opens into a lush, outdoor, curated culinary and educational experience in the form of three, unique areas that flow into one another.

A portal of light and shadows leads into the new Cafe Ohlone — Area One

The first area upon entry pays respect to our original Cafe Ohlone space at University Press Books, where diners entered into the bookstore without seeing the Cafe in the back, adding a layer of mystery and wonder to the experience as, like with a portal, guests were transported into a world reimagined. This first area offers suggestions of what will follow throughout the dining experience. After entering the gated entrance way off of Bancroft Avenue, diners will enter a scrim-covered, open-air shadow box framed by redwood. This shadow box will be illuminated by the light of the sun during the day and lit softly at night, displaying dramatic silhouettes of native plants dancing in the wind, altering shape and movement with the changing light. The plants will showcase our traditional East Bay landscape and traditional Ohlone foods, as well as subtly introduce Cafe Ohlone’s new, functional native plant gardens, generously curated in partnership with our friends at Oaktown Nursery. Diners will have their first view of one of the burlapped native gardens after walking along a transitional path from this first area; the gardens throughout Cafe Ohlone are full of aromatic and much-respected plants that will be made into teas and added to the plates of our meals. In this first space, diners will be checked in and directed to their seats.

Our voices are a part of the landscape — Cafe Ohlone’s singing trees

The sounds diners will hear upon entering Cafe Ohlone, amplifying as they reach the second and third areas, will come from native trees singing in Chochenyo language. In our old-time beliefs, still held close by our Ohlone people today, there was a time before humans existed when plants could speak. This dreamy belief inspired Cafe Ohlone’s singing trees: seven native trees will each have the voice of a living Chochenyo speaker from our Chochenyo language program. It will be so beautiful in action: an elder’s voice will begin to sing by themself — a familiar oldie, a ballad heard in our grandparents’ homes growing up; their beautiful, wise voice will be joined, one voice after another, with voices of different generations, until all are singing in unison, in harmony. Suddenly, all the trees will appear to be singing at once, saturating Cafe Ohlone with song in our enduring language. Then, each voice will drop off, one after another, until only a child is singing in the language — representing the next generation of Ohlone culture and those still to come. When the trees complete their song, the voices will shift to jokes and conversation in language — birdsongs of geese, flickers, blue jays, and red-winged blackbirds will serenade diners when the Chochenyo voices take a break. We acknowledge Meyer Sound for generously donating a wonderful sound system to us; recording for the singing trees is set to take place in January of 2022.

Diners will follow along a short, meandering path to arrive at the second Cafe Ohlone area, and the first of two dining areas. This area will feature two building-size, epic murals by the renowned California Indian artist Jean LaMarr (Northern Paiute/Pit River), who will paint these murals full of meaning and symbolism to our Ohlone community. Auntie Jean painted the prolific Ohlone Mural at Ohlone Park in Berkeley, a mural that touches the hearts of our people, in 1995. Along the other side of the courtyard, will be a dry creek made of Napa Basalt, interspersed with riparian plants, connecting the two dining areas. Winding paths through blossoming gardens throughout this second area will connect a series of dining tables, each handmade with locally and sustainably sourced redwood from our friends at Bay Area Redwood, with whom we developed a partnership during the pandemic. We worked with Bay Area Redwood and Terremoto to realize designs in the woodwork that are culturally specific for Cafe Ohlone.

Each dining table will have a seat made out of a redwood log, designed with comfort and sustainability in mind. Along the dry creek, there will be a series of Napa Basalt boulders as seats for two dining pods along two redwood table tops; the entire space will be speckled in abalone; traditional baskets will be shown with great respect. The signature burlapped native plant gardens will continue throughout this second area, and the air will be perfumed with Indian flowers and medicinal plants. The native plants will also separate dining areas for social distancing—aware of our desire, and need, throughout this pandemic to be together, yet apart.

A shellmound rises in a fragrant garden of abundance — Area Three

The lavish gardens will continue to expand with each area entered, growing more lush and intensely aromatic, culminating with the third area, centered around a long, communal redwood table for our Ohlone elders and single-party larger groups, as well as a series of redwood tables for smaller groups. The wall behind the family table will be trellised with native blackberry vines, alongside the dry creek that runs from area two; a redwood and tule ramada — a traditional shade shelter — will cover the communal table from above. Adornments of the clamshell and abalone hanging from the ramada’s roof will twinkle in the evening candlelight.

The largest of the singing trees will be in area three, as well as a storybook oak tree — also with a Chochenyo voice — in recognition of the importance of oaks and acorns in our Ohlone culture. The southern side of area three will showcase a new shellmound: a raised hill made of crushed oyster shell, mussel shell, abalone shell, and earth. This new shellmound pays respect to the traditional Ohlone shellmounds that ring San Francisco Bay — sacred sites for our people, built by the hands of our ancestors. All the dining tables in area three will be surrounded by an abundance of plants. These gardens will be full of native plants such as artemisia, poppies, mugwort, ceanothus, hummingbird sage, Indian strawberries — much as the landscape was prior to colonization: full, yet managed.

Cultural education complements exquisite Ohlone cuisine — Cafe Ohlone’s offerings

Cafe Ohlone has always been a one-of-a-kind culinary and educational experience. Every meal of luxurious Ohlone cuisine educates the public about our rich, enduring culture. Our menu has expanded throughout the pandemic, with new, sustainable sources of traditional foods added to our menu by season: fine black oak acorn soup; bay nut truffles; Ohlone salads; San Francisco Bay dungeness crab and king salmon; seared venison backstrap; Tomales Bay mussels and clams; soon-to-be-served Olympia oysters, the native oysters to this part of the world; chanterelle mushrooms; Indian strawberries; Indian teas made of elderberry, hummingbird sage, yerba buena, and rosehip—to share a sampling of our menu. Our weekly offerings of these sophisticated, deeply rooted foods prepared at our on-campus kitchen by a robust culinary staff will be as follows:

tawwa-sii Wednesday: Our weekly tea hour centered on a tasting of several seasonal, locally gathered Ohlone teas and small bites; an accessible way to learn about Ohlone culture.
Thursday Tasting: Our weekly lunch tasting, with full plates of intentional, seasonal Ohlone foods and teas contextualized and described with detail of the intersection between Ohlone food and culture.
mur, Evenings at Cafe Ohlone: Our most intimate dinners, now weekly, under the stars; a hearty and elegant multi-course experience made of our most traditional foods and paired with sophisticated cultural offerings, the fullest meal of our offerings.
sunwii Sunday: Our now-weekly Sunday brunch full of both old-time and contemporary Ohlone brunch offerings, where we bring out multiple courses, one dish after another in a high-energy, bold manner.

Every Cafe Ohlone offering is accompanied by a description of the specific context of our beautiful Ohlone culture to better educate the public of our living culture.

A community space for Ohlone people

Cafe Ohlone, the only Ohlone restaurant in the world, will function as a tangible, cultural space for our living Ohlone community; a space where language classes are held, safe gatherings and meals for our elders can occur, and our community can see representation of our cultural identity outside of our homes. Cafe Ohlone will also be a permanent center in the effort to build relationships with departments throughout campus to better relations between Ohlone people and the University of California, Berkeley.

For so long, Ohlone people have lacked these physical spaces within our homeland; Cafe Ohlone is centered on creating a safe space for our community to be represented and made visible. Throughout the pandemic, we have consistently led weekly language classes, cultural sessions, gathering trips and food drop-offs; our cultural programming will continue virtually for safety and spread into Cafe Ohlone in person when Covid cases are low, creating a hub for Ohlone culture in the East Bay.

Cafe Ohlone is a valuable and necessary space for Ohlone cultural identity in the East Bay, where tradition flourishes in a modern-day setting. We have waited since our early closure to restore the Cafe, in a grand fashion — where Ohlone culinary tradition, language, history and living identity can be fully made visible again. We also acknowledge, and are fully aware of, the harm the University of California, Berkeley — specifically, the Hearst Museum of Anthropology — has historically caused to our Ohlone community, and our role on campus will work toward healing and developing new, better relations with the University and departments across campus.

The pandemic is in mind as we plan

We closed Cafe Ohlone before statewide mandates were in place in early March 2020 because we wanted to be responsible, with a then-new virus with many unknowns, and to keep the community safe. Our previous location was centered on communal dining, around a long redwood table, with hands-on cultural programming. To continue our ethics of responsibility and value for human life, we are making choices to continue the richness and immersion of Cafe Ohlone in a modified way.

The new redwood tables will be for individual parties, with native plant gardens creating space between dining parties; masks will be required for our staff and diners when not dining; tables and chairs will be sanitized between meals; vaccination will be required and checked before arrival to ensure the safety and maximum comfort of our guests; our outdoor dining will not be covered, but still comfortable and well-heated on colder days and evenings. None of us know when this pandemic that has touched all of our lives will be over, but we will continue to make sense of this time we are in while fostering a greater understanding of our culture over elegant Ohlone cuisine in a safe, compassionate, and responsible manner.

‘alšip-mak — We are grateful

We express our gratitude to all those who have consistently aligned themselves with our work to strengthen and foster Ohlone culture, language, and cuisine. Since we established Cafe Ohlone in 2018, we have seen that support come in many forms: sharing our message in forums in which we have historically been left out; new and regular diners coming to dine with us and learn about our culture; monetary offerings to support our work; warm wishes and messages of care; media visibility and more.

We never take for granted the care we have been shown, and we thank our supporters for all these acts of respect and kindness for our work and our culture.

For those who would like to make an offering to support the costs of Cafe Ohlone’s new restaurant and cultural center, we now have an opportunity for that to be tax-deductible through the Hearst’s Giving Fund, found here. To ensure your offering is directed wholly to our work, click the link above, check the box next to “This gift is in honor of someone,” and enter “Cafe Ohlone” with your offering. Offerings can also be made directly to Cafe Ohlone through our website, however these donations will not be tax-deductible.

Our vision is quickly becoming a tangible reality, and in Springtime 2022—two years after the original Cafe Ohlone’s closure—we will see the birth of this magnificent creation born out of the deep love we have for our beautiful Ohlone culture, the people we come from, and our gorgeous East Bay homeland.

In Chochenyo language, the oldest language of the inner East Bay, we say makkin ‘ammasin hemmen ‘oyyo rooket — We will dine together again soon!