Kitchen Secrets

What's your favorite recipe?
I just made the breakfast tacos [shredded roast beef, shallots, chili, rice, eggs, hot sauce, napa cabbage, and cheese rolled up in a yellow corn tortilla] this morning, even though I wasn't hung over—it's a great hangover meal. I also really like the wild salmon and warm beet salad, because it has three of my favorite ingredients: salmon, bacon, and beets.

In the cookbook you stress the importance of eating raw and fermented food. Are you worried people are going to shrug that off as another hippie idea to come from the Bay Area?
I think to a certain degree that the raw food platform is a fad, but incorporating raw foods into your regular diet is not going to be a fad. It's as simple as eating fruit, lettuce or a simple salad with an olive oil vinaigrette. There's no heat in any of that, so none of the nutrients are depleted. And if you look back at cultures that embraced fermented food, they all had great records of longevity: the Asian, Eastern European and Mediterranean cultures. Fermented foods, like yogurts, are the custodians of your insides.

You also emphasize eating locally. Are people going to be able to afford to eat locally grown food as the economy continues on this downhill slide and food prices continue to rise?
We're blessed here in the Bay Area because we have such a bountiful selection of foods made within a 150-mile radius. Someone in Minnesota may have a more difficult time doing that in the wintertime, but if you go back in history, people didn't have these supermarkets and they still ate. You have to do a little digging; you have to be smart about it and do some work on Google to find out where you can source your foods locally. Ultimately it becomes about what it means to you. You have to make a socially conscious decision about your food.

Besides writing "Food 2.0," what have you been doing since you left Google in May 2005?
I have a lease on a restaurant we're planning on opening in August in Palo Alto: Calafia Café and Market a Go Go. It's two businesses under one roof. Half of it is an Internet cybercafe. It's not fast food by any means; it's slow food in a fast environment. The other half is a high-end grab-and-go market like something you'd see in a Whole Foods. It's controlled by the seasons, so it's always fresher.

What type of food will you be serving up?
I love to play with the Latin, Asian, and East Asian flavors—what I call the foods we eat here in California. It could be called Latin-Asian fusion, but I don't like to be pigeonholed into a certain type of menu. I specialize in making people happy.

Your book is sprinkled with phrases connecting food to contentment, such as when you advocate eating chilies by highlighting that "the brain responds to the burning taste by releasing endorphins that make you feel happy!" and even labeling beer a "happiness item" and chocolate as a "non-negotiable" part of your life. What is your cooking philosophy?
My whole thing is seeking the path of least resistance and getting the best without killing yourself doing it.