South by South Berkeley

South by South Berkeley

The spicy Cajun—and, in many cases, vegan—stews are easy to like at this gumbo hub.

This dish is called Tofu Ropa, which is a play on ropa vieja, and it features tender peppers, sweet tomatoes, and fresh bean curd simmered velvety-soft. It’s Southern and it isn’t. The patron to your left is digging into his red beans and shrimp—which is curried. It’s Southern—by way of South Berkeley.

In times of yore, restaurants emerged fully formed and, for all intents and purposes, adult. But these days, many begin by undergoing a larval stage during which they operate in miniature as food trucks or pop-ups.

It’s quite fitting for a bootstrappy, Kickstartery era in which demonstrative DIY is considered not amateurish but auteurish, the work-in-progress a Yelp-worthy wonder.

And just as insect larvae must survive harsh weather and predators in that most vulnerable of states, these pre-restaurants—let’s coin a new hipsterspeak plural noun: “prestaurants”—face make-or-break challenges. Like insect larvae, many prestaurants curl up and die.

But some don’t. Instead, having determined what does and doesn’t work, having garnered fond fans who provide free social-media publicity, they coalesce emboldened into brick-and-mortar maturity.

That’s how it went for Easy Creole, an über-casual order-at-the-counter gumbo hub whose co-owners Jess McCarter and Grant Gooding met at an absinthe tasting where “we were both bemoaning the lack of affordable Cajun and Creole” food in the Bay Area, remembers McCarter, a food-loving jack-of-all-trades who has lived and worked all over the world. Gooding “had a background cooking Creole,” McCarter says, “So we went for it.” They launched a popular pop-up in San Francisco and then set up a post-pop-up shop in an East Bay space whose former occupant’s vintage sign they deliberately kept affixed over the door, but amended. It now reads, “Not Ming’s Kitchen Anymore.”

Sourced from supermarkets, farmers’ markets, purveyors, and traders—”any way we can get something tasty,” McCarter asserts—fresh, wholesome ingredients fuel an ever-revolving array of entrées that aren’t made to order, but rather are prepared in advance, then plated as need be. Wondering which you’d like most of the 10 to 12 entrées—half of them meaty, half vegan—available on any given day? Free samples are encouraged—and delivered with a smile.

The “easy” in Easy Creole’s name applies to its friendly ambience, its steam-table efficiency, and the porous-borders regionality of its fare, which the chalkboard menu proudly calls “Creole. Cajun. Kind of.” Along with Southern classics such as jambalaya, chicken Creole, hot links, and drunken crawfish, you might also find—depending on the day—Southwestern pozole, Jamaican jerked poultry, Cuban ropa vieja, Thai-Creole curry, north-south Manhattan maque choux, and smooth, creamy, banjos-on-the-Volga mushroom stroganoff.

In spirit and provenance, these dishes are as swirlingly, thrillingly disparate as New Orleans itself. Yet a certain similarity somehow pervades.

Most dishes here share a reddish-brown bridle-path palette, a robust savory spiciness and a thick, soupy, comfort-foody consistency. The latter, in particular, lends itself excellently to chilly winter days. Luckily, each entrée is served atop an obliging, absorbent bed of brown or white rice. Also included in the price of each entrée is a hand-sized wodge of French bread to soak up every last soupy speck.

In the actual South, sometimes even the french fries are batter-fried. At Easy Creole, nothing is fried. This and the prominence of very welcome, well-thought-out vegan dishes—which can be vegetarianized with the delightfully free-on-request addition of cheese and/or sour cream—are among those aspects of Easy Creole that sing in an emo-zydeco chorus: Dude, we’re definitely not in Dixie.

Under a trendy black ceiling, walls the color of summer-camp ketchup are thronged by dozens of framed pictures: Dorothy Dandridge. Audrey Hepburn. Telly Savalas. Ming the Merciless. Geishas. Ballerinas. Harlequins. The requisite sad clowns.

These images, McCarter explains, came from “all over: drawings we made, good finds at Urban Ore, gifts from friends and family—hell, pictures of friends and family, and of people we love and who helped make this possible.”

“Chef Grant had a vision for this bright, artistic space. He achieved it in spades. It reflects his personality and his food and his love of irreverence.”

Except for frying, Gooding employs the “same cooking techniques” as standard Cajun/Creole chefs but imposes “different layers of flavor” thanks to “California ingredients— hello, chorizo étouffée!—and spices from all over,” McCarter says.

“As one eater remarked, ‘These aren’t like my grandma’s red beans. . . . They taste like something!’ “

Yes. They do. They taste rich, earthy, and vibrant. They also taste of bourbon. But if you’re among the capsicum-intolerant, the heat-avoidant, the tender-tongued, you might find most of Easy Creole’s fare a bit on the too-spicy side.

Granted, it’s the nature of Cajun/Creole cuisine to pack a peppery punch. But if you bleed for blandness, consider yourself forewarned. Hipsters think hotness is cool.

This is confirmed by the prominence, dominance, and numerosity of hot-sauce bottles festooning Easy Creole’s shiny black, close-together tables: familiar brands such as Melinda’s, Sriracha, and Tabasco, but also outliers such as Brother Bru-Bru’s African Hot Sauce and Burn Baby Burn, and house-made searers (amusingly contained in repurposed liquor bottles) such as “Suicide Sauce,” justifiably labeled with a cartoon skull. Want more hotness? Chopped raw onions can also be added to any dish for free.

The levels of hotness here rise and fall, elusively, even within the same dishes. One day, the beany, chunky, vegan Choctaw chili is sort-of-hot and sort-of-sweet. Another day it’s why-are-you-doing-this-to-me hot, although the cashier initially described it as downright mild. Granted, exercising the free-sample option can answer all such questions in advance. And exercising the free cheese-and-sour-cream option—while sipping, say, a glass of Mexican Coke or house-made lemonade—can cool any dish down.

A brilliant protocol allows customers to order, for the price of one entrée, two half-servings of two different entrées (gumbo excepted) on a single plate. This is a great idea for many different reasons, and makes takeout all the more exciting. But during one rather startling visit, all four of the disparate entrées comprising two different half-half orders were hotter than the heat-avoidant could handle. Only the mushroom-spinach étoufée could be borne unbuffered by big mouthfuls of bread and rice.

But hey: This just gives us all an extra excuse to order lush, fluffy, sunshine-yellow, honey-drizzled, kernel-studded, gluten-free cornbread, sticky bread pudding and scrumptious, chewy vegan rice pudding.

“If you don’t like something,” McCarter offers, “tell us and we will fix it. We can’t learn from you unless we hear from you.

“We like to change, constantly updating technique and spice. Grant can just figure out what is missing and add it the next time—a continual process of improvement.”

As for his own favorite dishes?

“It depends on the day,” McCarter says. “But I got in this game for gumbo.”


Easy Creole

1761 Alcatraz Ave., Berkeley
510-858-5063
EasyCreole.com
Open Mon.-Sat. 11am-9pm and Sun. 12-9pm
Entrées $8–$10. No alcohol served. Accepts credit cards.

Faces of the East Bay