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PrintFrom the Garden to the Table—Charlie Ayers
Charlie Ayers and Jesse Cool are raising the bar on local organic cooking. At Palo Alto’s Calafia Café, the quintessential California eatery, Ayers lets organic ingredients take center stage in his eco-friendly dining room. Jesse Cool of Menlo Park’s Cool Café and Flea Street Café grows her own produce, buys from local farmers, and makes compost in a business park.
Historic photos of Palo Alto line the earth-toned walls of Charlie Ayers' Calfia Café.
Photograph by Kyle Chesser
Charlie Ayers
As legend tells it, Calafia was the name of a glorious Amazon warrior queen who ruled the mythical island of California. Many believe that the state of California is named after her. The beauty of the name resonated with Charlie Ayers, who first heard the story at a Grateful Dead concert in 1989.
“I was gushing to my friends who lived out here about how much I loved it and this woman standing behind us proceeded to tell us this story. I thought the name was so beautiful and thought it would be a great name for a restaurant. So I said to myself ‘One day if I have a restaurant in California, I’ll name it that,’ and I logged it away,” says Ayers.
Twenty years later in January of 2009, Calafia Café and Market A-Go-Go opened its doors in the Town and Country Village in Palo Alto. With a casual, contemporary café on one side and a market with an organic salad bar, made-to-order sandwiches, and healthy prepared foods on the other, Calafia has become one of the Peninsula’s go-to spots for people seeking out organic, sustainable fare. Patrons can opt for a sit-down meal in the café or choose from a selection of reasonably priced, heat-and-eat dinners from the market, like a tofu lentil loaf or turkey meatloaf plus two side dishes ($26-28), an easy meal for three.
Calafia is elegant, earthy, and urban all at once. From the low-VOC paints and milk-bottle chandeliers to the recycled floorboards and Paperstone countertops, Ayers puts his green business practices in plain view. “There has to be complete connectivity in everything you do. It all has to be seamless,” he says.
Asked about how he handles refuse, Ayers points to a small garbage can just visible from behind the restaurant. “We have compost waste, recyclables, and what’s considered trash. See that black garbage can over there? That’s where all the non-compostable, non-recyclable waste goes.” In comparison, the restaurant’s compostable bin is a large dumpster.
Ayers and his team plan serving sizes judiciously. Meals are designed to satisfy without overwhelming diners with oversized, heaping plates of food. If a customer ends up with more than he or she can eat, Calafia offers eco-friendly to-go containers. “We use corn-based plastic for all of our cold packaging, recycled paper boxes, and utensils made from potato starch,” Ayers says. Leftover food that isn’t served to restaurant patrons is used to lend a hand in the community. “Every morning we have two different shelters that come pick up from us—our bakery items or leftover food items that can’t be resold or reused from our hot case in the market.”
Does Ayers’ passion for green living extend beyond work to his home life? “When we remodeled our home we did as much of a green remodel as we could,” says Ayers. “Our swimming pool is filled with salt water; our garden landscape has as much of the natural California plant life as possible. So I try to walk my talk.”
Ayers started working in restaurants as a teenager living in New Jersey. After attending culinary school at Johnson & Wales University, he took on posts with several well-known restaurants on the eastern seaboard. When the West beckoned, he pulled up stakes and moved to Northern California. In 1992, Ayers interviewed for a position with Alice Waters, renowned chef and co-owner of Chez Panisse and advocate of locally grown and organic food. It was a pivotal moment in shaping Ayers’ career.
“[Waters] said to me, ‘You won’t work out here; this is not a place for you.’ And I asked ‘Why?’ And she proceeded to tell me about the importance of supporting local farms and organic food. I was really offended because up until that point I had never been turned away by a chef… and so I wanted to learn as much as I could about this whole organic movement that I wasn’t qualified for or had no experience with.”
Shortly thereafter, while catering a music festival, Ayers met the founder of Muir Glen Tomatoes. “He said to me, ‘What do organic foods mean to you, Charlie?’ and I said, ‘It’s about foods that are free of chemicals and as pure as can be.’ He said, ‘Let me make it a little simpler for you. It’s about not having petroleum distillates in your food.’ That really piqued my interest. That’s where I really got the spark. And that’s when I started implementing the use of organic products in everything that I was doing.”
Ayers passion for organics led him to a job running the prepared food department at Whole Foods Markets, and then to his much-storied tenure as Google’s head chef—a position he held from the startup days in 1999 until 2005.
While growing an organic garden at home is one of the best ways to ensure a steady flow of produce at a minimal cost, Ayers admits he doesn’t have one. “I have a big dog at home, and there’s no stopping Elliott. He’s all things big and full of love. He loves to dig and he feels that if it’s part of the earth, it’s his.”
Instead, Ayers relies on the bounty of nearby farms. “We get as much as we possibly can from local farmers. They love what they do and they believe in it; I feel that it’s our responsibility to support them as much as we can. I’m lucky that I have a lot of guys who come here to me. I have someone coming this afternoon… he’s providing chili peppers he grows in East Palo Alto, lettuces, onions, herbs. He’s very close and it’s super fresh.”
People with gluten and other sensitivities can indulge worry-free at Calafia. “We’re very cautious about the ingredients we use. We recently rolled out a quinoa pasta for people who have food allergies, and we’re using as many rice products as we can. We make sure we don’t use peanuts anywhere in the dining room. Most everything we have is easily modified to meet someone’s lifestyle or dietary needs.”
Looking to the future, Ayers hopes to see Calafia’s reach extend beyond Palo Alto and even California, bringing fast, raw, and organic food to people across the country. His long-term plans for “more restaurants to oversee and manage and grow,” are just part of his goal to “help people eat better.” As Ayers states in his book, Food 2.0, Secrets from the Chef Who Fed Google, “Each meal is an opportunity to make a difference—in your body and in your world.”
A Chat With Charlie
What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
Going to see live music. Steve Kimock in particular, or ALO, Phish, or the Grateful Dead.
Who is your favorite chef?
My two good friends Ken Orringer and Ming Tsai. They both own restaurants in Boston.
Seen any movies lately?
I wanted to check out Julie and Julia. My friends were telling me, “That’s a chick flick! Why do you want to go to see that?” And I was like, “It’s about JULIA.” I met her in 1987 when I was in culinary school and she was a guest at a dinner that I was helping to put together. I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that I hadn’t converted the recipe [for an apple and brandy sorbet] correctly. I put in more brandy than fruit so it never really sat. It froze up. My instructor knew that I had messed up, but Julia pronounced it “the most delightful and unusually warming sorbet.”
What is your can’t-do-without ingredient?
Beets. I’m often teased by a friend of mine, “What, no beets on the menu?”
Calafia Café: Town & Country Village, 855 El Camino Real, Palo Alto; 650.322.9200.
Also read: From the Garden to the Table: Jesse Cool
