The Civic Kitchen

What is it: A purpose-built kitchen classroom in the city of San Francisco designed for home cooks to master culinary skills. The Civic Kitchen will get you cooking.

What you need to know: Co-founders Chris Bonomo and Jen Nurse opened The Civic Kitchen in 2018 with a belief that anyone can learn to cook. Their Mission Street space has a program of accessible cooking classes taught by knowledgeable local chefs in a supportive and welcoming environment. The roster of classes, which in person never go about 14 attendees, cover the basics like knife skills and baking, through to more in-depth studies like a recent evening on sweet and savory souffles. The schedule goes beyond just making food though, to also talking about it (with Salt + Spine Cookbook Club), documenting it (with lessons on food styling and photography), and writing about it (a current offering is how to pitch a Cookbook of your own). 

Why you’ll love it: This is not your typical classroom. This light-filled space feels like a home cook’s playground, from its brightly colored 20ft long floor-to-ceiling Cookbook Library through to a fully kitted out kitchen with its three ranges, double oven, and all the ingredients you could possibly need. The Civic Kitchen is all about practical hands-on learning and connecting with others as you sharpen those skills. During class, you’ll don an apron, get chopping and mixing, and make a meal to be enjoyed with your classmates on its central communal table. 

What they offer online and off: Refresh those cooking skills during the pandemic with online workshops and wine tastings. Rather than the one-way of YouTube, learning from a kind person who is there with you in your own kitchen (albeit via a screen), can help instill more confidence and even joy in your cooking.

Why we think it matters: Vulnerability binds, but food connects us. With a motto of “Kindness in the kitchen”, The Civic Kitchen makes preparing a meal as much about bringing us together as about assembling ingredients. Co-founder Nurse encourages civility in all encounters with cooking, from learning about other cultures — along with the respect that must go with that — and finding a common language in preparing a shared meal. By taking the fear factor out of food, and giving us a much-needed alternative to food delivery apps, The Civic Kitchen is also creating a path back to nourishing ourselves and supporting a better ecosystem around food and how and where we get our daily meals.

In their own words: “We have built The Civic Kitchen from the ground up to be the perfect place for home cooks to learn.”

What next: Learn one meal that you can prepare for yourself, and one meal you can share with others. Something that you love to eat, and something you think others will. Two meals. That’s a start. Then keep going. A brunch for Sunday mornings. A lunch to break up WFH days. A grabbable snack as you race out the door. Something to make with kids, or grandparents. A classic that you’d choose in a restaurant. A dish to pack in a picnic basket. We much prefer this approach to selecting starters, mains, and desserts that you find in typical cookbooks. Give life boundaries around the food you make to make it relevant, accessible, and meaningful again.

To find out more: Website / Instagram / Facebook / Twitter

Additionally, try: 18 Reasons / Bite Unite

Bite Unite | A cook and share community

“Modern facilities, a fully equipped commercial kitchen, business support, and a neighborhood cafe for foodie folk.”

We’re all now fully on board with the idea of co-working, of sharing work space for our laptop lives, but there’s a new idea in town, for co-working kitchens, shared cooking spaces for entrepreneurs who are happier holding a whisk and making creations of the edible kind.

The concept behind Bite Unite was first launched by amateur chef Patta Arkaresvimunin in Hong Kong in 2014, and four years later she brought it to San Francisco. Her co-working kitchens in both cities respond to a really pressing need: the huge cost barrier to creating commercial food enterprises. The set-up of just the cooking area can be prohibitive and rents, particularly in these cities, are in the make-up-numbers realm.

Bite Unite offers food entrepreneurs the chance to give it a low-risk-go by providing all the things: a licensed, insured and fully-equipped kitchen, as well as crucial software, business and community support to go along with this. 

Kitchen Memberships—which work exactly like co-working ones with full-time, part-time and day pass access (there are even food storage options)—also offer a readymade community in which to test out products, dishes and techniques.

At the SF location, there’s a pick-up service, with chefs making to order options like lunch and cookie sets and anti-inflammatory veg soup, and they get to host community dinners and pop-up events in the space—like Hawaiian food, Borek rolls, and sushi making. Current chef members we have our eye on include Prep School, a wellness cooking club and Kristie Chow of Sip Therapy

But Bite Unite extends its work beyond that of the incubator kitchen: it offers more on the public facing side too, like a pop-up series of eating focused events such as that recently offered by A Hard Pill to Swallow, a roaming dinner series that supports people of color in the culinary space. And Bite Unite functions quite simply as a community café: you can stop by the light filled space for the tastiest of mini-donuts and matcha nitro.

There’s a ton going on mostly behind the scenes but some of it is visible through light-filled windows and while seated at the central farm-table; with Bite Unite you get to choose how far you go on this food journey, all the way from creation to consumption.

To find out more: Website www.biteunite.com / Facebook @biteunite / Instagram @biteunite