Greens' Chef/Owner Penning Book

Greens in San Francisco has launched a happy hour daily from 5-7 p.m. to offer vegetarian fare, wine, and wine-based cocktails. The latter is consumed on site, but the food and even miniature wine bottles are available for takeaway at the Greens To Go counter, making it the first portable and one of the healthiest happy hours that we have encountered. We dipped into the restaurant to find out what else chef/owner Annie Somerville is doing, and discovered that the two-time author who introduced many American homes to vegetarian cooking may be in the early planning stages of her next written work.

How has Off The Grid—which attracts thousands to the parking lot on Friday nights for street food—affected your business?
Sometimes on the really cold nights, people might get a little tired of waiting an hour for something to eat and drink and they'll come in here. It's just a giant carnival, it's great; I can't tell you how many people I run into when I'm walking home that are looking for it.

Does it give you any desire to start your own food truck?
I haven't felt a deep urge yet. We've got a lot going on here, Friday nights are really busy, we have Greens To Go, and many weekend nights we're doing parties here.

What else are you working on at the moment?
I'm taking a lot of recipes that we're currently doing that aren't published and scaling them down for home use.

Are you doing this with an eye towards your next book project?
I'm thinking that it's getting to be time to work on it; instead of procrastinating and writing the term paper at the end of the term, I've got some time now, so I'm doing it. And we've been getting lots of recipe requests. We're in Sunset Magazine this month.

What is your personality as a recipe developer?
Oh boy! I am a pretty obsessive tester. Having written two cookbooks, just thinking about recipe testing makes my stomach knot up!

Is it easier to develop vegetarian recipes for books now that it isn't as much of a novelty in the mainstream as it was when you wrote your first cookbook? Can you be more sophisticated?
It's funny, I just did these two book signings at Adobe this week and in their cafe they prepared recipes from both Fields of Greens [1993] and Everyday Greens [2003]. I looked at the recipe from Fields of Greens and I thought, "Wow, I don't know if I would do that now. Would I still put a little bit of fresh oregano in that tomato salad?"

I don't know about more sophisticated, but I know a lot more about food now and I'm more comfortable with how Greens relates to farmers and all these great producers. I have more confidence than I used to have. And we're 32! [The Feast]

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