Community hub serves Persian breakfast, toasts and homemade scones, along with regular event nights in Berkeley
Easy Bay Express — Nine months after opening, Evergreen Café is comfortably settling into its identity as a community hub. Alongside colorful photos of crowded toasts, cookies and giant jars of preserved citrus, co-owners Stacie Frederick and Sara Rahimian post regular notices about upcoming event nights.
To date they’ve hosted local artists and musicians, a Bring Your Own Book Club, vermouth tastings and more. Evergreen participated in Berkeley Restaurant Week and served free drip coffee on Jan. 30 in support of the general strike that day.
Acting as their spokesperson, Rahimian discussed Evergreen’s origin story with me. A longtime Berkeley resident, she used to drop by Bartavelle after yoga for its Persian breakfast—until the mother-and-son team of Suzanne Drexhage and Sam Sobolewski closed the coffee and wine bar. Rahimian heard that the owners planned to sell the business.
“I got to meet the owners, and we bonded almost immediately around community,” she recalled. “And these unique spaces that Berkeley has that create a sense of neighborhood and connection.”
Frederick and Rahimian met as coworkers at a startup. For years they shared the same dream of owning and running a café in Berkeley, but the dream went unspoken. “We talked about everything under the sun, and neither of us had verbalized it,” Rahimian said. When Rahimian said she was done with tech, they brainstormed and researched the practicalities of running a café.
Neither Frederick nor Rahimian had operated a café or restaurant. But as tech alums, they had experience working long days while managing large teams on multi-year projects. “Having a vision for something that’s five years out is something we actually are very practiced at,” she said. Evergreen started quickly and unexpectedly, but as “very systematic people” it wasn’t an impulse buy.
In their initial vision, Rahimian said, their business model included a café that would be “an available community space for local artists, for community gatherings, for different people who can’t necessarily afford the full brick-and-mortar infrastructure but have beautiful things to offer.” But the dishes they planned to serve would be just as crucial to the café’s success or failure.
The co-owners are creative partners who run things equally and with different roles. Frederick is responsible for the scones and the baking. Typically, Rahimian puts the food together five days a week. “I run the kitchen and Stacie runs the business operations, finance,” she said. “Every recipe, we develop together.”
I dropped by Evergreen shortly after it opened last summer. The memorable dish for me was a Greek whole grain levain toast ($13) made with cultured butter, a feta spread, sliced cucumbers, one jammy egg, a preserved lemon vinaigrette and honey. It was thoughtfully plated, elegant and tasty.
“What we want to present is really delicious food that highlights what’s beautiful about living in the East Bay and this part of California,” Rahimian said. Evergreen serves local Highwire Coffee. “We really want to feature what people are doing in food here,” she added.
They’re also taking advantage of the fact that the Acme Bread Company is a neighbor. But they balance out carbs with dairy, proteins, fruits and vegetables. “You’re not going to feel like you went out for a heavy meal,” she said. “You can feel like, ‘Oh, I had a really nourishing breakfast or lunch.’”
Rahimian grew up in a Sacramento neighborhood that had once been a walnut orchard. Five mature trees remained in their yard, and they harvested all of the walnuts as a family.
“I grew up with my great aunt and grandmother and others going to the market, buying all sorts of beautiful produce and cooking,” she said.
Frederick, too, grew up in a family that enjoyed feeding people delicious food. Even though their professional backgrounds weren’t in the restaurant industry, Rahimian said it was part of their upbringing and home life. “We’re teaching ourselves that formal training over time,” she said.
Evergreen Café, 1621 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley. Open Wed-Sat, 8am to 2pm: Sun, 8:30am to 2pm. Instagram: @evergreencafeberkeley.
