This year marks the 35th year of the James Beard Awards, which “recognize exceptional talent in the culinary industries.” Because of its size, California qualifies as its own regional category for “Best Chef.” Before the finalists are announced on April 2, the preliminary list of 20 Golden State semifinalists includes one East Bay chef, Gaby Maeda, for her work at Friends and Family.
Under challenging pandemic circumstances, Blake Cole opened Friends and Family in 2020. Last year, she hired Maeda to run the kitchen after Alli Li left. Cole’s cocktail bar and restaurant is a unique business, even here in the queer-friendly Bay Area. Friends and Family was created as a safe space for queer folk and their allies to share a meal and to drink some fancy craft cocktails together.
In a recent phone interview, Maeda told me that she started to find her footing in the restaurant industry after the owners of State Bird Provisions in San Francisco hired her as a line cook in 2014. During her nine years at State Bird she worked her way up the kitchen ladder to become their executive chef. “It was a lot of learning curves, trying to find my voice,” Maeda recalled. “Everyone goes through that moment—‘What do I want to say with food?’”
To find her voice, the chef began to draw upon her culinary memories of growing up in Hawaii. After moving to the Friends and Family kitchen, Maeda established a much clearer focus. “We have a dish that’s a snack, a simple grilled onigiri,” she said. “It’s a grilled rice ball and it has tuna miso, which is a condiment I grew up eating that I kind of forgot about.” On a trip home, her grandmother taught her how to make it. “I ate it and I had that moment of, ‘Oh my goodness, I haven’t had this in so long.’”
Hawaii, Maeda said, is a big melting pot of different cultures. “Even though they all don’t speak the same language or they all eat different foods, all the customs that we have come to one point in Hawaii,” she said. Maeda’s heritage is Japanese and Okinawan. But she also grew up eating Korean, Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese food because, “all of those people came over [to Hawaii] around the same time.”
And then there’s Hawaiian food, which she said, is different from what most people think it is. Beyond loco moco, barbecue and spam, it developed from the land and the sea, from taro and pigs, to fish. Maeda now describes her approach to cooking as, “rooted in Hawaii but through the lens of my time in California.”
A dish such as her elegantly plated “Les Eggs”—shoyu eggs, yuzu kosho and smoked trout roe—starts with an emotional connection or fond memory of her past. Then she figures out how it can be translated to fit into her present life as a member of the Bay Area food scene.
When we spoke, Maeda mentioned that she’d been listening to Invitation to a Banquet by the acclaimed food writer Fuchsia Dunlop. At one point in the narrative, Dunlop explains how Chinese food is a restorative cuisine. It’s meant to heal, the way medicine does.
“When you go to a restaurant, you’re there to restore the depleted energy and just be taken care of,” Maeda said. “As chefs, we love to take care of people.” The chef also includes bartenders and servers in the equation. “We do it in a way where everyone feels heard and acknowledged.”
Maeda is the second person I’ve spoken to this year who mentioned the restaurateur Danny Meyer as a source of inspiration. In his book Setting the Table, he lays out his principles of “enlightened hospitality,” which includes putting employees first and caring for the community. When his philosophy is applied with the best intentions, restaurants can nourish both body and soul.
Having secured the Beard nomination, Maeda said it “boosts morale and reminds us we are doing the work that we want to do. We want to take care of the people who come into the space and to be recognized for that is just—we’re very honored and very humbled by it.”
Friends and Family, open Mon-Sat, 5–11pm; 468 25th St., Oakland. 510.918.5245. [email protected]. IG: @friendsandfamilybar. friendsandfamilybar.com. On Sunday, March 23, Maeda will cook a tasting menu at @snail_bar_oak’s Homie Night.
