The Draw Your Food Diet (at The Junket and The Bread Workshop)

Whenever we meet to sketch at a cafe we always try to sketch our food before we eat it and we always joke about what a great diet it would be to do that at every meal. It not only helps to slow down eating, but it also helps to speed up sketching! This leads to looser, more playful sketches which I think are more fun to make and to see.

Sonia and I met for lunch at The Junket, a deli in El Cerrito Plaza. My Turkey and Swiss Sandwich on a sourdough baguette (sketched above) was the best I’ve had in years. It was my second choice though, as we originally ordered Chicken Dumpling Soup. But when I saw them spooning it into a bowl, it had the consistency of gloppy, yellow gravy. I asked if it was cream-based (Sonia is allergic to dairy) and they said no, they knew it wasn’t because they reconstitute it with water. Um…no thanks. I switched to the half sandwich and Sonia got salad and we were happy.

On our next Tuesday night sketch-out we met at the Bread Workshop. They had contacted me the week before to ask if they could use this previous sketch I did there to illustrate a newsletter they are sending to supporters and I gladly said yes. They reserved a large table for us with a view into the bakery so that we could draw the bakers working.

I wasn’t much up to that challenge as it was my first night out after being sick for two weeks and my sketching felt rusty. You can see Micaela’s wonderful sketch here and Sonia’s here and here. The food was fantastic: my grilled veges (above) were so flavorful!

This was the extent of my drawing bread and bakers. The Bread Workshop are advocates of sustainable foods and practices and ranked as one of the top ten greenest restaurants in the Bay Area. Everything I’ve had there has been delicious and they were playing great music that night, going from George Benson to Billy Holiday to Tom Waits in succession.