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Ohlone people are the real OGs of the Bay Area. They never left the turf, they have a bright future—and you can actually taste it now.
Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino are personal culinary heroes whose work I’ve followed since they started their Cafe Ohlone pop-up in a now-defunct bookstore across the street from the UC Berkeley campus in 2018. They’ve since started an official relationship of repair with the university, set up a seasonal restaurant on campus, and on Friday will debut the permanent ‘ammatka cafe inside Lawrence Hall of Science.
“We recognize that the East Bay Ohlone people are not people of the past, but are alive and flourishing members of our community today,” said Rena Dorph, director at Lawrence Hall of Science, at a December media preview. “We have moved beyond simple land acknowledgments to active accountability.”
The preview included a luncheon with their gorgeous, fruit-enhanced Ohlone salad, grilled cheese sandwiches for kids and adults (the latter with homemade blackberry jam, Cowgirl Creamery Wagon Wheel cheese, and jalapeños), and tater tots paired with dipping sauces made of traditionally foraged herbs—a creative way to utilize one of kids’ favorite foods in connecting them to the Ohlone ways.
I haven’t stopped thinking about their thinly sliced smoked duck sandwich with Cowgirl’s Mt. Tam triple cream cheese and homemade rosehip jam. I’ll be surprised if that’s not my favorite sandwich of 2026, too.
“A huge amount of biodiversity and abundance has been shaped by the hands of our Ohlone people for thousands upon thousands of years,” Medina said at the preview. “And that knowledge, it’s never been lost, because our forebears have worked intergenerationally to preserve it, even through some of the hardest times that have come from colonization…
“And the truth is that colonization does not define our story. When we interpret our culture to the public and promote our culture, it’s a story about joy, celebration, about the knowledge that’s continued intergenerationally, and about how victorious the generations before us are and keeping alive the oldest traditions of the East Bay.”
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If you haven’t been to Lawrence Hall of Science since field-tripping there as a kid (as was my experience), it’s worth seeing now. The Ohlone influence runs deep through the museum, which even has a young class of Ohlone Science Diplomats. It’s a heartening place to visit.
Medina and Trevino’s seasonal ‘ottoytak cafe, located in the outdoor courtyard of the Hearst Anthropology Museum on campus, will also return this year, following the completion of nearby construction.
The day we had our media preview, the process of planting 15,000 native plants on the hill behind the Hall had just started. One day in the not too distant future, we’ll all be able to look up at Lawrence Hall of Science from Berkeley below and see nothing but verdant green.
Tamara Palmer offers the complimentary Food Book Club and California Eating newsletters.
