Features reporter
John Metcalfe
John Metcalfe is a Bay Area News Group features reporter for The Mercury News and East Bay Times, covering nature, food, the arts, and notable things to do in the Bay Area for the Eat Drink Play section. He lives in Oakland with no pets unless you count a thoroughly embedded family of backyard raccoons. Follow him on Twitter at @citycalfe or on Facebook.
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Expertise: Bay Area food and drink, hiking and outdoor recreation, arts and music, and anything else that falls under the umbrella of "fun."
All Stories
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Dungeness crab masala? The new Michelin-connected Pippal has it in Emeryville
Pippal is serving dishes from all over the 1.3 million square miles of India, which promises a significant amount of variety and flavor profiles
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Searching for the chicken in Petaluma, the former Egg Basket of the World
Kingdom of 10,000,000 White Leghorns. Chickaluma. The Egg Basket of the World. These are all historic nicknames for Petaluma, But how chickeny is it... now?
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First Look: Oakland’s Good Luck Gato revels in the fun of Mexican-Japanese cuisine
Peek inside chef Matt Meyer's new Oakland restaurant, where the izakaya concept gets a brilliant Mexican-Japanese twist.
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The tragic history of the Bay Area’s forgotten zoos
The zoological gardens of the day were half-amusement parks, half-vanity projects for the rich and powerful.
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Oakland’s Ale Industries shuts down, blames ‘rising rate of crime’
"We have been broken into 5 separate times in the last year. Each time we increase our security, and each time the break-ins get bolder. "
A Butterball Turkey Talk-Line expert on Thanksgiving disasters and redemption
Butterball's turkey hotline is also known as the "Cooking 911," due to its amount of food disaster-related calls.
Recipe: Whole roasted turkey with giblet gravy, from Butterball
It takes more than 3 hours in the oven, but this recipe for a whole holiday turkey rewards with crispy skin and supremely juicy meat.
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5 awesome things to do at the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Here are five great things to do at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, from behind-the-scenes tours to animal feedings to the chance to get in the water yourself.
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Inside the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s incredible surrogacy program for otters
Donning a poncho and dark mask to look like a B-movie psychopath, an aquarium staffer goes in to take care of an otter pup. This is normal.
Meat, meat, meat! A new Fogo de Chao restaurant opens in East Bay
The third regional outpost of Fogo de Chão opens next week in the Bay Street Emeryville shopping mall.