Rockridge: Food

By Olivia, Juven, Vanessa R., and Jackie P.

While being at Rockridge and walking in to different types of restaurants, we noticed that the food prices were quite high for what we're used to. We asked the people there they thought that the food were reasonable, and they told us that they thought it was. The prices were sometimes more than $10 per person, and if people there think that this is reasonable, then people have more money than people in our neighborhood.

When you walk around Rockridge, you'll find a couple little markets, lots of little cafes, and a grocery store that sells organic and locally-sourced food. The small markets also mostly sell organic food, and food from around northern California. Organic food and local food seems to be very popular in Rockridge. People tend to eat a lot healthier. You can find fruits and vegetables and just healthy food in general. There was a bakery there, and a butcher shop, and it seemed that people were happy to go to all the little stores instead of one bigger one.

As we interviewed people, we found that most them don't eat fast food. If they do, it's not too often. There weren't even any fast food places that we could find, not even a Subway, which is kind of healthy for fast food. This is a lot different than East Oakland because you only need to walk or drive a couple blocks to find a few fast food restaurants, and if you ask people in East Oakland about how much fast food they eat, it makes up about half of their weekly meals. Also, organic markets are very unusual in East Oakland, though maybe it's becoming more common in some areas of Oakland.

Some of the different types of food we saw were Mexican, Chinese, pizza, and sushi. There were also a few places that sold crepes and gourmet hamburgers. There were a lot of places that you could go to and visit to have lunch, dinner and even breakfast. One weird thing we saw was that, in the one Mexican restaurant we found, there was only one Mexican person! Everyone else was Asian. This was weird for us because you hardly see anyone but Mexican people in the restaurants in our neighborhood. We're guessing that the food tasted different because there weren’t any Mexican workers working there. Most people that we aw buying the food were white, African-American and Asian. We were the only Latinos in there.

Also, we didn't see any liquor stores in Rockridge. This is Oakland? Yes, it is!