Where the nuts are off the shelf

Longtime Berkeley residents also think they have a grip on the good life, so being banned from the Bowl is no small matter. On a typical summer day, a shopper at the Bowl is likely to find 20 kinds of apples, eight types of mangoes, half a dozen varieties of papaya, six kinds of garlic, five types of ginger and 40 different tomatoes.

Glenn and Diane Yasuda opened their market in 1977 in a nearby bowling alley. They specialized in produce from the start, creating a section that today is among the largest on the West Coast if not the nation.

A decade ago, the store moved to its current larger headquarters. But kaleidoscopic choice is still Glenn Yasuda's business recipe.

"When it comes to food," says Yasuda, 74, "Berkeley shoppers will try anything."

Five mornings a week, usually before 3 a.m., Yasuda rises to scour several wholesale produce markets, hand-selecting the fruit and vegetables that will soon fill his shelves: Barhi dates, Gravenstein apples, Flame seedless grapes, Idaho pears.

Yasuda, whose father and grandfather were Los Angeles produce farmers, wants to handle the merchandise. "Before you buy anything," he says, "you have to smell it, taste it."

He knows his customers expect new taste sensations. They often corner him, asking him how to prepare produce they're seeing for the first time.

Local chefs savor the store.

"The produce section's like an orchestra," said Ryan Scott, executive chef at San Francisco's Mission Beach Cafe. "The last time I was there, the cucumbers were just screaming at me. As a chef, it's often hard to get excited about food. But I get excited there."

Produce accounts for 30% of the Bowl's sales, nearly triple the percentage of most grocery stores nationwide.

On an average summer Friday, three tractor-trailer loads of produce are delivered to the Bowl to get customers through the weekend. Often, it's still not enough to meet the demand. So Yasuda soon will open a second store nearby to take some pressure off his flagship.

One shopper said she asked her mother, who was visiting from out of town, if she liked the Bowl's produce section. "You know in that book 'The Lovely Bones,' where you get to pick what your heaven looks like?" the mother answered, gazing at the selection. "This would be mine."

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Each morning, the early birds wait in line for the Berkeley Bowl to open.