When founder Jesse Ziff Cool started Flea Street Café in Menlo Park back in 1980, Silicon Valley was just beginning to take shape. So was the farm to table movement, with its “back to the land” ethos. It was an attempt to get away from the processed foods of the convenience era of the 1950s and ’60s, when people traded nutritious homecooked meals for frozen TV dinners, meals in boxes and cans and fast food. America was on the move, and people wanted portability, repeatability and convenience.
But, at what price? Flavor, freshness, nutrition, wholesome goodness were often sacrificed for convenience. These are the fundamentals upon which Flea Street was founded, and upon which it operates today. Cool knew that she was not alone in her belief in the value and nutrition of fresh whole foods direct from the fields, delivered by the farmers who grew them.
After 46 years, Flea Street’s values are still community and customer service, making customers feel like family and making farmers a valued part of the ecosystem.
To her credit, Cool, who remains executive chef to this day, provided the culinary framework and the throughline for the restaurant from the beginning with ingredient-driven cuisine. She remains invested in organic ingredients, sourcing 90% California and truly local, including a Santa Cruz-focused wine list. What is fresh this season, what is in abundance and at its peak this week is what drives Flea Street cuisine.
Cool’s late parents, Eddie and June, were a huge part of the restaurant’s framework, and the dishes they inspired are still on the menu. Many of the recipes come directly from Cool’s cookbooks and from the deep history of the restaurant itself. And, each year, new ideas, inspired by the market, become a part of the future. Most important, they are still making Eddie’s biscuits from the original recipe.
Dream team
Flea Street’s team today is the dynamite foursome of Jean Cooper as managing partner, kitchen manager Erika Morales, Andrea Thuerk as front of house manager and Cool as executive chef.
It just so happens that this current team is all women: Whether that’s kismet or chemistry, it works. “What matters more is that it is exactly the right team at exactly the right moment in Flea Street’s history,” says Cool. “People who love the place as it is, who understand that the ingredient leads, that simple and beautiful is the point, and that the guest who has been coming here for decades comes back to exactly what they remember, seasonally tweaked/adjusted, but always familiar.”
Cooper, who worked for Cool at Late for The Train, Flea Street and then jZcool Café & Catering, is now back at the restaurant after 20 years. Eager to work in the nonprofit space, she spent 20 years at Glide Foundation in San Francisco helping to feed the unhoused.
Now she’s back feeding the community of well-to-do Silicon Valley tycoons and tech workers, along with those who have long since retired.
“We are following the seasons, the farmers, the growers, the people who harvest, cook and serve our community,” says Cooper. “We are following the ingredient.”
Following the ingredient
The cuisine at Flea Street revolves around core dishes like hand-rolled pasta, short ribs and fish, which change with the seasons. The freshest current ingredient informs the dishes served each evening.
The historic “Wild Wild” pasta might be fettuccini or pappardelle with wild mushrooms and wild rice, with lemon, garlic and chile flakes and white wine, plus feta and oregano. I sampled the summery and silky pappardelle with prawns, chiles, cherry tomatoes and avocado—a hearty and satisfying dish.
“The way we do fish is the same,” says Cooper. “We pair it with local vegetables and clean sauces.
“Every week there is something new,” she adds. “This week, I am focusing on the bounty from our gardens and local, small family farms to create Taste of the Season.”
The night we visited, it happened to be a skewer with fresh cucumber and Sungolds from Flea Street’s garden, dipped in olive oil with a side of Maldon salt, presented with Eddie’s signature biscuits and butter. Divinely simple, and that’s the point.
During the summer months, lots of greens and tomatoes come from Blue House in San Gregorio, a farm that also provides Flea Street with dried beans and more.
Stocking up
Flea Street recently began working with a new distributor called Rootstock, which specializes in very seasonal offerings from small family farms. Currently, cases of cherry tomatoes and berries from Live Earth Farms and Anita’s Ranchita are coming in to be processed, frozen and preserved for winter. Figs and grapes are arriving from Murray Family Farms in Bakersfield.
For fish, they have partnered for years with Two by Sea out of San Francisco, and Flea Street has recently begun working with Ocean 2 Table from Santa Cruz. Their short ribs and lamb are currently coming from Painted Hills Natural Beef and Umpqua Valley Lamb in Oregon.
A fun seasonal dish on the summer menu was the Pacific Catch, which could be seabass, halibut or salmon, paired with mole ancho chile and succotash, made with green beans, basil, tomatoes and corn with avocado crèma on top. One of my dining companions reveled in the seasonal risotto with corn, summer squash, tomatoes and basil pesto.
Flea Street is still working with long-term farming partners like Full Belly Farms in Guinda. “Dru and Paul have been in partnership with Jesse for decades,” says Cooper. “They sold their CSA boxes out of the parking lot at Late for the Train. And we do our best to purchase from Hidden Villa in Los Altos, and Webb Ranch just up the road.”
Cooper says they do pretty much all their baking in house. “Jesse came up with a recipe for gluten-free cornbread made with cornmeal and lemon and rosemary with whipped butter with maple syrup,” says Cooper. Whole grain breads are outsourced from As Needed in the East Bay.
And is there anything better than a pie straight from the onsite oven? Morales makes the desserts, including a seasonal galette from a crust that originated at Late for the Train, and sorbets and ice creams that are house-made with organic ingredients.
New faces, old friends
Cooper says she is happy to see many of the same faces she knew from 20 years ago. At the same time, there is an influx of new and young folks; as Silicon Valley changes with the latest wave of AI, people are discovering Flea Street anew.
“A lot of the old-timers are really happy to hear and see us continuing in the future,” she adds. “This is their neighborhood restaurant, and it’s going to stay that way. We have found an elegant way forward.”
Dining and Cooking