Berkeleyside35%
Following successful first year, Evergreen Cafe plots Westbrae expansion 36%
By Alix Wall45%
7/22/2026, 7:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Halo Effect, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 14.8% saturation with 201 hits. Analysis detected 2,033 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,357 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 43.5% and a BS Rank of 36% (12,926 of 20,097 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 64.30% of the article peer group.
When Sara Rahimian read that Bartavelle, the cafe near her North Berkeley home, was closing in the fall of 2024, she was bereft.
Of Persian descent, Rahimian had become a Bartavelle regular; she liked the neighborhood-y vibe, yes, but she specifically loved its Persian breakfast.
“I was sitting in bed next to my husband and I said, ‘I cannot take another loss.’
I had just left the tech world, and it felt like a bad divorce.”
At that time, she couldn’t imagine that she and a former colleague would soon take over the space and turn it into a new spot, Evergreen Cafe, making the Persian breakfast available once again.
In June, Evergreen Cafe celebrated its first year in business; Rahimian and co-owner Stacie Frederick have doubled down on their commitment to their career change; they recently bought Henry’s Service in Berkeley’s Westbrae neighborhood, an auto repair shop, which closed in May after 50 years in business.
They are building it out into a second cafe that will have a large commissary kitchen that will supply both places (the current space’s kitchen is severely limited) as well as a large outdoor patio.
At the time of this interview, they were still interviewing contractors, so it will be some time before that is open.
Like Bartavelle before it, Evergreen offers Californian, yet globally influenced, elevated cafe food: think bowls (the Persian breakfast includes labneh, feta spread, a jammy egg, za’atar, seasonal veggies (when I visited it was cucumber and tomato, garnished with small piles of fresh dill and mint, served with a piece of Acme’s pizza bianca), a vegan version and others include savory porridge with red rice, roasted mushrooms and chili crunch, and toasts ranging from salmon, prosciutto and almond butter with appropriate accompaniments to sandwiches like a chorizo and cheese to a Manchego and membrillo quince spread.
Besides Acme supplying its bread, its coffee partner is Highwire Coffee Roasters and tea is from Blue Willow.
The scones are baked in-house and are especially popular, garnering the highest praise from regulars.
Not only have the pair seen customers practically “inhale” them, but they’ve received feedback like: “I lived in England for five years, and that was the best scone I’ve ever had.”
Their technique is a “house secret,” they said, but uses both cream and butter to achieve a slightly crispy exterior and softer, moister crumb inside.
Rahimian said that the longer she stayed in the tech world, the further she got from hearing direct feedback about bugs in the software; being a cafe owner couldn’t be more different.
“Interacting with our customers and hearing someone say that to you, well, I think that’s the point of life,” she said.
Their menu has been influenced by several factors; popular dishes from Bartavelle, like the Persian breakfast, have been reimagined.
Berkeley being Berkeley, various dietary restrictions are another.
And they are limited by their less-than ideal space functioning as the kitchen.
“We don’t have a hood, we don’t have a stove,” Rahimian said.
“We had to pump out all this food in a single, little oven, one hot plate and two crockpots.
As engineers, we’re really good at optimizing.”
Rahimian and Frederick met years ago while working for the San Francisco company Collective Health.
They were in a management group together, and in September 2020, they left the company during a time of transition.
Along with some other colleagues, they formed a book club, meeting regularly on Zoom.
They not only discussed what they were reading, but updated each other about their new work situations, too.
In early 2025, both Rahimian and Frederick began short-term consulting gigs, and when those ended a few months later, they were both feeling in their gut the same sentiment: they were done with tech.
Said Frederick: “Sara said to me, ‘You know, one thing I would do if I could is open a cafe.’
And I was like, ‘You know what?
In the back of my head I’ve always had that thought as well.’”
So much so, Rahimian said, that “my childhood best friend and cousin were always sending me these Instagram posts of bookstores, cafes, or plant shops, saying ‘When are you going to realize you are not a tech lady?
You are actually this person.’”
That initial conversation took place in January of 2025, and by June of 2025, Evergreen was open.
The women agree that once they decided, everything just fell into place, as if it were meant to happen.
They described it as grabbing onto the tail of a comet.
Rahimian lives in the neighborhood, and her seeing that Bartavelle was closing was the beginning of the journey they’ve been on, ever since (Frederick lives in Union City, but attended Cal, and it’s very likely she could be moving soon, to be closer.)
Neither had any prior professional food or restaurant experience, though Rahimian spent four years developing OpenTable’s reservation system, and during that time, spoke with countless restaurant owners and managers.
Also, her sister is a chef, and she consulted on the menu, teaching them how to get the jammy egg just right (one major trick they learned: that eggs can differ by quite a lot in size, and the timing has to be adjusted by seconds to produce the desired result) and other culinary tricks.
Given how much time the women had spent in the digital sphere, they wanted to create an old school cafe where people could get work done, of course, but also where people could interact IRL with their fellow humans.
A real “third space,” where people could meet their neighbors and feel a sense of community.
“One thing we talked about is just missing people,” Rahimian said.
Frederick spoke about how intentional they’ve been in building out their team with people all wanting to share their knowledge in a collaborative environment.
Rahimian added that the small business community in Berkeley has been welcoming and helpful, with owners offering to make connections and share their knowledge.
In addition to being profitable, the owners see ownership as more than just a business; they are measuring such metrics as connections made there, and repeat visits as signs of success.
By working for OpenTable, Rahimian learned a lot about what distinguishes good service from great.
“Great service requires the right tools as well as a front of house team that builds deeper relationships with returning customers,” they said.
“We use our tools to understand our business health and drive improvement and consistency.
We hire a team that cares about and enjoys social connection to drive relationship building with our community, which translates to remembering people’s special needs and humanizing the cafe experience beyond a transactional one.”
That the cafe is closed in the evenings is by design, to allow various groups to meet there after hours.
There have been music events, food pop-ups and local author events.
Bay Area nonprofits hold board meetings there; they are open to providing the space at low cost; private parties are welcome, too.
Bay Area artists, many of whom have never had their work publicly displayed before, are showing their work on the walls, and some have even made their first sale there.
Brian Nelson, an El Cerrito regular who noticed the art on the walls, approached Rahimian about mounting his photography there, and it was an easy yes.
His black and white photographs of longshoremen (he worked as one as well) date back to the early 1970s are part of the Bancroft Library archive, but hadn’t been viewed by the public in decades.
With the purchase of Henry’s, Rahimian and Frederick have cemented their career pivots.
“Nobody drops an email in my inbox at 5:30 p.m. on Friday that categorically ruins my whole weekend anymore,” Rahimian said.
“Here, I run out of eggs and I have to make a Berkeley Bowl run at night.
It’s a totally solvable problem.”
(Disclosure: Sara Rahimian is a member of the board of directors for Cityside, the parent non-profit organization for Berkeleyside and East Bay Nosh.
Board members have no input on editorial decisions.)
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.