Pucker up for...

Pickles

Kimchi, cortado, bread and butter pickles: all vinegared and lacto-fermented savories made around the country from real ingredients that are responsibly foraged or grown without the use of synthetic inputs are eligible for the Good Food Pickles Award.

About

The Good Food Awards rely on the expertise of the pickles community to create the tasting, determine judges and set standards for the category. Read on to learn who has been integral to building the category, as well as what the pickles standard are and who will be judging this year.

Committee

Co-Chairs

Christian Reynoso

Sous Chef at Zuni Cafe – San Francisco, CA

Christian first learned about good food when he was a young boy in his parents’ Sonoma Valley restaurant. Now, living in San Francisco, he has grown his passion for all things food related – including pickles. He’s a two-time Good Food Awards judge and has been a Co-Chair for the Pickles category for the last several years. He has helped grow representation for the tastiest vinegared and lacto-fermented savories made around the country from real ingredients. Christian is also a graduate from the Pickles and Ferments Mastery course at The Food Craft Institute, where he honed his own canning business savvy andcan now be found as Sous Chef at Zuni Cafe, an award winning and mainstay restaurant in SF dedicated to serving the best local ingredients. When he is not cooking at Zuni, he is still cooking and testing recipes for new cookbooks for chef cookbooks in the Bay Area and beyond.

Emiliana Puyana

Program Coordinator at La Cocina – San Francisco, CA

Emiliana was born in New York, but raised in Venezuela. Food and cooking have always been her passion and love. In 2002, she made the move from New York to San Francisco, having fallen in love with the Bay Area after working at La Folie. She has held many different food titles as a San Francisco resident, including creator, owner and one and only hand of Jarred SF Brine, a two-time Good Food Award winner in the Pickles category. Her love of all things food keeps her glued to the Bay Area, while constantly on the move. She now finds herself working as the program coordinator at La Cocina, a non-profit organization that supports low-income food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses.

Committee Members

Brie Mazurek, Communications Director, CUESA
Kelly McVicker, Owner, McVicker Pickles

Standards

In order to be eligible for a Good Food Award, pickles entries must meeting the following standards:

Made in the USA or US territories.
Free of artificial ingredients, including colors, flavors and preservatives.
Free of genetically modified ingredients.
Made with domestic, non-petroleum based vinegar, where vinegar is used.
Made with ingredients that are foraged or grown:
- Locally.*
- With respect for seasonality.*
- Without the use of synthetic inputs, including herbicides, pesticides, fungicides or fertilizers.

_{*Ingredients that make up less than 2% of the product, such as spices, may be sourced from farther afield.}