While Berkeley is known for spearheading the California cuisine movement (more on that below), sometimes you just need a good hot dog. Top Dog, open since 1966, slings some of the best encased meats in the area. I bought a regular frankfurter and spicy hot link for $3.50 each, dousing them in mustard and onions at the self-serve condiment bar (the garlicky, snappy hot link was particularly good). I asked the guy behind the counter for a receipt and he tossed a small booklet and pen onto the counter: “Sure man, just put down whatever you want,” he said.

On a different part of the spectrum, we have Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse, opened in 1971 as a marriage of French technique and local, high-quality ingredients. It’s frequently credited with pioneering the idea of California cuisine, and the idea that produce-heavy, seasonal menus are best. The restaurant is on the expensive side — you can expect to pay between $75 and $100 a person in the downstairs restaurant.

But there is a workaround: the less formal upstairs cafe, surrounded by the pleasing lines and dark wood tones of a Prairie-style home. I ordered the menu du jour — a $32 three-course lunch, the highlight of which was a plate of perfectly roasted asparagus served with savory lentils, cilantro rice and chard.

A central tenet of California cuisine is the value of good product above nearly all else — a principle you’ll notice everywhere in the city, from the famous Berkeley Bowl grocery store in South Berkeley to Monterey Market farther north, which is smaller, but also excellent. There — and at the farmers’ markets, of course (there are a few, but the big downtown market takes place just west of the university on Saturdays) — it’s possible to revel in the glory of California organic produce. During my springtime visit, that included sangria-colored orach leaves ($5.98 a pound), fiddlehead ferns and beautiful wood ear mushrooms (both $15 a pound).

The intersection near Monterey Market has a life of its own, with cute shops and stores to explore. I stopped into the Country Cheese, a quirky old market down the street, and picked up a nice chunk of raw cow’s milk cheese from Joe Matos Cheese Factory in nearby Santa Rosa that happened to be on sale for $5.84. What better to pair that with than a loaf of fresh bread? A few doors down at Hopkins Street Bakery, I paid $4.25 for a loaf of crusty multigrain bread (and I couldn’t resist buying a $3 hamantash to snack on).

If you’re looking to sample Asian cuisine, Vik’s Chaat on Fourth Street does excellent Indian street food in a large space that contains both a restaurant and market. The dahi papdi chaat ($7) is a glorious mess — flat papdi chips served in a big bowl of garbanzos, yogurt and sweet tamarind chutney. Up on Ninth Street, the recently opened Funky Elephant is a good option for Thai cuisine. I particularly enjoyed the nam kao todd — a salad of crispy jasmine rice with fermented pork and pig skin ($12).