Something About Alice

Alice Waters

On a soft evening at the end of May, I sat in the window at Chez Panisse, open to the front garden and the street. My then husband and I were celebrating a wedding anniversary, plates of linguini with mussels in a garlic and parsley broth in front of us. A little pile of oblong shells in beautiful colors grew by my plate. As I dipped my bread in the broth, sopping up the delicious tastes, I felt I had at last found the flavors I had known ten years before in Europe. It was 1977.

Looking out, we could see guests coming up the walk, past the sculpted brass gates and the tall, dark green monkey puzzle tree. The spring evening sky grew dark and lights were turned on. The restaurant had transformed an ordinary Craftsman-built house into a delightfully welcoming space with clean white sheets of paper on each linen-covered table, illuminated by a little brass lamp. Everything was simple, but had been consciously prepared.

Chez Panisse was not yet the internationally known Berkeley, California restaurant begun by Alice Waters in 1971. That is, it was, but I had found it in a book called The Little Restaurants of San Francisco [published 1976] and it was still affordable and easy to get into. It served one prix fixe meal each night with several courses. I know now its kitchen was a wild place at that time, but there was little evidence of this. Service, by a reserved, formal wait staff, was impeccable. Perhaps we had the stellar almond tart made by Lindsey Shere for dessert.

I know you won’t believe me, but at that time you couldn’t get a croissant in San Francisco. I looked in vain until I found some almond-flavored ones at an Italian bakery in North Beach. Posh restaurants had old-fashioned French-language menus with rich dishes on them whose sauces tasted as though they had been simmering for months. But, having lived in Europe for a year, I knew that Italian pizza was full of eye-poppingly fresh tastes, that great wines and cheeses could be had by ordinary people, and that fresh French bread with butter was the food of the gods.

Alice Waters knew these things too. She based her restaurant around a story out of Marseilles by Maurice Pagnol. In the story, Fanny and Marius love each other, but Marius is smitten with a love of the sea and a desire to see other lands. Fanny helps him escape onto a ship, keeping from him her pregnancy. Monsieur Panisse steps in to save Fanny from shame by marrying her. 

Beyond wanting to share great food with her friends, Alice began sourcing organic ingredients, vegetables, herbs, eggs, meats and fruits. The organic movement was just getting started. People were finding that foods doused in chemicals could not taste great. Soils serving up mono-cultivated plants did not thrive in the long run.  Alice found local people willing to work with her on these projects, growing around her a community of farmers, vendors and cooks, all of whom went on to spread the good news about great food.

I was a budding foodie. I often poured through my hoard of Gourmet magazines, which in those days were thin affairs with hardly any advertising. (Conde Nast bought it in 1983.) They were filled with great writing, recipes and secrets known only to the culinary cognoscenti. M.F.K. Fisher, living and writing in Sonoma County, was one of my favorite writers, on any subject. When I found Chez Panisse, I felt it was my culinary home.

Nothing knits our inner and outer selves together more than the way we eat. We become our chemistry. I often think of myself as an “aesthetic eater,” as I am not as concerned about a diet chock full of nutrition, as I am about how things look, smell and taste. It turns out that great taste follows good nutrition in any case. Don and I have been saying to each other for years that we would rather pay the extra cost of organic food than pay for doctors later.

Chez Panisse celebrated its opening 50 years ago on August 28, 2021. Alice Waters has had one simple message all those years. Food sourced from good soils and farming practices is more nutritious and tastes better than factory-farmed food. In addition, it sustains the health of people and the planet. You can hear her repeating this message here in a documentary filmed this year. Michael Pollan, also in the video, says “three quarters of spending on health care goes to treating preventable chronic diseases.”

It is hard to believe that we are so slow to act on these well-known facts. But our culture, which at base responds only to money, supports cheaply-grown, chemically-dependent food and we are spending an unconscionable amount on trying to fix diseases which could have been prevented by better diet. Additionally, many people have given themselves over to esoteric diets and handfuls of drugs and supplements. We have no idea how to live simply any more.

There is something about Alice Waters that makes her into the conscience of our food industry, however. Her one-pointedness drives some people crazy (notably Anthony Bourdain, who called her “Pol Pot in a muumuu”). But, over the years, she has made one house in Berkeley better known than all of the many restaurants it has spawned. She has also tried to promote better food in schools, including gardens in schoolyards which teach multiple lessons. Michelle Obama even planted a vegetable garden at the White House, inspired partially by Alice.

I lived in the Bay Area for many years and continued to eat at Chez Panisse, usually at the cafe upstairs. On cold winter afternoons in the low sunshine, a plate of pasta sauced with sausage, vegetables and herbs often felt like a miracle placed in front of me. I made their lovely French roast coffee into a dessert, drinking it long after I had had to give up coffee in general. Afterwards I went off to Black Oak Books next door to sit reading second-hand books all afternoon. And briefly, after that, a truffle from Alice Medrich’s Cocolat. I harked back to Europe no longer!