Alice Waters and Chez Panisse
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution Thomas McNamee,
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
ISBN: 1594201153
DDC: 641.5092
Edition: Hardcover; 2007-03-22
Summary:
In an authorized biography-the story of Alice Waters, Chez Panisse,
and the San Francisco 1970s counterculture food revolution that
invented "American cuisine" Not so long ago it was nearly impossible
to find a cappuccino or a croissant in this country, and goat cheese
and mesclun lettuce were virtually unheard of. Most people had no
idea what "organic" food was, and even fewer thought about
"sustainable farming." But in 1971, in a corner of Berkeley,
California, a young Francophile named Alice Waters opened a small
counterculture restaurant for her friends called Chez Panisse and
launched an entirely new way of thinking about and serving food in
America. Without an ounce of business sense or financial discipline,
Alice relied on the coterie of devoted friends and followers who
developed around her and on her strong principles of, among other
things, using only locally grown and organic ingredients at the peak
of their seasons, to keep her restaurant afloat. It was a reckless,
extravagant, inexperienced venture that would have failed at any
other time and place, but that instead-somehow-turned into a food
revolution. Today, Alice Waters may be the most important figure in
the culinary history of North America. Chez Panisse revolutionized
what it means to eat out and gave birth to a new nationwide
cuisine-the first in this country not associated with a single region
or ethnic group, the first "American" cuisine. Gourmet's 2002
appraisal ranked Chez Panisse as the best restaurant in America, and
The New York Times has called Alice "the mother of American cooking."
Alice has become a public figure, revered and idolized by many. The
first "foodie," she has become a famous chef, activist, advocate, and
spokeswoman whose personal beliefs have become the values of an
entire food movement. But her complex personal character is hardly
known at all. Thomas McNamee was selected by Alice to document her
story and was given exclusive access to her and her closest friends,
to the Chez Panisse archives, and to private collections and
memorabilia. As the story unfolds over the decades, we learn of her
many passionate loves, her marriage, her divorce, the birth of her
daughter Fanny, her failures, her critics. We come to know the
extraordinary cast of characters who have formed the ever-shifting
Chez Panisse community-a make-shift family with complex
relationships, competing interests, and a strange, almost cultish,
devotion to each other and to their work.
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