Alice Waters, The Mother of an American Culinary Awakening (file under incredible role model)

Alice Waters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Waters ) is one of those people that makes you wonder how a visionary becomes a visionary. Yet while pondering how one becomes a visionary Alice revealed to me the qualities that I aspire to when it comes to my restaurant. Her culinary love affair began with a trip to Europe in her formative years. From that trip Alice’s love affair with food was charged with the force of ten atomic explosions and the birth of California Cuisine was the result. Cause and effect in its most delicious form. Alice’s Chez Panisse (http://www.chezpanisse.com/ ) is arguably the most important and influential restaurant in the United States and the result of her vision and approach is felt, seen, smelled and tasted in countless well appointed restaurant dining rooms and homes alike.

Reading Thomas McNamee’s “Alice Waters and Chez Panisse” I found myself thrilled. Enthralled really. By the clarity of her vision and the prowess of her execution. In the foreword R. W. Apple, Jr states; “Before Chez Panisse, even the grandest American restaurants relied on imported, often canned or frozen products; today, the Waters credo – fresh, local seasonal, and where possible organic ingredients – is followed by hundreds of farmers’ markets, thousands of restaurants, and millions of home cooks.” In the very next paragraph he tells the tale of Alice showing up at Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons for a meeting of the greatest chefs in the world with nothing more than a few Meyer lemons and proceeded to shock and awe the collected wisdom of the assembled chefs. I immediately admired her chutzpah. That took balls. Big balls. And she has them in spades.

McNamee’s tale takes us through the various stages of both Alice and Chez Panisse’s development. From the first moment that it opened its doors to the many successes and failures it has had over the years. If you can even call them failures. To my mind, Alice’s credo, her desire to make food that tasted like food, looked like food, smelled like food doomed Panisse to the status of non money making venture. BUT, and this is a big but, Alice KNEW, intrinsically, that if she stuck to her credo, money (the last of her concerns) would eventually follow. It is as I have always said, follow your passion and the rest will fall into place.

The success of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse is the story of dedication, truthfulness and integrity. It is the result of a vision maintained in spite of challenges and obstacles. It is also the story of a confluence of events and people at just the right time to make the right impact to reshape the culinary world. Of course I don’t need to explain to anyone here what Berkeley was like in the early 70’s but it should be obvious that it was the heartland of an American revival of sorts. It was a collection of hippies and student protestors. It was an assortment of societal “misfits” that had a purpose and a dream. And in that spirit Alice was able to attract like a tractor beam the right people to make her vision reality and Chez Panisse a success.

Alice’s spirit was the driver and Chez Panisse became the magnet to attract greatness. From those that designed special menus. To purveyors. To cooks with no experience. Chefs with massive experiences. Front of House staff. Everything in the universe conspired to make it a success. But also Alice’s unrelenting maintaining her original vision. NO MATTER THE COST! The result of that vision saw Alice develop lifelong relationships with a veritable who’s who of the United States but more importantly with children through her Chez Panisse Foundation (http://www.chezpanissefoundation.org/ ).

Rather than me blithering on about Alice, I think I would prefer to have you understand her from the way that she cooks;

“I usually stand at my kitchen table. I may pull a bunch of thyme from my pocket and lay it on the table; then I wander about the kitchen gathering up all the wonderfully fresh ingredients I can find. I look at each foodstuff carefully, examining it with a critical eye and concentrating in such a way that I begin to make associations… Sometimes I wander through the garden looking for something appealing, absorbing the bouquet of the earth and the scent of the fresh herbs. Sometimes I butterfly my way through cookbooks, quickly flipping the pages and absorbing a myriad of ideas about a particular food or concept.”

I think that this quote best characterizes Alice. What she does and how she does it. And as I said before it gives me something to aspire to. Alice was not taught how to cook. She cooked. Alice the mother of an American food revolution believes that slow food is good food and that it takes time.

I could go on for much longer about how important Alice is to the North American culinary esthetic but I think I would prefer to have you discover for yourself. I will however leave you with this quote from Alice;

“I’m completely dedicating this decade to public education…There are small things like writing a book and whatnot, but my immediate big hope is that we will have rolled out an organic lunch program in all seventeen schools in Berkeley. And that we will have integrated curriculums of the grammar schools and the middle schools and the high schools with the lunch program, and that ten thousand kids will be eating lunch as part of the academic day. And that we will be supporting any number of farmers and ranches and dairies that are within a couple hours of the school district. And that we will have documented everything that has gone on. And that children will have actually changed their eating habits, and that we will have stemmed the tide of obesity in Berkeley. That we will have our first graduates out, and it will be so compelling and so delicious that the state of California will be contemplating a statewide program, and that they will be ready to take over the funding of the Berkeley program. For Slow Food, my hope is that in ten years it will really be a vibrant force for change in every country in the world.”

This is why Alice Waters should be a household name. Vision. Passion. Execution and Deliciousness.

Are you dreaming big and inspired?

A la prochaine

SDM