1

years
of

t h e power
of gathering

A lice Waters
an d f riend s
Foreword by Calvin Trillin | Afterword by Michael Pollan

CLARKSON POTTER/PUBLISHERS
N E W YO R K

Foreword by Calvin Trillin

CALVIN TRILLIN (writer): I once referred to Alice

I called it La Maison de la Casa House, Continental

Waters as the Emma Goldman of the New American

Cuisine and speculated that the continent they had in

Cuisine. Shes a revolutionary, and I have to believe that

mind was Antarctica, where everything starts out frozen.

her revolutionary approach was affected by what was

Chez Panisse was instrumental in overthrowing that

happening at the University of California at Berkeley

regime. It uncoupled good eating from fanciness. Its

when she arrived there as an undergraduate in the six-

menu included takes on humble street food, like pizza

ties. I was in Berkeley not long after Alice arrived; I had

and calzone. It hired the sort of chefs who wore baseball

come to do a piece on the Free Speech Movement for

caps rather than toques and might have found them-

The New Yorker. I found that the student radicals I met

selves drifting into kitchen work after getting bored with

had a style (a word they used a lot) that was militantly

graduate studies in anthropology. It was wildly inclusive.

inclusive and nonhierarchical. The organization they

The growers were an honored part of the operation. The

most admired, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

customers knew they deserved to be on the premises and

Committee, which provided the young shock troops for

didnt seem to mind that Alice was serving up, with the

the civil rights struggle in the South, was said to make

heirloom tomatoes and free-range chicken, some strong

decisions by letting the consensus emanate. Before the

views on the connection between good food and sus-

Berkeley radicals got deected and eventually consumed

tainable agriculture. Now, every middle-size American

by the Vietnam War, they were interested in organizing

city has a couple of restaurants that are modeled, in one

around issues that were specic and close at handa

way or another, on Chez Panisse. Like any good radical,

rent strike in substandard housing in Oakland, say, or

Alice seemed interested from the start in creating not an

working conditions on the farms of the Central Valley.

empire but a network.

If their interests had been culinary rather than political,

they would have been locavores.

I tend to eat in the upstairs caf at Chez Panisse rather

than in the more formal dining room downstairs, but I

In those days, when good food was intertwined in

nd it comforting to know that the dining room is there.

the American mind with ne dining, the style of lead-

Why? Because for fteen years, beginning in the late six-

ing restaurants was neither inclusive nor nonhierarchical

ties, I was in a strange town every three weeks for a

nor local. The chef was a magisterial gure in a towering

series of New Yorker pieces, and my last resort for nding

toque. The menu needed but a single word to designate

something decent to eat was to approach the motel clerk

the high quality of an ingredientimported. The waiters

and say, Not the restaurant you took your parents to

wore tuxedos and the matre d seemed to have been

on their twenty-fth wedding anniversary; the restaurant

hired for his ability to make patrons feel that they didnt

you went to the night you got home after thirteen months

quite deserve to be on the premises. Every middle-size

in Korea. In Berkeley, Im pleased to say, those are the

American city had a couple of versions of this restaurant.

same restaurant.

I would like to invite you to share

a personal and impressionistic chronicle
of the evolution of a small restaurant
and caf in Berkeley, California,
called Chez Panisse.
An Introduction and an Invitation by Alice Waters
To put this history together, rst my collaborators and I

we have an obligation to support the farmers, sher-

pored over thousands of photographs, menus, and other

men, and ranchers who are taking care of the planet at

ephemera, looking for memorable images that would be

the same time they are nourishing us, and an equally

expressive enough to tell the story all by themselves.

solemn obligation to nourish our children, who are

After we had arranged the pictures in more or less

depending on us for a livable future. Another idea is

chronological order, and after I had written about what

that our full humanity is contingent on our hospitality:

they meant to me, I invited nearly a hundred friends to

we can be complete only when we are giving something

contribute their recollections, too. Regrettably, hundreds

away; when we sit at the table and pass the peas to the

more friends of the restaurant who have also been indis-

person next to us we see that person in a whole new

pensable members of the Panisse family have been left

way. Finally, and critically, weve been serving forth

out; and without their stories, this book can only be frag-

the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its

mentary, incomplete, and subjective. But in the end the

parts. This concept explains, among other things, how

only story I can tell is my own. So here it is: my story,

a restaurant like Chez Panisse becomes not just a place

mostly in pictures; the story of what I have learned and

to eat, but also a convivial venue for celebrating and

how the restaurant has come to ourish.

savoring particular moments in time, a forum for politi-

For decades, Chez Panisse has been serving its guests

not just food, but ideas. The real story of this book is

cal engagement, and an ongoing opportunity for artistic

collaboration.

how a few simple ideas about food and cultureideas

Our vision at Chez Panisse has always been of a world

that are accessible to anyonewere planted in my mind

where delicious food enriches the celebration of life and

before the restaurant was founded and became convic-

strengthens our connections to nature and culture. To

tions that took root, blossomed, and bore fruit, to be

turn this vision into reality, we need to gather together

propagated from Berkeley back out into the world.

at the table and prove that the authenticity we crave can

What are these ideas weve been serving? They

exist right under our noses. This is the power of gath-

are neither new nor radical. In fact, they are as old as

ering: it inspires usdelightfullyto be more hopeful,

humankind. Most important is the universal idea that

more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive.