‘A DELICIOUS REVOLUTION’
Food activist Alice Waters bucked fast-food trend back in 1971, sparking farm-to-table fare
Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook Alice Waters with Cristina Mueller and Bob Carrau Clarkson Potter
Today, it’s fairly commonplace to open a fine-dining restaurant menu and learn a dish’s provenance down to the salad greens.
But back in 1971, when Alice Waters flung open the doors to her celebrated Berkeley, Calif., restaurant for the first time, it was revolutionary.
The chef and food activist is a pioneer in the farm-to-table movement. Locally grown, organic, sustainable and simply prepared — the food Chez Panisse is renowned for what was once radical.
Her pursuit of flavour led her to local, organic producers, which was in direct opposition with the burgeoning fast-food culture.
In her memoir, Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, the culinary icon reflects on her life leading up to the opening night of the famed restaurant.
Chez Panisse’s roots in the counterculture didn’t just make it unique among fine-dining restaurants, Waters says. They made it possible. Waters credits much of Chez Panisse’s early success to the fact that it “didn’t feel like just another restaurant.”
It looked different with its mismatched vintage tableware and second-hand furniture; women were members of both front and back of house staff; and a “tightknit tribe” of untrained cooks was behind the vision.
“(We’re) espousing a lot of human values that have been really lost in the fast-food culture of this country. And it’s what made it different, that it felt different,” Waters says. “And we just didn’t know enough to do it any differently. We were so inexperienced and we just did it the way we knew best.”
She was 27 years old when she opened Chez Panisse. After honing her skills throwing myriad dinner parties for friends, writing a cooking column called Alice’s Restaurant for a San Francisco newspaper, and seeking to re-create the style of eating she was enthralled by as a student in France, opening a restaurant “was, in some ways, inevitable.”
Waters is self-taught. And like her unconventional staff of artists, writers and intellectuals, she had never cooked professionally before.
A brand of home cooking defined the restaurant’s practices, which she says are still in place.
“As James Beard said later, ‘It’s like you’re eating dinner in somebody’s home.’ I wanted it to feel like that,” Waters writes.
The book was intended to come out in September last year and Waters believes the delay was fortuitous.
The political turmoil in the U.S. makes the counterculture message particularly relevant, she says, with many young people feeling a connection to the movement.
“People gave me the advice, ‘You shouldn’t mention that word counterculture.’ And I just felt like it was so important to me that I had to put that on the cover,” she says. “And then of course, looking back now ... it’s an essential part of the book; it is the reason for the book.”
Waters dedicates the book to the memory of Mario Savio, a leading member of the Free Speech Movement of 1964-65. She delves into that era of Berkeley protest in the book, as well as her early involvement in politics.
By opening her own restaurant, Waters writes, she thought she was turning her back on politics. But food became political.
“The mentors you have when you’re young can really shape your thinking. And I was very lucky to be exposed to that world and particularly to the cooking mentors I learned from.”
Diana Kennedy, Lulu Peyraud, Madhur Jaffrey and Elizabeth David are among the culinary legends that Waters counts as mentors.
From Kennedy, she learned to be “unrelenting” in the spheres of biodiversity and sustainability.
Peyraud, who turns 100 this year, continues to inspire with her “joie de vivre and fascination with … hospitality.”
Jaffrey is “so elegant and such an iconic person,” Waters says, adding that she’s learned from the beauty, earthiness and “exquisite taste” of her food.
David’s cookbook was the first in her collection, and she credits the British writer with teaching her how to cook simply and changing how she purchased food.
Waters sees a “disconnect” with nature — not knowing where our food comes — as the most pressing food issue we’re facing today.
Accepting what fast-food conglomerates are feeding us and adopting their values is problematic, she says.
“The ideas that more is better; that time is money; that cooking is drudgery; that farming is undesirable; that you want everything fast, cheap and easy. Those values are what are changing our world. And they just simply are not true.
“Less is more. Advertising doesn’t confer value. Cooking is a pleasure. Food is precious; I want to pay more for the food. I don’t want to waste any … And our nourishment, that idea that somehow it doesn’t matter where it comes from is scary.”
To understand our connection with nature — to eat what you’ve grown and become your own teacher — is transformational, Waters says.
When people engage in the process of growing food or form relationships with producers, it draws them in and stokes a sense of curiosity.
Waters says she sees her primary contribution to food culture as demonstrating that we have the capacity to change our lives through these choices.
“I’ve always tried to be the change (I wish to see) in the world. I try to follow those Gandhi principles. It’s very difficult to talk to people about these ideas. I like to feed them the ideas,” Waters says. “As I always say, ‘this is a delicious revolution.’
“This is not hard to do. This is easy. It’s just turning around and going another direction.”