The culinary journey of the legendary Alice Waters

Waters’ culinary journey began in Paris, where she studied and was enamored by the changing produce offered each day by the market close to where she lived

When I learned CNN was going to feature Alice Waters in the next edition of its monthly special Culinary Journeys, I was flummoxed. Waters is the mother/father/parent/originator of what’s been called California cuisine — the kind of pretty, pared-down cooking that relied on the zing of fresh ingredients, locally sourced and organically grown.

She was a legend, a change maker, a culinary heavyweight. How to distill her life and influences in one show?

Waters’ culinary journey began in Paris, where she studied and was enamored by the changing produce offered each day by the market close to where she lived. She returned to California, received her diploma in French Cultural Studies from the University of California in Berkeley in 1967, but yearned to recreate her French experience. “I wanted to live like the French, and I wanted to eat like the French — and the only way to do that was to make the food myself,” she said.

That hankering gave birth to Chez Panisse, the groundbreaking restaurant she opened in 1971 in a house in Berkeley. At that time, she said that, “All I wanted to do was create a place where my friends could eat delicious food and gather for good conversation.” She simply assumed they would pay for their meals because she had been feeding them for years, she told NPR.org in 2011.

Named after Honoré Panisse, a character in a 1930s movie trilogy about waterfront life in Marseille, the restaurant featured a menu that changed everyday, depending on what was available from local suppliers. Unlike the recipe-and-technique-driven cookery of the time, Chez Panisse relied on ingredientbased cooking. The food served at the restaurant was actually quite traditional — smoked salmon and onion soup, for example. What elevated them from the everyday was the way each dish was tweaked to accommodate what was in season — or to rescue them from the sauces and spices that muffled the singular flavor of the principal ingredient.

Indeed, some of the early patrons who made the pilgrimage to Chez Panisse to check out the growing buzz left disappointed. They couldn’t believe how plain the food was. They expected confection; what they were got was a barely garnished plate that looked pretty at best. They expected a party in their mouths; instead, they got low-key flavors.

Classic onion soup, for example, was freed from a smother of cheese and replaced by a crisp sourdough crouton and some Parmesan. The standby trifecta of dried thyme, capers and eggs on the afore- mentioned smoked salmon was replaced by thinly sliced onions and lemons with the skins still on, recounts Harlan Walker in Cooks & Other People: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 1995.”

Posited Walker: “The core of Chez Panisse, the heart of Alice’s vision is simplicity and quality — food so good that it needs no fanfare, no dressing up.”

After two years of doing the cooking herself and finding herself shut out of the dinner conversations she valued so much, Waters decided to hire a chef in 1973. The names who eventually worked in her kitchen went on to become some of the most influential chefs in the US — Jeremiah Tower of the iconic L.A. restaurant Stars, Jonathan Waxman (you might know him through Top Chef), Victoria Wise who opened the first charcuterie in the States, and Mark Peel, the former first chef of Spago.

Even today, the most celebrated chefs in the world have been influenced by Waters’ zeal to put locally sourced, organically grown, and sustainably produced ingredients front and center of cooking. She also inspired some of the world’s best chefs including Rene Redzepi, chief foreager of noma, the Copenhagen restaurant that was the best in the world for many years; and culinary bad boy David Chang, who is a fellow advocate of two things Waters is now involved in: Slow food and providing free, healthy meals to schoolchildren and making food and edible gardens a part the American school curriculum.

The food writer and critic Ruth Reichl credits Waters for influencing the way we consume packaged food products. No longer do we see the additives that were once dumped in mass-produced food to extend shelf life or improve coloring and taste. We now read our labels to check for dubious ingredients and actually pay a little more for, say, canned tuna caught using sustainable fishing methods. Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden in the White House and her healthy school lunches are directly inspired by Waters. So is the mainstreaming of organic food, sustainable agriculture and farm-totable restaurants. So to have Waters grace CNN’s Culinary Journeys is a big deal — and a tall order. Given her awesome stature, where to start? What to focus on? Wisely, CNN zeroed in on Chez Panisse’s involvement in Berkeley’s annual garlic festival, which falls on Bastille Day. With Bob Cannard, a long-time Chez Panisse producer who supplies the garlic for this year’s feast, Waters travels to Napa Valley to sample the region’s finest wines before returning to Berkeley to celebrate the National Day of France. Her journey is also a nod to the country that first inspired her to bring the joie de vivre of French eating to America, a process that has also succeeded in changing the fundamental way we view our food. What inspired you to cook?

“I was awakened to food after I studied abroad in France in 1965 — the food there was alive, and at that time, the French had a very different set of values about food. It was a whole culture that revolved around the table and that had a deep cultural interest in biodiversity. When I came back, I wanted to live like the French and I wanted to eat like the French — and the only way to do that was to make the food myself.” How did you get into the hospitality industry?

“Quite honestly, I don’t really think of myself within any one ‘industry.’ I see myself more, if anything, as a restaurant owner and part of a movement. A food movement. But in the beginning, honestly, all I wanted to do was create a place where my friends could eat delicious food and gather for good conversation. That’s really how it started — with that simple idea.” Where did you first learn about Slow Food?

“I was introduced to Carlo Petrini 25 years ago when he came to speak in San Francisco. I heard what he had to say about preserving biodiversity and about supporting people by ‘winning them over with taste,’ and I realized that Chez Panisse was a Slow Food restaurant. That initial meeting was very empowering and it brought me into an international movement where I felt connected to others in a way that changed everything.” How would you describe Slow Food to a complete outsider?

“Slow Food is a language and a philosophy based on valuing traditional ways of eating. It nurtures and celebrates what we have been doing since the beginning of civilization: Buying what is local, eating what is in season, taking care of the land, and eating with family and friends. The Slow Food movement fills me with hope because everyone who adopts these practices can understand that food is precious and that participating in slow food can be an act of social justice. Slow Food values are nurturing and supportive and when you show people what they mean, they are completely won over.”

What’s it like being a woman in the very masculine culinary world? Do you have a golden tip for women who want to get inside the culinary business?

“I started Chez Panisse during the counterculture movement of the ’60s and ’70s, and so many of the things we were doing were unorthodox. I was always aware that there were not as many women owning restaurants or becoming chefs at that time but I didn’t focus on it. Men and women bring different things to cooking and it is best to have a balance.” How did you discover organic food?

“When I started Chez Panisse, I was always on the hunt for ingredients that tasted the best. This was the most important thing for me — taste. As the restaurant evolved, I found that the fruits and vegetables that tasted the best — and were the best for you — were those being grown by local organic farmers. Organic farming has existed long before we started using that word. The Native Americans in this country and farmers all over the world for centuries have been growing food in harmony with the land.”

Since the ’80s, you have been a leader of the organic food trend that is going strong until this day among chefs from around the world. How do you feel about this success?

“I do not like to think about food in terms of trends. I am a part of a delicious and organic food revolution and a movement that brings the world into a new relationship with food and the land. For me, a great chef pays attention completely to the wholesomeness of food, which includes the procurement of sustainably grown ingredients. It is so important for chefs to feel responsible. We have the power to influence so many issues for the better. It is a huge responsibility and the ones who are doing it right deserve the highest honor.”

There seems to be a concerted effort to make fastfood healthier and to remove the stigma surrounding it within the fastfood industry. What are your thoughts on this?

“Fastfood culture has altered our way of life. Fast, cheap and easy are concepts that have permeated our culture. They are not just stigmas, they are ways we are allowing ourselves to be deceived and to think of food as a commodity and not precious. It is so important that we understand that things can be healthy and affordable, but they can never be fast or cheap. We need to make food that values the farmer’s precious work and the time that went into growing it.”

Do you remember the exact moment you realized you wanted to work with food?

“Oh yes! When I traveled to France in 1965 as an exchange student. I was not a trained chef, but I experienced a whole new relationship to food when I was there and I came home wanting to create a place where my friends could come to eat the same delicious food as I had in France.”

You’re often called the mother of Slow Food. You’ve been revolutionizing the way people eat for over 40 years now. I wonder if the idea “slow” evolved for you in any way through this time?

“When I first started Chez Panisse in 1971, provenance was not something I was thinking about. I was after taste. I knew that if we could make something that tasted really good, the way the food had been when I had first gone to France in the mid-’60s, people would come to the restaurant. And taste was what first brought me to the doorsteps of the small organic farmers who were taking care of the land; the things that tasted the best were the flavorful, heritage varietals of fruits and vegetables. That was the great tragedy of the industrial fastfood culture that had sprung up in the ’50s—we had abandoned taste in favor of shippability and year-round availability. So taste was what brought me to the ideas of slow food, but the values of social justice and the preservation of biodiversity are what keep me engaged.”

Today you have this undeniable aura in the world of gastronomy and even beyond, are you aware that you have become an icon?

“I care deeply about what I do and I feel lucky that what I believe in has resonated with so many people. I see myself as a restaurant owner and as part of a movement. A food movement. But in the beginning, all I wanted to do was create a place where my friends could eat delicious food and have good conversation. That is really how it started — with that simple idea. I have always thought my ideas were just basically common sense.”