REMEMBERING THE E ARLY YE ARS

Extracts from Coming to My Senses

WATERS ON LIFE IN FRANCE WHILE ENROLLED AT THE SORBONNE, 1965 My love of France was insatiable, so [my friend] Sara and I would go all over France on weekend trips on our Eurail Pass… One of our trips was to Pont-aven, a little town in Brittany. Sara and I wanted to see the crucifix that inspired Gauguin for his painting The

Yellow Christ. By the river near Pont-aven, out on the edge of town, almost in the country, we happened upon a little restaurant. We looked at the menu, went in, and got seats for lunch. It was on the second floor of a house, overlooking the landscape and the Aven river, and there were pink tablecloths on all the tables. The menu that day was cured ham and melon, whole trout with slivered almonds in browned butter, and a raspberry tart. No choices, just, ‘This is what we’re having today.’ Every dish was quietly sublime. That meal made a very big impression on both of us. I realised later that the food tasted so good because the trout probably came from the stream we could see out the window, the melons came from their garden, and the owners likely made their own jambon. It was one of those perfect little meals. Years later when I opened Chez Panisse, I looked back on that experience as a blueprint.

The dining room was filled with French gastronomes – or at least, they seemed that way to me, because they were so clearly enjoying the food. Everyone was saying, ‘ Oh! C’est si bon!’ In other restaurants, the Frenchmen would normally just shrug and say, ‘ Eh, c’est bien.’ They never said anything about any meal, even if it was fantastic – just, ‘ C’est bien,’ in that blasé way. And here they were, exclaiming! Sara and I had never seen anything like it. It was the first time we’d seen the French be overtly enthusiastic about a meal. The men even asked the chef to come out so they could pay their compliments – to her. I just remembered: the chef was a woman. ON FINDING THE PERFECT PRODUCE The supermarkets of the mid- to late-1960s were all about frozen foods and canned goods – the exact opposite of the French markets – and I figured out pretty swiftly that they were to be avoided if at all possible. Instead, I went to the Berkeley co-ops where we bought things in bulk, or I travelled to smaller speciality shops for particular foods. For charcuterie, I would go to Marcel et Henri in San Francisco, an old French place where we would get pâtés and saucissons. I also went a lot to the old Italian delicatessens in Oakland, like Genova Delicatessen, where we got olive oil, big long loaves of fresh Italian bread, olives that weren’t the tired green ones stuffed with pimientos, and hunks of Parmesan cheese that the deli workers would cut off of their big wheels. I got to know all those guys from Italy behind the counter, older men around 45 or 50 years old. When I approached the counter, it always sort of felt like, Here she comes! I was so interested in what they had, and I was full of questions for them. They’d give me little samples to taste: ‘You like those olives? Try these, too! Here, have these breadsticks!’ It was a mutual flirtation.