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Alice Waters and Chez Panisse
Thomas McNamee
The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution
Penguin
March 2007
On Sale: March 22, 2007
Featuring: Alice Waters
400 pages
ISBN: 1594201153
EAN: 8671594201158
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
In an authorized biography-the story of Alice Waters, Chez
Panisse, and the San Francisco 1970s counterculture food
revolution that invented "American cuisine" Not so long ago it was nearly impossible to find a
cappuccino or a croissant in this country, and goat cheese
and mesclun lettuce were virtually unheard of. Most people
had no idea what "organic" food was, and even fewer thought
about "sustainable farming." But in 1971, in a corner of
Berkeley, California, a young Francophile named Alice Waters
opened a small counterculture restaurant for her friends
called Chez Panisse and launched an entirely new way of
thinking about and serving food in America. Without an ounce
of business sense or financial discipline, Alice relied on
the coterie of devoted friends and followers who developed
around her and on her strong principles of, among other
things, using only locally grown and organic ingredients at
the peak of their seasons, to keep her restaurant afloat. It
was a reckless, extravagant, inexperienced venture that
would have failed at any other time and place, but that
instead-somehow-turned into a food revolution. Today, Alice Waters may be the most important figure in the
culinary history of North America. Chez Panisse
revolutionized what it means to eat out and gave birth to a
new nationwide cuisine-the first in this country not
associated with a single region or ethnic group, the first
"American" cuisine. Gourmet's 2002 appraisal ranked Chez
Panisse as the best restaurant in America, and The New York
Times has called Alice "the mother of American cooking."
Alice has become a public figure, revered and idolized by
many. The first "foodie," she has become a famous chef,
activist, advocate, and spokeswoman whose personal beliefs
have become the values of an entire food movement. But her
complex personal character is hardly known at all. Thomas McNamee was selected by Alice to document her story
and was given exclusive access to her and her closest
friends, to the Chez Panisse archives, and to private
collections and memorabilia. As the story unfolds over the
decades, we learn of her many passionate loves, her
marriage, her divorce, the birth of her daughter Fanny, her
failures, her critics. We come to know the extraordinary
cast of characters who have formed the ever-shifting Chez
Panisse community-a make-shift family with complex
relationships, competing interests, and a strange, almost
cultish, devotion to each other and to their work.
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