Alice Waters & Chez Panisse : the romantic, impractical, often eccentric, ultimately brilliant making of a food revolution / Thomas McNamee ; foreword by R.W. Apple, Jr.

Cover image for Alice Waters & Chez Panisse : the romantic, impractical, often eccentric, ultimately brilliant making of a food revolution / Thomas McNamee ; foreword by R.W. Apple, Jr.

ISBN:

9781594201158

Title:

Alice Waters & Chez Panisse : the romantic, impractical, often eccentric, ultimately brilliant making of a food revolution / Thomas McNamee ; foreword by R.W. Apple, Jr.

Author:

McNamee, Thomas, 1947-

Personal Author:

McNamee, Thomas, 1947-

Publication Information:

New York : Penguin Press, 2007.

Physical Description:

xvi, 380 p. : ill., music ; 25 cm.

Contents:

Opening night, 1971, 2006 -- Soup, 1944-1965 -- Very Sixties, 1965-1966 -- Montessori and a dream, 1967-1971 -- Very Berkeley, 1971-1973 -- Jeremiah, 1973-1975 -- Last birthday? 1976 -- Ennui and inspiration, 1977-1978 -- Creation and destruction, 1979-1982 -- Rebaptism by fire, 1982 -- A world for Fanny, 1983-1984 -- Alice takes flight, 1985-1986 -- Death and life, 1986-1987 -- Sustainability, 1987-1991 -- Star power, 1991-1994 -- Into the great world, 1995-2001 -- An extraordinary day in Italy, 2001-2002 -- An ordinary afternoon and evening at Chez Panisse, 2003-2006.

Personal Subject:

Waters, Alice.

Corporate Subject:

Chez Panisse.

Subject Term:

Restaurateurs -- United States -- Biography.

Women cooks -- United States -- Biography.

Format:

Books

Electronic Access:

Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0721/2006050334-d.html

Publication Date:

2007

Publication Information:

New York : Penguin Press, 2007.

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Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
641.5092 MCN	Recreational Reading	1	Standard shelving location	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

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 2002appraisal ranked Chez Panisse as the best restaurant in America, and The New York Timeshas 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.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Talk about dish: McNamee's book is a gossipy history of the famed restaurant and a biography of the individual behind its three-decade rise from humble beginnings to international renown. Alice Waters was a young, single American woman with strong, confident sense and vision but little experience in the restaurant business when she moved to Berkeley in the 1960s. She loved food and cooking, and dreamed of opening a restaurant; her passion and enthusiasm eventually produced a location, a crew and a clientele. The book chronicles the following decades with extensive detail from a behind-the-scenes viewpoint, going from stovetop to bedroom, from opening night right up through the restaurant's recent 35th anniversary. Larger-than-life personalities abound, but the primary focus is Waters, whose success occasionally comes across as attributable to accidents and other people as often as design. The author researched restaurant archives and interviewed dozens of willing subjects with Waters's approval, and the result is a melange of reverential biography with restaurant and food history. Sidebars scattered throughout the text provide additional anecdotes and insight into Waters's favorite dishes. Serious foodies will devour this memoir. B&w photos. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

The great American food revolution of the last half of the twentieth century arose predominant from cookbook writers. The singular exception to this rule originated within a whimsically amateurish Berkeley, California, restaurant whose inspired owner accomplished no less than a redefinition of the American eatery. In 1965, Alice Waters, unexceptional student, jetted to France and found herself transformed by French cooking in general and especially by their careful attention to detail in preparation, presentation, and service. Returning to Berkeley, she opened her own version of a bistro, imagining a table where the war-protesting counterculture might gather and develop its own revolutionary culinary aesthetic. Thanks to Alice's charisma and young, creative chefs such as Jeremiah Tower, Chez Panisse grew, institutionalizing the arc of Alice's own journey from worshipful re-creation of French haute cuisine to a bracing new California cooking based on exceptional local produce. McNamee documents this innovative era, providing portraits of the many personalities who graced both Chez Panisse's kitchens and its dining rooms. This book will be of great interest even to those readers who have not enjoyed her restaurant but do enjoy reading anything about food--and who doesn't? --Mark Knoblauch Copyright 2006 Booklist

Choice Review

McNamee (independent scholar) presents a combination biography and business history of Alice Waters and her famed Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California. Arranged chronologically, the book whirls through Waters's early years and focuses on the considerable perseverance, vision, passion, and luck of this "unlikely revolutionary"--with entertaining doses of sex, drugs, and gossip--that resulted in her and her business's considerable influence on US fine dining, agriculture and, now, school food. McNamee primarily draws from an exhaustive series of interviews with those in Waters's extensive circle and with people that are considered part of the Who's Who in food and food media. She maintains a conversational interview tone, resulting in a book that is engaging to read and that keeps its reverence in check. Scholars may be frustrated by the sparse notes. Judicious use of photographs, narrative recipes, and menus effectively illuminate the history of the woman and the restaurant. R.W. Apple Jr.'s foreword adds gravitas. This work is a good complement to chef Jeremiah Tower's version of the story, California Dish (2003), as well as David Kamp's The United States of Arugula (2006), which considers Waters and others in broader context. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through graduate students; technical program students. J. M. Deutsch CUNY Kingsborough Community College

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Summary

Summary

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Choice Review

Library Journal Review