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There’s a story about agrarian author Wendell Berry that food buffs and literary types like to pass around. According to popular legend, when an out-of-state fan asked Berry to travel and speak at a conference, the writer responded with a 14-line poem. It read in part: “In the labor of the fields longer than a man’s life I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too.”
Alice Waters loves Wendell Berry’s work. As an organically-minded restauratrice and a supporter of local produce, she finds that Berry’s message lauding small-scale farming and closeness with the earth strikes a similar chord within her own philosophy. But by all appearances, the strongest connection between the 64-year-old owner of Berkeley eatery Chez Panisse and the author is their shared devotion to that fundamental mandate — “Stay home.”
It’s been nearly forty years since Waters first opened Chez Panisse’s doors on Shattuck Avenue, welcoming friends into the grimy stucco “former hippie crash pad” that she has since built into one of America’s premier French cuisine restaurants. In all those years, she has never opened another restaurant — although she supports nearby standing-room-only Café Fanny — and she has absolutely no plans to do so.
Admittedly, Chez Panisse certainly looks different than it used to: the polished-wood walls with copper highlights and artfully-exposed rafters look more like an homage to the restaurant’s bohemian spirit than the actual thing. And Waters has changed too — she’s mellowed into her role as a respected chef, a burgundy scarf thrown over her dress the only visible indication of a mischievous spirit in her otherwise eloquent and poised persona. But despite the gloss of age and respectability now smoothing her rough edges, the elder Waters has remained true to her basic convictions: she has continued to serve delicious food cooked from fresh seasonal ingredients; she still frequents local farmers markets and area suppliers, seeking out what’s in season for the next dish on her table; and most of all, she still invests the whole of her being in Berkeley, a sharp contrast to the many alumni of her kitchen that have since spun themselves off into trademarked names and chains of glittering restaurants, sacrificing what rooted them in the world for a show on television or their picture in a cookbook.
Has she been asked to leave Berkeley and open a brand new Chez Panisse in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York? Oh, yes, she says. But she can’t imagine doing it.
“I like restaurants where someone is home,” she said. “I like people to become familiar with the people who run them, the waiters and the cooks. I don’t just want to be in the restaurant business to make money — I think I’m not capable of doing that. I think there are very few people who are capable of doing that.”
Friends who have known Waters since her culinary debut agree: ever since her first meal service at Chez Panisse — pate, duck with olives and a plum tart for dessert — the woman who brought American cuisine back to the forefront of the culinary world has been a one-town gal.
“It’s always been her place,” retired Chez Panisse pastry chef Lindsey Shere said of Berkeley. A longtime friend of Waters, Shere met the chef at one of her famous Berkeley dinner parties and worked for her restaurant for over 25 years. “At a certain point you feel responsible. You don't just give it up in a moment. She has very strong belief in family, in locality, and she lives it.”
Compare this to Jeremiah Tower, the golden-boy head chef at Chez Panisse from the mid-70s to the early 80s. Tower likes to tell people that Waters hired him on the spot in 1973, after he wandered into the kitchen looking for a job and fixed a soup for the harried chef. Despite his bravado, those who worked at the restaurant said it was easy to see that Tower had talent, talent that ultimately gave Chez Panisse the final push into the spotlight the restaurant needed.
But differences in philosophy soon became apparent. Tower was a creature of the 80s, wanting bigger and better, accounts say. Shere remembers that he didn’t like the simple French fare that Waters was making him cook, preferring the heavier haute cuisine dishes that are the staple of glamorous restaurants worldwide. He wanted more than the homey one-star local restaurant that his counterpart saw no need to expand or glam up.
When he broke with Chez Panisse, Tower broke with style, founding an opulent haute cuisine restaurant, aptly named “Stars,” in San Francisco. From there, he spread his name to restaurants in Oakville, Palo Alto, even Singapore. The California sensation, his food a must-have for the San Francisco elite, even licensed out his name.
Waters refused to follow. Former boyfriend Tom Luddy, a film producer, said that she knew she could never match Tower’s zest for expansion — and nor would she want to.
“She never believed in doing more than you can control, she never believed in franchising,” he said. “She'd be a millionaire if she did.”
Instead, Waters has chosen to invest herself fully in the surrounding community, working with a Berkeley middle school to establish a student-run garden, supporting local growers and helping keep area farmers markets in business. Meanwhile, Chez Panisse has quietly become an international sensation, nearly always placing in the top 50 of restaurants in rankings worldwide.
And the elegant chef isn’t alone — she’s recruited a core of Bay Area faithful from her kitchen, their present enterprises ranging from baking to meat production, to carry out her vision of locality. Good food is an end to itself, she says, and in true Wendell Berry form, home is where the heart is.
“I love living in Berkeley — this is a place that’s connecting with us,” she said. “I like to know that these restaurants are friends. And I think they feel the same way.”
