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Alice Waters’ appearance isn’t the flashiness you’d expect from a world-class chef. Aside from a dark, striped scarf, she wears little color and little jewelry.
So it makes sense her world-renowned cuisine that sparked the organic food movement has a simple presentation and an even simpler method of preparation.
“I think that when people come to the restaurant, it’s a surprise to have the best dessert be the fruit on the table that’s completely unprepared,” Waters said. “Very carefully selected, but unprepared.”
But based on years of experience and close ties with local, organic farmers, Waters has learned how to pick out the best ingredients since she opened her Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley in 1971.
She judges butter by its color and strawberries by their closeness to fruit she tasted in France decades ago. She can even pinpoint the time of the year based on what fruit she sees at farmers markets. Who needs a calendar when you know Bing cherries are ripe in June and royal apricots last only a few days after Memorial Day?
But food is the life of the 64-year-old executive chef and owner of Chez Panisse.
She doesn’t bother with tablespoons or measuring cups – she relies on her taste buds. Like a great quarterback, she calls audibles at the kitchen line, tweaking recipes and even entire meals based on the quality of her fresh ingredients. That’s why her restaurant offers vague menus in advance and doesn’t finalize anything until it gets that day’s meat and produce.
“We’re taking what (the farmer) has and trying to make the best use of it,” Waters said. “It’s a very different idea of cooking.”
That reliance on only the best ingredients led her to local, organic farms in the ’70s – a revolutionary idea at the time.
“It wasn’t an idea that we were looking for sustainable farmers and ranchers; we were looking for flavor,” she said. “[We] ended up very closely on the doorsteps of the organic farmers and the local people that were able to bring food that was ripe and in season right to the restaurant.”
And once she found the best local farmers in the area, she never turned back.
Waters’ innovative cuisine spread across the country, and organic orchards and farmers markets began popping up everywhere.
Steve Kashiwase, whose farm supplied the fruit for Wednesday night’s nectarine galette with peach leaf ice cream, credited Waters for boosting sales every year since his farm became organic in 1990.
Likewise, Leif Hedendal, an employee of Blossom Bluff Orchards, said his farm has seen “a significant” increase in business since it switched to organic last year. He said Waters is to thank for that.
“She’s definitely at the front of the movement,” Hedendal said at a farmers market as he loaded the nectarines that would appear on Waters’ tables the next day. “When she started Chez Panisse in the ’70s, there wasn’t really any movement in the restaurants to sell locally grown stuff. The farmers market movement started here, and it was with her collaboration, for sure.”
The organic movement has since strayed from Waters’ slow food roots and into mass-produced snacks shipped across the country. Major companies market organic breakfast cereals and peanut butter, and the fresh greens she got from France to replace iceberg lettuce 36 years ago have become the fixture of salad mixes in supermarkets everywhere.
“I must say, it’s pretty shocking to see a bag of mesclun lettuce produced by Dole,” Waters said.
“There’s all kinds of crazy things in there.”
Despite her restaurant’s $85 meals and her distaste of mass-market foods, Waters said she is committed to opening up food to everyone. Chez Panisse literally and figuratively embodies that idea, as no walls separate the kitchen from the dining area. Chefs chat freely with customers. Diners can see and smell cooks chopping onions and feel the warmth of the oven’s fire as they walk to their tables.
Through her Chez Panisse Foundation, Waters supports organic foods across the country, including the Yale Sustainable Food Project.
Sean Fraga, a junior at Yale and photographer for the project, said Waters’ celebrity status and involvement with the on-campus farm made her a hit when she spoke at the university this year.
“It was a huge deal that Alice Waters would come speak at Yale,” Fraga said. “The place was just packed, and people loved it. When she spoke, she was absolutely passionate about everything she’s doing.”
And everything she’s doing is, well, just about everything.
Waters’ foundation runs The Edible Schoolyard, a one-acre garden at Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in Berkeley that gives students hands-on experience with food production.
She’s appeared in two documentaries, episodes of “The View” and countless newspaper stories. She’s also written eight books with her ninth, “The Edible Schoolyard,” scheduled to be released later this year.
Waters’ popularity has made her a favorite of celebrities such as Martha Stewart and prompted requests to open restaurants across the country – offers she has all declined.
Fittingly, it’s also helped business at the local farms she adores.
“I sell entirely at farmers markets, and I hear people constantly say they went to her restaurant and saw us on the menu and want some,” said Kashiwase, the fruit farmer in Winton, Calif.
Waters also welcomes the publicity as a way to promote her activism, including calls to end world hunger and fight global warming through local farms.
“We’re only talking about hybrids – why aren’t we talking about walking to the farmers market?” Waters said.
“This needs to be in our conversation. It needs to be on the front page of the New York Times.”
Waters said she’ll continue her crusade to change the world’s diet when she cooks at the United Nations World Hunger Week this October. It’s a global stage, but Waters said she has no idea what she’ll serve yet.
Of course not. That depends on what she finds at the local, organic markets in New York that morning.
