Saint Alice
Did you know Alice Waters, the pioneer restauranteur in Berkeley, CA, is a Jersey girl? I mean it should be obvious. Send someone from Jersey to the corners of the Earth and it’s instantly more interesting.
I know, I know. I’m prone to promoting Jersey. Even if she wasn’t from here, she’s still awesome. I’ve never really met her directly. I’ve listened to her speak and stood 3 feet away from her, but she doesn’t know me and I don’t know her personally. She’s my biggest culinary influence in terms of ideology. (My biggest influence in practice is Kurt Gutenbrenner.) I went to culinary school during the whole Ferran Adria El Bulli era, but aside from looking cool it never appealed to me. Don’t get me wrong, I ate a lot of molecular gastronomy and Ferran Adria is amazing. It’s just not my thing. I don’t really think it’s important to be creative in food. I’m more of the stand back and enjoy nature kind of guy. In my deepest dreams I’d rather be some hunter-gatherer wandering the land, experiencing new flowers, herbs, and dangers. So Alice Waters’ cooking and style is my middle ground between idealism and reality. It’s both cultured and raw. There’s something about the seasonality and simplicity that feels right. Obviously there’s a lot of influence from Europe but it’s thoroughly American.
When I lived in the Bay Area I used to hang in Berkeley a lot. My favorite used bookstore is there, and the parks are awesome. I used to walk by her restaurant, Chez Panisse, and see her going over each table before opening. That shouldn’t be dismissed. She’s an older woman now and is successful to the point where others wouldn’t even be bothered to do that.
Ideologically within food she is my hero, although I wouldn’t say our stuff follows it. And partially it’s because of my own conditioning. Alice Waters is from Chatham. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there but it’s a rather nice town. When I was a kid in elementary school at St Anthony’s in Passaic, we visited another school in Chatham for the day. My friends and I were in shock. The school had their own falcon. They had a nice patch of grass to picnic and have lunch. At our school we played football in the parking lot, and the only patch of grass was more glass than grass. I didn’t even know towns like that existed. I thought Montclair was nice. So I’ve partly maintained this immigrant/urban/lower class perspective along with all my other influences. I love seasonality, but I’m also fine with eating a bowl of rice and beans everyday for months. When I was growing up it seemed rather fancy to some of my friends that I ate canned tuna for lunch. So the food at Chez Panisse and the style of Californian food Alice Waters nurtured is cuisine to me where one can stop and be satisfying on multiple levels. It’s still in a place that loves the natural while still being sophisticated and cultured. It’s not so much as a restaurant but rather just hanging in her kitchen. And that’s where true culture is: in the home and in the kitchen. Sometimes we forget that and go to these trendy restaurants that are flashy and fancy but are at the end of the day mediocre and empty. They’re rooted in nothing.
I miss her food although I don’t really miss the Bay Area. Alice Waters is a hero. No, she’s a saint. A Jersey saint.
