40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering [Hardcover]

Just spent the afternoon with this gorgeous book and feel as if I've whiled away the day lingering over a sparkling champagne lunch with Alice and friends. I've only had the pleasure of dining with them once - what a shame, considering the many trips I've made to San Francisco. I had expected a book of essays with pictures sprinkled throughout but instead found a virtual trip back in time, a beautiful, evocative picturebook with essays sprinkled here and there. If you're expecting recipes, I'd recommend one of the many Chez Panisse cookbooks as there isn't a recipe to be found here. And you won't mind, either. Worth every penny. I'm ready to start packing for a quick trip to Berkley. Merci beaucoup, Alice!

Chez Panisse is named after a widower, Panisse, from a series of french films that Alice Waters and her friends enjoyed. Alice is the mother earth of sustainable food, and one of the first to suggest fresh food from the farmers is the best buy for our tables.

This is a tribute via photographs and writings of the restaurant that Alice Waters built with her numerous friends over the past 40 years. It is a remarkable tribute, filled with wonderful stories giving the history of Chez Panisse and Alice Waters. She has asked her many friends to write their memories and recollections to fill the history, and she has succeeded more than she knows. Most of us have heard of Chez Panisse, it is the monument that most restaurants want to emulate. A place where food fresh from the farm is brought to the stove, and the chefs take that food and present it in simple but delicious form. If you have not had the Chez Panisse experience, read about it and add this to your bucket list.

Alice's mother was not a great cook, the family did not go to restaurants, and it was remarkable, indeed, that Alice became a chef. She went to college and then traveled to many parts of the world, became a Montessori teacher and started cooking and feeding her friends. She realized she would love to be a hostess and have many people enjoy her food. She planned a restaurant, having no idea that she would spend much of her time in the kitchen and rarely saw her friends in the dining room. Through a remarkable turn of events she discovered the organic farm fresh vegetables and meat and dairy and fruits. She incorporated this philosophy into her cooking. She developed a single, fixed priced meal every night. She cooked for seven years, and then her daughter was born, and she realized she wanted to spend more time with the family. She has not been in the kitchen cooking, for the past 28 years and many times she misses the stove and the cooking. Through the years she brought many new chefs and organic farmers and dairy farmerss and on and on into her kitchen. The restaurant is so well known that it is the restaurant most people want to visit. She has written many cookbooks and with assistance developed gardens for children, the White Hiouse and on and on. Her friends bring their memories to the written page, and so begins the tribute of the past 40 years.

The book is organized by the decade. What fun it is to read of the parties to celebrate each decade and to look at the menus. I became very hungry reading this book,looking at the pictures of Alice and her friends from around the world, the menus they planned and executed. The only complaint is that there are no recipes in this book, and upon reflection, this is not the place. How do you decide what recipes to include from 40 years?

August 28, 2011 is the 40th anniversary- oh how I wonder what the menu will be.

Highly Recommended. prisrob 08-26-11

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This retrospective of the famous 'Chez Panisse' is a delightful read. It becomes obvious that Alice Waters is only one player in the development of an entirely new genre of restaurants, indeed a new way of looking at the food we eat. Many friends pulled together to change the world of food. The locavore movement started here. Interesting that this bunch of radical-ish Berkleyites made a real change happen in the world that they never would have suspected in the late 60's and early 70's.

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