40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering

Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2011: In 1971, a young Montessori teacher with no cooking experience beyond having friends to dinner inspired some of these friends to help her open a restaurant in Berkley, serving one perfectly delicious meal each night. In 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering, Alice Waters gives a lively history of how this modest beginning grew into a mecca that helped catalyze the rise of local food culture. Photos and ephemera that evoke each decade come alive through vivid little stories from 90 other collaborators and patrons—the chefs, waiters, fishmongers, farmers, winemakers, bakers, food writers, and friends who grew with the restaurant into an extended, cross-generational family.

First galvanized by political action at UCLA in the mid-‘60s, Waters experienced a more personal revolution in Europe: Paris taught her how food “anchored life to the land” and café culture built community; in London, she devoured the culinary classics Elizabeth David, internalizing her ethic of seeking fresh, local ingredients and “leaving well alone”; and in Greece and Turkey, she awakened to the transformative power of hospitality. Backed by an inventive crew, Waters brought all these elements to life at Chez Panisse, buying directly from growers (giving them, for the first time, bylines on the menu) and cultivating a hospitality that extended into the community through incredible parties and initiatives like the Edible Schoolyard Project. Beyond creating four decades of memorable meals, Chez Panisse demonstrated how restaurants can shift America's cultural relationship to agriculture and eating, a change that gains momentum each year. Destined to become a food-lit classic, this gorgeous volume pays homage to the power of gathering around a table, culminating in this luscious truth: "ripeness is all." --Mari Malcolm