The Restaurant That Never Gets Old

This time last year I was getting ready to head west for the 50th Anniversary of Chez Panisse. Sadly, due to Covid the event was cancelled.

Still, I’ve been thinking about the fact that Alice’s little restaurant in Berkeley is now 51 years old. So just for nostalgia’s sake, I pulled out my notes from the 40th Anniversary party in 2011…..

The museum in Berkeley has a particular smell, a combination of cool concrete and dry oil paint that always sends me right back to the seventies.  On Friday night it was also filled with food, and for a moment I was back at The Swallow, the restaurant a group of us once ran downstairs, right by the Pacific Film Archive. Making my way through the crowd gathered to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Chez Panisse, I kept running into fellow members of The Swallow; before long I was in tears.

It was that kind of night, and then that kind of weekend: emotions were never far from the surface. There were speeches – by the Governor, the Mayor, and assorted dignitaries. There was drinking and dancing, too much food and too little sleep. But more than anything, there was the recognition of how much Chez Panisse has meant to those of us who care about the way we eat.

The feasts went on for days. The major meals began with Scott Peacock’s shrimp boil at Alice’s house on Thursday night – lights in the garden, peach cobbler for dessert – and ended with an invitation only staff party on Sunday night. In between so many people fanned out into so many places that you kept missing your friends. Michael Pollan had a pig roast, Joan Nathan concocted a Roman Jewish dinner, Angelo Garro roasted a wild boar at his forge…. I was at Cecilia’s Chiang’s banquet, some 20 courses cooked by an astonishing woman who seems to laugh at time. With the help of chefs Henry He and Alex Ong this 93 year old woman created a feast…in a tiny kitchen that has no gas.

Abalone was astonishing, so tender you inhaled each delicate white slice. Ethereal kidneys were like spicy clouds, numbing your tongue with the tingle of Sichuan peppercorns. Beggar’s chicken was stuffed with sticky rice, wrapped in lotus leaves and then coated in clay. Cecilia handed me a hammer. “Hit it,” she said. The clay fractured and a wave of scent leapt into the air filling the entire room.

We ate with sterling-tipped ivory chopsticks that snuggled into your hand. “These,” said Cecilia, “were part of my mother’s dowery.” 

As one dreamlike dish followed another director Wayne Wang, quietly elegant, documented each bite.  “I wanted," he told me, "to do something for Alice. In the early days, when I had no money, she always fed me.” (Wayne expanded the small film about that dinner into Soul of a Banquet, a very moving documentary about Cecilia’s life. You can find the movie here.)

The truth is that Alice fed us all. And she's still doing it. On the final night, when all the feasts were over, we gathered in front of the restaurant, reluctant to let the party end.  At some point Alice came over and put a grape into my mouth.  “Taste this,” she said. 

Sweet, intense, slightly perfumed, the flavor resonated through my body for a good hour. It was just a grape.  It was one of the best things I have ever eaten. Even after a week of extraordinary food, Alice Waters can offer you a single bite that blows you right away. 

And here, just for the fun of it, is the menu from the Chez Panisse 30th birthday party, ten years earlier.

where I got to introduce one of my all-time food heroines, Edna Lewis.

If you’re interested in reading a really fine article about Miss Lewis, this piece by Chang Rae Lee would be a good place to start. And if you’ve never encountered Miss Lewis’ wonderful recipes, be sure to look at her book, The Taste of Country Cooking.

I learned about the Pueblo Seed and Food Company from Alice’s daughter, Fanny Singer, so this seems like the appropriate time to mention it. The company make all sorts of very appealing products (organic chili grits and cream of wheat are two favorites). I am also very taken with these unusual blue corn cookies. Made with heirloom corn, they are haunted by the flavor of wild anise.

And if you don’t know about Fanny’s on-line shop, Permanent Collection, be warned: it is filled with absolutely gorgeous objects which you will instantly covet (including Alice’s famous egg spoon).