Chez Panisse

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Chez Panisse
The front entrance to Chez Panisse
Restaurant Information
Established	1971
Current owner(s)	Alice Waters
City	Berkeley
State	California
Country	United States
Website	Official site

Chez Panisse is a Berkeley, California restaurant known as the birthplace of California cuisine, a style credited to its co-founder, Alice Waters.

The restaurant is located in the north Berkeley neighborhood known locally as the "Gourmet ghetto". Chez Panisse is listed as the #20 restaurant in the world in Restaurant magazine's 2006 list of the best restaurants in the world^[1], #40 on the 2007 list^[2] and #37 on the 2008 list. In 2006 and 2007, Michelin awarded the restaurant a one-star rating in its guide to San Francisco Bay Area dining.^[3]

Contents 1 Inspirations and history 2 Legacy 2.1 Culinary Innovations 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Inspirations and history

Named after a character in a Marcel Pagnol film trilogy, Chez Panisse grew out of Waters' interest in the possibilities of using fresh, locally grown ingredients, inspired by her 1965 visit to France, where she ostensibly went to study at the Sorbonne but was seduced by the cuisine. A trip to the south of France that spring, with its cooking based on fresh herbs, vegetables and olive oil, would prove especially influential, as would a visit to Brittany, where she ate fresh mussels and buckwheat crêpes and dined at a small restaurant in an old stone house that crystallized her sense of what good food could be. Waters was influenced less by grand Parisian restaurants that served a predictable menu than by more modest establishments whose chefs visited the markets each day and invented the meal on the spot. La cuisine du marché, market cooking, relies on improvisation and experimentation and puts shopping on an equal footing with technique.^[4]

After Waters returned to Berkeley, she cooked for friends by combining French cooking techniques with ingredients grown nearby and in season, rather than imported or frozen. She co-founded the restaurant in 1971. Paul Aratow, a faculty member in comparative literature at the University of California who had lived extensively in France, was a 50% partner in the original restaurant. He planned the reconstruction of an old Berkeley apartment house, supervised the construction of the restaurant, managed the kitchen and "back-of-house" and was the original chef de cuisine. Aratow derived his extensive knowledge of cooking from the classic French cookbook, La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange, which he translated into English years later (Ten Speed Press). Aratow sold his share of Chez Panisse after a few years when he moved to Los Angeles to become a film producer.

Waters wrote in 1980:

“

Chez Panisse began with our doing the very best we could do with French recipes and California ingredients, and has evolved into what I like to think of as a celebration of the very finest of our regional food products. The recipes of Elizabeth David and Richard Olney provided a starting point and inspiration to us; and we soon realized that the similarity of California's climate to that of the south of France gives us similar products that require different interpretations and executions. My one unbreakable rule has always been to use only the freshest and finest ingredients available.[5]

”

Chez Panisse now consists of a downstairs restaurant serving a daily fixed-price dining menu and an upstairs cafe with a less expensive menu and a more informal atmosphere. With the restaurant's fame, the cafe has come to embody Waters' original idea for Chez Panisse as a place to hang out with friends.^[4]

Over the years, Waters' role at Chez Panisse has been that of proprietor, iron-willed visionary, and taster-in-chief, rather than chef or businesswoman. Biographer Thomas McNamee has characterized the restaurant's history as bipolar, with triumphs alternating with disasters leading to more successes. This cycle could be seen in the aftermath of a March 1982 fire that came within 10 minutes of destroying the building. Influenced by the book A Pattern Language, Waters collaborated with co-author Christopher Alexander on a redesign that removed the partially burned wall previously separating the kitchen from the dining room. Today, the former is clearly viewable from the latter, and diners interested in the kitchen and its cooking are often invited in. Famous diners include the Dalai Lama and President Bill Clinton. With the help of Alice Waters, filmmaker Werner Herzog cooked his shoe at Chez Panisse, eating it at the nearby UC Theater before the premier of the film Gates of Heaven, an event recorded in the documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.

[edit] Legacy

Beyond its broad influence on American cuisine, Chez Panisse is directly responsible for the success of many prominent chefs and the founding of a number of notable food-related businesses.

• Acme Bread Company, a pioneer of the artisan bread movement and the restaurant's bread supplier, whose founder was the restaurant's first in-house baker from 1979-1983.^[6]
• Dianne Dexter, founder of Artisan baker Metropolitan Bread Company, was Pastry Chef at Chez Panisse.^[6]
• Head chef Jeremiah Tower, whose first professional cooking job was at Chez Panisse, later opened the landmark Stars and is along with Waters and Wolfgang Puck credited with inventing California Cuisine.^[7]
• Mark Miller, chef after Jeremiah Tower, left for Berkeley's Santa Fe Bar and Grill, then later opened the Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe, New Mexico as the first of a string of Southwestern-themed restaurants throughout the United States, including a Coyote Cafe in Las Vegas, Nevada^[8] and Red Sage in Washington, DC.
• Paul Bertolli, Chef from 1982-1992, was executive chef of Oliveto in Oakland, California from 1993 until 2005 before forming Fra' Mani, a maker of Salumi for wholesale and retail sales. ^[9]
• Chez Panisse alumni Richard Mazzera, Dennis Lapuyade, and Stephen Singer, who in 1998 founded César, a popular tapas restaurant next door^[10]
• Judy Rodgers and Gilbert Pilgram, the two chef-owners of Zuni Cafe in San Francisco, California, are both alumni of Chez Panisse.^[11]
• Deborah Madison, who worked with Judy Rodgers at lunchtime, later opened Greens Restaurant and became a cookbook star.^[8]
• Lindsey Remolif Shere, pastry chef from the restaurant's founding until her retirement in 1997, along with daughter Thérèse, and friend Kathleen Stewart (also of Chez Panisse), opened Downtown Bakery and Creamery in Healdsburg, California in 1987.^[12]
• Peggy Smith ran the cafe at Chez Panisse from 1980 to 1997, before leaving to form Cowgirl Creamery, maker of cheeses including Red Hawk, as well as a cheese retailer in the Bay Area and Washington, DC.^[13]
• Jonathan Waxman, after getting his start at Chez Panisse, opened Michael's in Santa Monica, California, Buds, Hulot's, Washington Park, and Barbuto in New York City (where he partnered with and mentored future Food Network star Bobby Flay), Jams in London, England, and Table 29 in Napa, California.^[14]
• Mary Canales, former pastry chef, owns and operates Ici, a gourmet ice creamery in Berkeley, CA.

Other alumni who went on to become chef-owners of renowned restaurants include Charlie Hallowell, chef-owner of local pizza restaurant Pizzaiolo, Michael Tusk of Quince, Mary Jo Thoresen of Jojo, Gayle Pirie of Foreign Cinema, Christopher Lee of eccolo, Joyce Goldstein of Square One, Amaryll Schwertner of Boulettes Larder, and Alison Barakat of Bakesale Betty's, all in the San Francisco Bay Area,^[15] and Mark Peel of Campanile Restaurant in Los Angeles, California.^[8] In addition, April Bloomfield, the head chef of The Spotted Pig in New York City, cooked for a time at Chez Panisse.

[edit] Culinary Innovations

• California-style pizza, which later became an international staple of fast food, frozen dinners, and restaurant chains, was invented at the cafe in 1980.^[16]

• Goat Cheese Salad: first offered in the late 1970s, the chèvre rounds were coated in bread crumbs and baked, then served with mesclun.^[17]

• In-house carbonated tap water: this filtered version of the East Bay Municipal Utility District offering first replaced conventional bottled water at the restaurant in summer 2006.^[18]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official site
• Interactive Map of Chez Panisse in Gourmet Ghetto: MondoMap
• The Green Gourmets: The Evolution of Chez Panisse
• The Edible Schoolyard: Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Foundation at JUST CAUSE Magazine