Alice Waters
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| Born | April 28, 1944 Chatham, NJ |
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| Cooking style | California |
| Restaurants | Chez Panisse, Café Fanny (Berkeley, CA) |
Alice Louise Waters (born 28 April 1944 in Chatham, New Jersey), one of the best-known and most influential American chefs since the 1970s, is credited with single-handedly creating a culinary revolution in America. She is the founder and co-owner of Chez Panisse, the original "California Cuisine" restaurant in Berkeley, California, as well as the informal Cafe Fanny in West Berkeley. A champion of locally-grown and fresh ingredients, she has been credited with creating and developing California cuisine and has written or co-written several books on the subject, including the influential Chez Panisse Cooking (written with then-chef Paul Bertolli). She has also promoted organic and small farm products heavily in her restaurants, in her books, and in her Edible Schoolyard program in the public schools. Her ideas for "edible education" have been introduced into the entire Berkeley school system, and with the current crisis in childhood obesity, have attracted the attention of the national media.
Waters advocates eating locally produced foods that are in season, because she believes that the international shipment of mass-produced food is both harmful to the environment and produces an inferior product for the consumer.
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[edit] Education
Waters' interest in the possibilities of fresh local ingredients were inspired by her visit to France in the summer of 1964 and, especially, a particular meal she had in Brittany
"I’ve remembered this dinner a thousand times,” she says. “The chef, a woman, announced the menu: cured ham and melon, trout with almonds, and raspberry tart. The trout had just come from the stream and the raspberries from the garden. It was this immediacy that made those dishes so special." (From The Green Gourmets)
Waters received her BA degree in French Cultural Studies in 1967 from the University of California, Berkeley. She then trained at the Montessori School in London, followed by a year traveling throughout France. She opened Chez Panisse in 1971. Her daughter, Fanny, was born in 1983, and a year later Waters opened a stand-up breakfast and lunch restaurant called Café Fanny.
[edit] Books
Alice is author and co-author of several books, including the following:
- California Fresh Harvest: A Seasonal Journey through Northern California (California Fresh) (with Gina Gallo, the Inc. Junior League of Oakland-East Bay, et al)
- Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook
- Chez Panisse Cooking (with Paul Bertolli)
- Chez Panisse Fruit
- Chez Panisse Vegetables
- Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook
- Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza, Calzone
- Fanny at Chez Panisse : A Child's Restaurant Adventures with 46 Recipes , a storybook and cookbook for children
- Slow Food : The Case for Taste (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History) (with Carlo Petrini and William McCuaig)
[edit] Board memberships
- Founder and Director of the Chez Panisse Foundation
- International Governor of Slow Food
- Visiting Dean at the French Culinary Institute
- Honorary Trustee of COPIA in Napa
- Board Member of the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.
- Waters serves on the steering committee of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, which brings locally grown, seasonal and organic food to students at Yale.
[edit] Awards and honors
Gourmet magazine awarded Chez Panisse restaurant as the Best Restaurant in America in 2001. In addition, Waters has won other honors.
- Listed as one of the ten best chefs in the world in 1986 by Cuisine et Vins de France .
- Best Chef in America by the James Beard Foundation in 1992
- James Beard Humanitarian Award in 1997
- Bon Appetit magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000
