Alice Waters and Chez Panisse
by Thomas McNamee
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas McNameeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-02-26
ISBN: 0143113089
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse
Book Review: A great short story, but long on the read
Summary: 3 Stars
I just finished the book and although I was engaged in the story the first half of the book, the 2nd half really dragged. Maybe if you have had the great pleasure to dine at Alice's restaurant, perhaps the story would have kept your attention better than mine. It's interesting to learn about the evolution of fine dining in this country and the recent movement for slow food. Alice Waters is a hero for her work way beyond the walls of her restaurant. However, the writing was inconsistent.
Summary of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse
The first authorized biography of "the mother of American cooking" (The New York Times)This adventurous book charts the origins of the local "market cooking" culture that we all savor today. When Francophile Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971, few Americans were familiar with goat cheese, cappuccino, or mesclun. But it wasn't long before Waters and her motley coterie of dreamers inspired a new culinary standard incorporating ethics, politics, and the conviction that the best-grown food is also the tastiest. Based on unprecedented access to Waters and her inner circle, this is a truly delicious rags-to-riches saga.
You can't tell the story of Chez Panisse, Berkeley's famed restaurant, without relating that of its diminutive founder, proprietor, and sometime chef, Alice Waters. This is what Thomas McNamee does most handily in his Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, a chronicle that begins with the seat-of-the-pants opening night of the "counterculture" venture in 1971, and ends 35 years later with Waters's restaurant an American institution--one credited with birthing California Cuisine, a style devoted to simplicity, freshness and seasonality. The book also limns, with tasty gossip, the ever-evolving Chez Panisse family, including the cook-artisans uniquely responsible for dish creation; follows the attempts, mostly failed, to put the restaurant on sound financial footing; shows how dishes and menus get made; and of course pursues Waters as she broadens her commitment to "virtuous agriculture" by establishing ventures like The Edible Schoolyard and The Yale Sustainable Food Project.
The success of Chez Panisse--Gourmet magazine named it the best American restaurant in 2002--has everything to do with Waters, yet she remains an elusive protagonist. Sophisticated yet naive, professional and amateur, hard-driving but emotionally blurry, she invites reader interest but doesn't always satisfy it, as least as presented here. If McNamee cannot quite bring her to life, and if his tale lacks an insider's full conversance with his subject, he still engages readers in the considerable drama of people finding their way--blunderingly, with talented intent--to something new. With menus, narrated recipes, and photographs throughout, the book is vital reading for anyone interested in food, period. --Arthur Boehm
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