Alice Waters |
About forty years ago a young lady started a movement that was geared to locally grown, fresh and organic food. Alice Waters is a well known restaurateur and food activist whom owns a famous Berkley-based restaurant, Chez Panisse. Chez Panisse has become one of the most famous dining spots in America and is known for changing its menu daily to reflect what is in season and this also gives her a reason to visit the local farms and farmers markets to build her menu.
When it comes to food, Alice Waters is a legend. At age 65, she has done more to change how we Americans eat, cook and think about food than anyone since Julia Child.
As a child, Alice and her family rarely ever went out to dine in a restaurant and she was very picky as to what she actually ate. "My mother made a lot of things because she thought they'd be healthy for us," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "There were some very unfortunate experiences with whole wheat bread and bananas. I always tried to get rid of that sandwich and eat one of my friends' lunches." (CNN)
It wasn’t until Waters took a semester off from Berkeley to study abroad in Paris when she began to view food in a different light. "It was really an awakening for me," she says. "I felt like I had never really eaten before. I had liked certain things but I didn't understand how it fit into people's lives in a delicious way. When I went [to Paris] and walked past the markets and ate in the little restaurants, it was like a revelation. ... So when I came home, I felt like I could really make this happen in my own life."
Waters was only 27 years old in 1971 when she opened her French bistro Chez Panisse in Berkeley,
California and today is considered to be one of the finest restaurants not just in the United States but in
the world.
Over the past 40 years, the restaurant has received honors from Gourmet magazine and Michelin and inspired hundreds of prominent chefs across the world to use locally sourced...