Alice Waters

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Alice Waters

Waters at Viader Vinyards in Napa, California, 2007
Born April 28, 1944 (1944-04-28) (age 64)
Chatham, NJ
Cooking style California

Alice Louise Waters (born April 28, 1944 in Chatham, New Jersey) is an American chef and co-owner of Chez Panisse, the original "California Cuisine" restaurant in Berkeley, California, as well as the informal Café 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 at the King Middle School in Berkeley. 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[citation needed].

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[citation needed].

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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,” says Alice. “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 located at the corner of Cedar and San Pablo in Berkeley.

[edit] Books

[edit] Board memberships

[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.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced on May 28, 2008 that Waters will be inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. The induction ceremony will take place December 15 and she will be inducted alongside 11 other legendary Californians.

[edit] Interesting facts

  • Alice Waters was the chef who cooked the shoe that film director Werner Herzog eats in the film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
  • She was briefly married to French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin.
  • She was married to Stephen Singer, "an importer of Italian olive oil and [Chez Panisse]'s wine buyer.[1] Stephen's brother Mark is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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