Waters, Alice

Alice Louise Waters was born on April 28, 1944, the second daughter of Margaret and Charles Waters of Chatham, New Jersey. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, at the height of the Free Speech Movement. In January 1965, Waters and a friend, Sarah Flanders, went to study in Paris and discovered the delicious variety and low price of French restaurant meals. Alice Waters was changed forever.

The friends traveled around the Mediterranean and found food that was locally grown, gloriously fresh, boldly seasoned, and deliciously prepared, without the fuss of French grande cuisine. Waters returned to Berkeley in 1966, determined to open a cafe that served the food they had eaten abroad. After graduation, Waters worked as a waitress and wrote a food column. She became a teacher at the local Montessori school and received Montessori certification in 1969.

In 1971, Waters found a restaurant space in a small house in Berkeley, California. Family and friends [Page 1542]invested time and money in the enterprise, and ownership was shared. The restaurant was named after the old sailmaker, Panisse, in Marcel Pagnol's film The Fanny Trilogy.

Chez Panisse opened on August 18, 1971. Ms. Waters and her chef, Victoria Kroyer, had no culinary training and the staff lacked experience. One hundred twenty meals were served the first night, and customers had to be turned away. The restaurant was a great success but was a financial failure, as income was unable to cover expenses. Fiscal difficulties lasted for years. The restaurant finally became financially stable in the 1980s. Waters's first book, The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, was published in 1982, and eight more books followed. All are coauthored, but her name is prominent on each cover.

It is notable that when Chez Panisse first opened there were no farmer's markets in most American cities. Waters had to search for fresh and humanely raised ingredients, and she cultivated friendships with small suppliers of such products. Even in the beginning, she was committed to the use of very high quality, carefully grown, organic ingredients. Local farmers, orchardists, ranchers, hunters, anglers, and foragers were the sources for food at Chez Panisse.