Alice Waters
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Waters at Viader Vinyards in Napa, California, 2007 |
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| Born | April 28, 1944 Chatham, NJ |
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| Cooking style | California |
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Current restaurant(s)
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Alice Louise Waters (born April 28, 1944) 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.[1] She is a leading advocate of a multi-billion dollar stimulus package that works to give every child in the public school system free breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack.[2] She states that taxpayers should endorse this package because we are already paying for it in terms of our health.
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] Personal
Alice Waters was born on April 28, 1944 in Chatham, New Jersey. In 1967, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in French Cultural Studies from the University of California at Berkeley.[3] She then trained at the Montessori School in London, followed by a year traveling throughout France. She opened Chez Panisse in 1971.
Waters has been married twice — briefly to French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin;[4] and to Stephen Singer, an importer of Italian olive oil and Chez Panisse's wine buyer.[5] Her daughter, Fanny, was born in 1983,[6][7] 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] Interest in fresh local ingredients
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." [8]
Her Chez Panisse Restaurant web page says: "All our produce, meat, poultry, and fish come from farms, ranches, and fisheries guided by principles of sustainability." [9]
[edit] Books
- California Fresh Harvest: A Seasonal Journey through Northern California (California Fresh) (with Gina Gallo, the Inc. Junior League of Oakland-East Bay, et al.)
- Waters, Alice. Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook. ISBN 0060175834.
- Waters, Alice; Paul Bertolli. Chez Panisse Cooking. ISBN 084467110X.
- Waters, Alice (2002). Chez Panisse Fruit. ISBN 9780060199579.
- Waters, Alice (1996). Chez Panisse Vegetables. ISBN 978-0060171476.
- Waters, Alice (1995). Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. ISBN 978-0679758181.
- Waters, Alice (1984). Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza, Calzone. ISBN 978-0679755364.
- Waters, Alice. Fanny at Chez Panisse : A Child's Restaurant Adventures with 46 Recipes. ISBN 978-0060928681., a storybook and cookbook for children
- Waters, Alice; Caro Petrini, William McCuaig. Slow Food : The Case for Taste (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History). ISBN 978-0231128452.
- Waters, Alice. The Art of Simple Food. ISBN 978-0307336798.
- Waters, Alice. The Edible Schoolyard. ISBN 978-0811862806.
[edit] Board memberships
- Founder and President 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 University 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
- Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2007
- Given Global Environmental Citizen Award by Harvard Medical School February 2008 together with Kofi Annan
- 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. She was among 12 inductees in 2008.[10]
- In 2009, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humanities by Princeton University.[11]
[edit] Trivia
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Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (May 2009) |
- Alice Waters cooked the shoe that film director Werner Herzog eats in the film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Dowd, Maureen (2009-04-28). "Chef Waters' vision becomes hot topic". New York Times in Sun Sentinel. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-28dowdsbapr28,0,7789755.story. Retrieved on 2009-05-15.
- ^ Waters, Alice; Heron, Katrina (2009-02-19). "No Lunch Left Behind". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/opinion/20waters.html. Retrieved on 2009-05-15. "Under the program, the United States Department of Agriculture gives public schools cash for every meal they serve — $2.57 for a free lunch, $2.17 for a reduced-price lunch and 24 cents for a paid lunch. In 2007, the program cost around $9 billion, a figure widely acknowledged as inadequate to cover food costs. But what most people don’t realize is that very little of this money even goes toward food. Schools have to use it to pay for everything from custodial services to heating in the cafeteria."
- ^ "About Alice Waters". ChezPanisse.com. http://www.chezpanisse.com/pgalice.html. Retrieved on June 14, 2009.
- ^ Garchik, Leah (January 15, 2008). "Entertainment column". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/15/DDTSUDAEG.DTL&hw=leah+garchik&sn=001&sc=1000. Retrieved on 14 June 2009. "....UC San Diego film Professor Jean-Pierre Gorin. Both were made Chevaliers des Arts et Lettres. Alice Waters, longtime Luddy friend and onetime Gorin wife, provisioned the party, bearing trays of hors d'oeuvres as she circulated among film-loving pals."
- ^ Burros, Marian (1996-08-14). "Alice Waters: Food Revolutionary". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/14/garden/alice-waters-food-revolutionary.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved on 2009-05-14.
- ^ Knickerbocker, Peggy (September 2003). "Educating Fanny". Food & Wine. http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/educating-fanny. Retrieved on 14 June 2009. "Visionary chef Alice Waters's daughter, Fanny, grew up eating figs and foie gras. Now a junior at Yale, she's cooking for herself and her friends, and becoming part of a culinary youthquake."
- ^ Lawrence, Jeanne (February 2008). "Legendary Chef Alice Waters honored at Raising Healthy Childre Gala". San Francisco Social Diary. http://www.nysocialdiary.com/node/4089. Retrieved on 14 June 2009.
- ^ Whiting, John (2002), The Green Gourmet: The Evolution of Chez Panisse, http://www.whitings-writings.com/essays/chez_panisse.htm, retrieved on 2009-05-16
- ^ Chez Panisse. "Cafe Menu". http://www.chezpanisse.com/pgcafemenu.html. Retrieved on 2009-05-14.
- ^ "2008 Inductees". California Museum. http://www.californiamuseum.org/exhibits/halloffame/inductees#2008. Retrieved on 2008-24-05.
- ^ {{cite web|url= http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/39/63E27/index.xml?section=topstories|title= Princeton awards five honorary degrees|accessdate= 2009-06-03|author= Eric Quiñones|date= 2009-06-02|publisher= Princeton
[edit] Further reading
- Mcnamee, Thomas. Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution. ISBN 9781594201158.
