JAY and the CULINARY world: Looking into the life of CHEF ALICE WATERS

I.INTRODUCTION

Alice Waters was born on April 28, 1944 in Chatham Borough, New Jersey. She is a chef, author, activist and the proprietor of Chez Panisse. She is an American pioneer of a culinary philosophy that cooking should be produced with the finest and freshest seasonal ingredients that are produced sustainably and locally. She also believes that a food economy should be “good, clean, and fair.” Chef Alice Waters promote the local goods and the importance of serving the highest quality products according to the season. Her diner, Chez Panisse is a living proof of her legacy which produces foods that came from fresh and pure ingredients. Over the course of nearly forty years, Chez Panisse also helped the community of local farmers and ranchers to supply the ingredients for the restaurant.

Chez Panisse opened in 1971. It is the epitome of her success. It is recognized to be one of the best restaurants in the world. It has been consistently ranked among the World's 50 Best Restaurants. Waters has been also recognized as one of the most influential people in food for the past few years. Another chefs like Stephanie Alexander, David Chang, Suzanne Goin, Rick Bayless, Judy Rodgers, Scott Peacock, Molly McCook, Rose Gray, Skye Gyngell,and Frank Stitt had noted that Waters is a great influence on their work. She has been called the mother of American food and the pioneer of California Cuisine. She is currently one of the most visible supporters and advocate of the organic food movement, and has been using organic ingredients for over 40 years. Waters believes that eating organic foods free from herbicides and pesticides, is essential for both taste and the health of the environment and local communities.

Because of her beliefs and practices, she contributed a lot in the culinary industry. She made her own name and became affiliated with different well known organizations for food industry. She also won lot of awards and continuously inspires other people. She is consistently active in her advocacy about the use of organic and fresh ingredients, healthy eating and environmental friendly cooking.

II.BACKGROUND

Alice Waters was born on April 28, 1944, in Chatham, New Jersey. She is the second of four daughters in her family. She is the daughter of Charles Waters, a business psychologist and management consultant and Margaret Water. She got married twice, first to French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin, and then to Stephen Singer, an importer of Italian olive oil and Chez Panisse’s wine buyer. She had one daughter named Fanny Singer and was born in 1983.
She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and received a degree in French Cultural Studies in 1967. In her stay at UC Berkeley, she studied abroad in France, where she lived near the market street. This is where she got inspired to shop for local produce and prepared fresh foods. Also, during her time at Berkeley, Waters became active in the Free Speech Movement in response to a campus-wide ban on political involvement and activism. One of the student leaders named, Mario Savio, had a profound influence on Waters. Also in that time, Waters worked on the congressional campaign of Robert Scheer, an anti-Vietnam War politician. She often cooked fellow campaigners, and for the first time was building her reputation as a cook in addition to an activist. She never stopped in provoking change and continuously remained constant over her advocacies in life as evident by her current works in increasing awareness in the use of organic foods.
After graduation in 1967, Waters worked as a Montessori teacher in London England. She was also a cooking columnist for a radical newspaper run by some friends, and sometimes fed its staff. When she eventually returned to Europe, she travelled in Turkey and France. Her work in Montessori helped her cultivate her advocacies because of the Montessori principles, which emphasize practical and hands-on activities for children, which engages children in the preparation of fruits and vegetables with the supervision of their teachers. After her worked in London, she travelled to Turkey, which held a great impact on her approach to hospitality and her respect for local communities. From Turkey, Waters then returned to France. Her travels solidified her passion about food and French. It was her travels across France, that she first became enthralled by French food and how Europeans seemed to savor a meal. She got inspired and return to California and open her own restaurant. Elizabeth David, the English cookbook author and writer and Richard Olney, an American authority on French food who spent much of his life living in France, had a great influence on her cooking.
After that, Waters started building her restaurant. She borrowed $10,000 and opened Chez Panisse in 1971 in an old house on Shattuck Avenue. The word "Panisse" came from a character in a trilogy of works by French film-maker Marcel Pagnol. She got inspired and used those terms because she love Pagnol’s movie. As the head chef, she made her own menu and relied on local growers to bring her ingredients and supply. "It took us a long time to become profitable, because we didn't know anything about running a restaurant," she admitted to Roman Czajkowsky in Nation's Restaurant News some years later. "It was very rocky for the first four years." By the end of the decade Waters expandd her restaurant, and build the Chez Panisse Café opened in 1980. It offered a broader menu with a focus on foods from around the Mediterranean basin. In early 1980s she was being hailed as the pioneer of the new California Cuisine. The New York Times ' Craig Claiborne, was an early fan of Chez Panisse, and in a 1981 article he commended Waters and her visionary ideas.
Waters was dedicated to use organic ingredients. Waters has become an advocate for organic foods because of the belief that they are both better for the environment and for people's health in addition to tasting superior to commercially-grown, non-organic foods. Waters became an organic advocate by accident, claiming that what she was originally after the taste but ended up with the collaboration of local farmers who produce organic ingredients.
Gourmands and restaurant critics from France visited Chez Panisse and gave it a high marks. Waters' became famous and led to her first book how-to guide, the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook which was published in 1982. Several other titles followed over the next two decades. Despite of the fame and many companies making generous offers for an endorsement, Waters avoided becoming a celebrity chefs and never had her own television show, nor signature cookware or even line of supermarket foods. She also declined to replicate and open for franchise Chez Panisse. Her last expansion for the restaurant was a Berkeley take-out food counter she named Cafe Fanny after both her daughter.
Now after so many years, Chez Panisse is still operating with a staff of over 100 people, including chefs, pastry chefs, and interns. It also has become one of the most awarded and renowned restaurants in the world. It was recognized as the Best Restaurant in America by Gourmet Magazine in 2001, and Waters was named Best Chef in America by the James Beard Foundation in 1992. She was the first woman to win this award.
In addition, she was the first woman to won the lifetime achievement award given by the S. Pellegrino 50 Best Restaurants association. Waters was able to write a lot of books and she became one of the most influential people in food i North America. She was called the “mother of American cooking”.
Up to this date, Alice Waters continue to inspires others and continues her advocacy. Her restaurant is very famous and she is now considered as one of the grear foundation of the culinary world.

III. ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND CONTRIBUTION TO THE CULINARY WORLD

i. AWARDS and AFFILIATION

Over the years Alice has garnered countless of awards, affiliations and accolades

California Hall of Fame, 2008
Co-recipient, with Kofi Annan, Global Environmental Citizen Award, 2008
Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007
Lifetime Achievement Award, Restaurant magazine’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants, 2007
Founder, Sustainable Food Program at the American Academy in Rome, 2006
Force for Nature Award, Natural Resources Defense Council, 2004
Founder, Yale Sustainable Food Project, Berkeley College, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 2003
Vice President, Slow Food International, Bra, Italy, 2003 Rachel Carson Environmental Award from the National Nutritional Foods Association, 2002
Chez Panisse: Best Restaurant in America, Gourmet Magazine, 2001
Robert Mondavi Food and Wine Award, Collins School of Hospitality Management, 2001
Lifetime Achievement Award, Bon Appetit Magazine, American Food and Entertaining Awards, 2000
Pellegrino Artusi Award, City of Forlimpopoli, Italy, 2000
Lifetime Achievement Award, Ritz-Carlton Resorts, 1999
Alumna of the Year, University of California at Berkeley, 1999
Excellence in Education Award, from Senator Barbara Boxer, 1998
Humanitarian of the Year, James Beard Foundation, 1997
National Education Diplomate Award, Chicago, Illinois, 1996
Honorary Degree from Mills College, Oakland, California, 1994
Best Chef in America and Best Restaurant in America, James Beard Foundation, 1992
Senator Barbara Boxer Top Ten Woman Award, 1991
Le Tour du Monde en 80 Toques, Metziner & Varaut, 1991
Restaurant and Business Leadership Award, Restaurants & Institutions Magazine, 1987
Les Meilleurs Chefs du Monde No. 10. Cuisine et Vins de France, 1986
The James Beard Special Achievement Award, 1985
The Cook's Magazine Top 50 Who's Who, 1982

ii. SELECTED WRITINGS

Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, Random House, 1982.
Chez Panisse Vegetables, Morrow Cookbooks, 1996.
Fanny at Chez Panisse: A Child's Restaurant Adventures with 46 Recipes, Morrow Cookbooks, 1997.
Chez Panisse Café Cookbook, Morrow Cookbooks, 1999.
Chez Panisse Cooking, Peter Smith Pub Inc, 2001.
Chez Panisse Fruit, Morrow Cookbooks, 2002.

iii. GREATEST CONTRIBUTION IN THE CULINARY WORLD

Waters has contributed a lot in culinary world. She is an advocate of organic farming and of the use of the freshest and finest ingredients in cooking. She is an activist against and a humanitarian. She doesn’t promote serving foods that use killing of endangered animals like sharks fin soup and others. Her greatest achievement is the stability of her restaurant that shows what she is fighting and living for. And part of her legacy is the Chez Panisse Foundation which is founded in 1996 with the objective of funding similar "Edible Schoolyards" in different schools. The project is called “the School Lunch Initiative”, and the program is for the entire curriculum. Students grow the produce, learn kitchen skills while preparing it, and then benefit from eating healthy meals in the school cafeteria. The Edible Schoolyard was built for a lifetime promotion of healthy eating habits.

Waters believed her mission is to fight one of the biggest problems in American diet. The number of obese children is very high and a lot of children are getting obese each year. It is due to the fact that a lot of people has an over-reliance and consumption on convenience foods and fast-food meals. For her, it was a food issue but more or less related to personal moral values or political beliefs. "If you buy fast food, you're supporting a whole other vision of the world," she told Dorothy Kalins in Town & Country. "These companies are out there destroying natural resources and limiting biodiversity. They're teaching kids to be wasteful."

Waters and her Foundation attracted influential supporters, which includes California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver. Waters' future goal is to have an Edible Schoolyard and School Lunch Initiative program in all California public schools some day.

Waters is also an active supporter of the Slow Food movement, which calls itself the antithesis to "fast" food. Its members from several countries, promotes locally grown or raised food, invites farmers in the adoption of biodiversity-protective agricultural policies, and work to educate consumers about food choices. Despite her long list of achievements, Waters remains modest and humble about her influence on American cuisine. In her interview for Restaurant Business, writer Kevin Farrell asked her what she thought her most significant impact on dining habits might be. "I think the fact that you can get a halfway decent salad in many restaurants today," she replied, "is an indication that some of the things I believe have taken hold."

iv. WHY THIS CHEF IS POPULAR AND A BIG DEAL?

Chef Alice Water, aside from all her accomplishments, writings and books, is very popular because of her advocacy in the use of organic foods. She is one of the many who promotes good eating habits. If not for her and others, we may not eat fresh green salads and a lot of children especially in California are obese and continue their bad eating habits. She continuously inspire other people with what she believes is right. She continuously gives awareness to people on how to be healthy by having good eating habits.

IV. CONCLUSION

Chef Alice Waters inspires me in a lot of ways. She inspired me to be an advocate of green chef and promoting healthy lifestyle thru good eating habits. I realized that I should not just be cooking passionately but as well care for all the people who will eat my foods. It is important to let people be aware that we must eat good and organic foods. It is important to be advocate of change. Also, being a chef, it is not our only duty to cook good meals but also to have a heart that we must cook for them to be healthy and happy.

With the continuous growth of the fast food chains, we must give people awareness of what they are dealing with. I realized that I, myself is also a consumer of fast food chains. It is not wrong to eat in fast food chains once in a while but it is better for us to eat fresh and healthy organic foods. A lot of diseases is related and linked with bad eating habits, so we must stop now and start to eat healthy.

Also, as a green chef, we must avoid wasting. We should always reuse, recycle and reduce wastes. Our environment is greatly affected by all our actions so we must take care of it. We must never waste and take things for granted. We must make our actions to save the environment and be healthy as well before its too late.

After learning the life of Alice Waters, I was amazed and inspired by all of her accomplishments. I never realized that she would influence me this much. At first, I had no idea who she is and what she do. I don’t really even now her. I am thankful that I was able to learn from her life and her works. Her life story makes me want this culinary course even more. I want to be like her. I don’t want to be just a chef but to be someone who cares for others. Now, she is one of my idol that I would always look up to.