Vote With Our Forks!
Alice Waters is not mincing words
In this fraught presidential election year, Alice Waters is not mincing words.
A lefty political activist since the 1960s, founding chef/owner of Chez Panisse since 1971 and non-stop crusader for local, seasonal food grown by regenerative farmers, Waters is doing what she can to elect Kamala Harris.
This is why she tells those who care about health, nutrition, climate change and reducing hunger and poverty worldwide that “It’s really important for us to vote with our forks.”
The Julia Child Award
On October 17, at age 80, a joyfully emotional Waters accepted the 10 th annual Julia Child Award at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington DC as more than 300 guests—many of them longtime culinary friends and colleagues – cheered loudly.
Previous awardee Jose Andres said from the stage that Waters teaches and encourages “all of us to search for answers, to make us better cooks and chefs and smarter eaters.” He recalled an achingly simple desert of three dates served at the café above Chez Panisse (he couldn’t get a reservation in the main dining room), hailing her voice in and out of the kitchen as “soft but powerful.”
Waters noted that “this is the most important moment in the world, and we have the opportunity to do something.”
In presenting the award, cookbook author and longtime friend Joan Nathan said pointedly, “It’s about time….Alice doesn’t have an empire nor does she want one.”
But Waters does have a large, loyal following and an idealist’s zeal to change the world, including serving food in school cafeterias from local, regenerative sources rather than Big Agriculture.
Ask Waters about the award from the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary arts before the ceremony, and her voice quivers.
“I am very emotional about it because I met Julia Child,” who died 20 years ago. “In one way I don’t think Chez Panisse could have been accepted if it hadn’t been for Julia Child’s ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking,’” Waters says. That 1961 book inspired the wildly popular PBS show, “The French Chef,” which aired from 1963-73 and is still in reruns.
“I loved her television programs and the way she always empowered people to do it, and then sat at the table with them to eat it, because it’s not just about the cooking but the sitting together,” Waters recalls during our recent podcast interview.
Like Child, Waters Fell in Love With Food in France
Her culinary epiphany began in Paris during her junior year abroad, where she skipped classes to travel throughout France soaking up local cuisine, wine and culture. By the time she returned to California, she was a “Slow Food’’ evangelist, especially fond of mesclun salads made with just-picked young greens lightly dressed in vinaigrette.
At Chez Panisse, she planted mesclun behind the restaurant and ultimately gave seeds to the local farmers she patronized so everyone could enjoy memorable salads. She even brought mesclun to a New York event featuring Playboy magazine’s top 25 American restaurants. Her male colleagues produced elaborate, edible constructions. Waters went minimalist, arranging her beloved little leaves in a salad bowl borrowed from James Beard. The media took note, much to her surprise and delight.
The fellowship of the table has always been part of the Chez Panisse DNA, where the first fixed-price meal of pate baked in pastry, duck with olives, a green salad and an almond tart cost $3.95, or about $23 today.
But even if you manage to snag a coveted reservation, a fixed-price dinner now runs $175. She attributes that extreme jump to the Berkeley restaurant’s generous salaries and benefits, as well as inflation. A long list of distinguished alumni passed through Chez Panisse, including
, Deborah Madison, , Samin Nosrat and .For just $5 a month or $50 a year, join The American Table and participate in a media revolution that explores the powerful intersections of politics, food, and culture. Your paid subscription directly supports our dedicated team based in New York, Washington DC, and Atlanta, allowing us to continue producing award-winning content that informs, inspires, and ignites meaningful conversations.
Alice in Washington
Waters made several appearances during her DC visit, including a “Dinner For Democracy” fundraiser for Harris, where tickets ranged from $500 to $5,000. Donors packed Centrolina restaurant to sample the delicious bits prepared by owner-chef Amy Brandwein and 10 other restaurateurs and chefs offered delicious bites from owner-chef Amy Brandwein and 10 other prominent food-scene locals.
Waters was not a headliner simply because she knows Harris, an avid home cook. Rather, the unapologetically liberal crusader is convinced this election will be “more important than any other moment in history.” At stake, she contends, is everything from worsening environmental disasters to escalating mass production of “fast, cheap and easy” food that harms consumers and threatens small-scale, regenerative farmers who enrich, rather than deplete the soil.
Waters is no stranger to the nation’s capital. In 2009, she started Sips and Suppers to fund local anti-hunger and anti-homeless groups, along with Jose Andres, the famed chef and World Central Kitchen founder, and writer Joan Nathan, who just published her 12th cookbook, “My Life in Recipes.”
The Edible Schoolyard Project
But what may be Waters’ proudest non-profit legacy took root in Berkeley in 1995, where she started the first Edible Schoolyard Project at a public middle school. Using her Montessori teacher training to engage all the senses of students, their work in the garden and kitchen reinforces every academic subject. Teaching kids to raise, harvest and eat what they grow at school also provides a way to combat the hunger and poverty that impede their ability to learn, says Waters.
Today there are 6,500 Edible Schoolyard Projects around the world, but there is at least one small cloud on the horizon. Last month, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a long story suggesting there are problems afoot in California, from an ex-employe citing a toxic work environment in Stockton to a precipitous drop in revenue and assets at the Edible School Project foundation.
Waters shrugs off the story, calling her non-profit’s financial woes a casualty of Covid. “I thought about the difficult times we have all been in since the pandemic. There is no question it’s been difficult to find funding for non-profits…I would never, ever allow the Edible Schoolyard Project to fail.”
As for her legacy, she cites one cherished contribution in her memoir, “Coming to my Senses: the Making of a Counterculture Cook:”
“I think if there is one thing I am responsible for in this country, something that I can take a little credit for, it’s the propagation of real salad in the United States.”
loved this one!