hey, I want to hear more about your meals at chez panisse... and about your thoughts. More your thoughts. less NYT repost. 
(she teased)
make sure when you get the book, that you try out some stuff and let us know what you think.
I liked the part about who you fall in love with... me too by the way.
Holy Moly Jesse!! You are really starting to shine, I mean shine, as a writer. Writing so consistenly for the GNB has been so good for you. That third paragraph with the descriptions of wonderful and amazing feelings....I saw them and felt them too.
Man, I am going to go to this restaurant as soon as we can head out to SF. I am ashamed to admit that we had reservationas the last time we were out there and had to cancel them as we ran out of time. I will NOT do that again.
I am ordering her book as soon as I finish this.
Thank you again Jesse.
I heart you both.
*hugs*
abo... you CANCELED! sacrilege - stoning with fresh raspberries will commence.
no seriously, I would love love love love to go there... you must never admit to canceling again or my heart will break. 
TLG....No canceling again for me on this one. I promise! We are getting the bug to go to the wine country so I can see a trip out there for maybe early next year. February is a great time for SF.
ok, now I am getting jealous.
tonight I did have a nice meal. this sweet couple opened up an italian place in my tokyo neighborhood. It is small, simple, seasonal and friendly. I like the fugilli with olives, pork, tomatoes, and capers. YUM.
the restaurant I run Fujimamas also believes in fresh local, ingredients, and simple not too fussed over food. The owners even own an organic farm in hawaii. where the second fujimamas is located.
heritage varieties of veggies and live stock, great fresh food, well made. we also live the alice waters life, or try to. (though it is Quite hard in Tokyo)
Even as an avid cook I have to admit, despite frequent trips to the Bay Area in the past few years, I really haven't had much of a chance to sample the food, especially Chez Panisse.
Most of my travel there has been for business in Silicon Valley where the challenge is to find something edible without wasting too much time.
Thanks for reminding me I need to correct that. It is well past time I took a pleasure trip to the Bay Area and play tourist.
as dedicated rural arizona follower of slow food i adore, worship, and loves me some alice waters.
real food. food that tastes of the ground and the season.
all good stuff.
So where's that Coming Great Depression/Katie Bar the Door article? Looking forward to that. Gotta stock up on olives and plant those berries for when we're all living in 1900 House, eh? 
The Union Square Greenmarket.... that brings back memories of the summer and fall I worked in Manhattan and walked through the square every day to the client's office. Greenmarket days were wonderful days!!
Jesse:
That is some gorgeous-ass heartfelt writing. Well done!
Just to mention that the movement that Alice is part of is a reawakening and not any kind of revolution. My grandmother grew almost everything that could be grown in Pennsylvania and prepared it in many ways, but most of it was very simple and all organic. She came from the old country, Lithuania, did not speak English, but taught me most of what I now know about growing before I was even able to walk. I grow my plants in the tropics now. At least several times a day my mind returns to the period over 30 years ago before my grandmother died and I conjure up all of those flavors from the garden mulched with ash and ringed by all the herbs, the grapes, the apple tree, the complete miniature Eden.
Through all the 1950s and 1960s every summer I was in that garden. Alice is completely right about what she is promulgating. Grandma would approve.
PBS's American Masters series did a very nice bio on Alice Waters you might like to look up.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/american...e/
waters_a.html
The genesis of Chez Panisse in a student communal kitchen in Berkeley is very illuminating in the sense that the axis of food and politics has always been a part of her philosphy.
One of the projects she's been very involved with for the past decade of so is starting gardens in schools, neighborhoods, instutions like prisons, etc. With great success in each project. What's amazing to me is that it's like having to reinvent the wheel each time inspite of the fact that there's a long track record on the success of these sorts of projects.
The latest big deal at Chez Panisse is the pushing back against the privatization of water. They no longer use bottled water at all, due to the transportation costs (actual and environmental), corporate control of a vital resource, recycling containers etc. They use tap water (which admittedly in the Bay Area is very good out of the tap), with their own filters served in exclusively designed hand blow caraffs. Available in bubbly or still. They've managed to bring a growing number of high end restaurants along.
I've always thought one of the greatest jobs in the world would be one of their food "scroungers". The person who travels around the area to small farms/ranches/perveyors and samples and buys supplies for Chez Panisse. In the meantime Alice Waters for Secretary of Agriculture!
It's kind of funny to see Steve's "successors" talking up the San Fran-Berkeley-wine country food. Sure, Steve paid lip service to Alice Waters, big time, but he never publicly gave that area its due in terms of acknowledging how good the food is there. I highly recommend a trip there to anyone the least bit into food, and you don't even need to go to Chez Panisse, unless you feel like it. There's so many good restaurants within an hour or two of San Fran, including right within the city, that it's ridiculous. Expensive, too, but still ridiculous.
You could visit the Bay area for other reasons, too, of course, but there are so many good food options there it'd be crazy not to eat your way across town in addition to checking out the other interesting sites.
Also, "Nellcote" -- cool name. Okay, back to the food talk.
Okay, here's a story from me. When I first met my husband (was 1987) I liked to cook but really didn't consider myself a gourmet. I subscribed to a few food magazines and read them each month. He came over one time and said, "Hey, how'd you like to go to California?" Well, who wouldn't? The plan was we were to go to Sacramento and do some politicking with the Trial Lawyers Association. We decided to spend a few days in SF because neither of us had ever been there. So, the day before we were to leave, my Gourmet magazine showed up with an article about places to eat in the Bay area. (Timing really IS everything.) I took it with me and read it on the plane. When we got to SF, I suggested we eat at Kuleto's...it was very good. Then I suggested we go across the Bay Bridge to Oakland and eat at a Thai place named Plearn's...it was orgasmic.
He told me later that he knew I was the one for him...if I could go to a place I'd never been to and know all the great places to eat, then he was going to make sure I didn't get away.
Since then, we've eaten our way into many great places. The Internet sure does help you find a place that you might miss nowdays, but I'll have to give a print magazine the credit for my marriage.
I lived in the Bay Area for nearly 20 years. And I have never once been to Chez Panisse.
I avoided it for several reasons. One is that I lived on the other side of the bay, and didn't get to Berkeley more than two or three times a year. Especially when my kids were little, lining up a sitter for a place that you'd spent 90 minutes just getting to and back from didn't make any sense.
Another is that I heard the horror stories about the reservations. Six months in advance, maybe more. I thought about going for a special event -- a birthday or anniversary -- but there were great foodie places closer by that always seemed to get our business instead.
And then there was simply the money. In my 20s and 30s, spending $150-plus for a dinner for two was just beyond reach.
In the end, though, I think it was just the sheer yuppiness of it all that got to me. It was such an iconic place that a certain crowd would make a big deal about having been there -- and I wasn't interested in restaurants as a status game. (Still amn't.)
I've been to Greens a couple times (another legendary SF vegetarian haven, located inside Fort Mason), eaten the bread from Tassajara, and still make a point of finding a Peet's the minute I get off the plane. Great SF food experiences all.
But Chez Panisse always seemed like a party that was just doing fine without me. Jesse's almost making me sorry I missed it.
eaten the bread from Tassajara
Yeah, and if you think that's something, come up to Green Gulch, and sit down with the monks for dinner.
Oh...my...Gods. Just the smells alone are enough to drive you insane.
I love Green Gulch so much that I set entire scenes from Act 2 of my screenplay, Guru Trap there, just so we have an excuse to pay the San Francisco Zen Center enormous sums of money for the right to film on their beautiful property overlooking the Pacific, while having them make food for the crew. Oh...we'll be in heaven with our food for those days of shooting, yes we will.
If I ever just vanish and I don't go to Chile, look for me at Green Gulch.
Mrs. R. If the yuppies turned you off, just realize that it was not Alice, she couldn't be more well grounded and down to earth. I have heard her on a few interviews and she is simply lovely
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