Alice Waters and Chez Panisse

Note: I wrote this last spring, and explored finding a non-Cod home for it. What with the new Waters jawn dropping, I thought I would share my thoughts on the last Panisse communique.

Thomas McNamee, Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2007), 380 pp.

           One of the challenges in reviewing a biography is to review the book, rather than its subject. As often as not, reviews of biographies become mini-bios of the subject, rather than critiques of a particular biography. When the subject is Alice Waters, the temptation to take this approach is strong, especially as musing on the Organic Revolution seems to be an irresistible topic these days. However, if you are reading this review, you probably know the Alice Waters story, at least in its broad strokes: Young woman founds small restaurant in Berkeley in the early 1970s, starts culinary revolution.

            It might be easier to review Waters herself than this biography. Waters's impact on eating in America has been significant and positive. As a biography, Alice Waters and Chez Panisse is much less successful than its subject. Indeed, the relation between the book and its subject may tell us more about Waters than McNamee's text itself.

        Readers who come to this book hoping for Bourdainian grit, or an organic and sustainable West Coast iteration of Just Desserts, the dishy Martha Stewart bio, will be disappointed. McNamee makes no bones about his friendly approach:

"Cristina Salas-Porras, at the time Alice Waters's assistant, first approached me about writing this book, presumably on her boss's authority, and in that sense, it is "authorized," but I have had complete freedom throughout. Alice herself has been extremely generous with her time and resources. I have had unimpeded access to the Chez Panisse archives at the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, and to archives stored at the restaurant. Alice has granted me many hours of interviews…." (xv)

        Waters, indeed, is and remains an influential figure in the history of eating in America over the last thirty-plus years. As an interesting and complicated woman living through several interesting and complicated decades, one imagines a biographer might find more to do than buff her halo. Unfortunately, McNamee rarely reaches past this level. It would be hard to think of another contemporary biography that is as complicit in the mythology it seeks to describe.

        Even by the standards of the restaurant business, the history of Panisse is unusually convoluted, but McNamee toes the party line with a consistency one might find in Brezhnev-era columnist for Pravda. One of the most significant and controversial figures in the evolution of Chez Panisse is Jeremiah Tower. By all accounts, he played a critical role in the evolution of the restaurant. After a personal and professional falling-out with Waters, he left at the end of 1976. In 1984, he started his own restaurant, Stars:

"On the wall he hung a framed letter from Alice, written in happier times, praising him profusely. Displaying that letter, he told the Chronicle, was 'a little bit of malicious vengeance. People can see in her own handwriting just who is whose disciple.' He seems not to have known how self-degrading a gesture hanging that letter on the wall at stars was."

McNamee goes on to quote from a 1984 Times article by Marian Burros, pointing to what he calls "a vividly contrasting character," and characterizing her "gracious tone as that of a smiling winner." (206)

Moments like these are perhaps open to interpretation, but there are also holes in the narrative that will confound a reader who has been paying attention to the food world over the last several years. After an opening vignette describing the opening night in 1971, we learn

"Thirty-five years later, Alice Waters is arguably the most famous restaurateur in the United States, Chez Panisse the best-known restaurant. In 2001, Gourmet magazine deemed it the best restaurant in the nation; in the magazine's next assessment, in its October, 2006 issue, Chez Panisse fell to number two (behind a Chicago newcomer called Alinea).

Now, I would be inclined to disagree with the first assertion, especially, but they are qualified with an "arguably." However, if I can remember back that far, the big Panisse news of the fall of 2006 was not winning the silver from Gourmet, but finishing in the one-star peloton in the Michelin ratings, cheek by jowl with 22 other Bay Area spots, and behind four two-star spots and one three-star spot. When this news does appear, it is as a footnote. Towards the end of the book between a sustainable meal for Yale students, and an epic slow food feast in Italy, Waters is quoted as saying (the quote appears just after another mention of the 2001 Gourmet honor) "…all I ever wanted was to be like a little Michelin one-star restaurant."(p. 308) There is a footnote, and on p. 357 is a note that "in October, 2006, in its "red guide" for the San Francisco Bay Area, Michelin awarded Chez Panisse just that—one star. Based on my meal there in the spring of 06, the one star was generous.

         If you are writing a story of a restaurant that has an arc from 1971 through the fall of 2006, you would think that the one-starring from Bib would warrant more than a footnote – at the time, this rating was a surprise, and described as a rebuke in many quarters.

Utilmately, this book reads like an entry in the "as told to" genre of biographies, but its subtitle "The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution suggests that it purports to be more. However, MacNamee writes as if he enjoys being part of the Panisse in-crowd, and does not want to do anything to change that. To these sins of near-omission, he adds sins of commission, perpetrating what reads like an In Style magazine feature on Waters's home:

"A big oval table topped with marble sits at the sunny end of the kitchen, surrounded by mismatched wooden chairs. A corner cabinet houses thick pottery plates, also of differing but harmonious styles. A bay window looks out into the garden through a tangle of vines. On the shelf below the window is a clutter of antique cookbooks, art books, baskets, bottles." (312-313)

And so forth.   

There are bigger flaws than the fawning tone. In particular, readers of this book might get the impression that she is the revolution, rather than a revolutionary. My academic training makes me deeply skeptical of the kind of post hoc, ergo propter hoc logic that permeates this biography. McNamee gives the impression that here in 2007 anything you put in your mouth that does not come out of a can is thanks to Alice Waters. As recent books like the United States of Arugula, Organic, Inc, and the Omnivore's Dilemma indicate, the reality is far more complicated.

Until the office was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983, the process of promoting a candidate to sainthood involved an officer of the church who was charged with making any possible case against canonization. This office is the origin of the term "devil's advocate." McNamee has not produced a hagiography, quite, but thoughtful readers of Alice Waters & Chez Panisse will find themselves yearning for the perspective of a devil's advocate.

Ultimately, the fawning approach of this book does its subject a disservice. It would be hard to name a single restaurant more significant to the history of 20^th century American dining, and Water's endurance through a variety of roles and contexts is remarkable. By giving us the icon, rather than an individual, MacNamee relegates Waters's very real achievements to the realm of mythology.

Comments

[DrBehavior]

One garners the distinct impression that there exists a rather large compendium of individuals who owe much to Alice Waters and though she's virtually become an anachronism in her own time, it's precisely because of those people that 'owe' her - that the myth is perpetuated. The disciples or students or whatever may or may not like Ms. Waters personally, but, the fact nevertheless remains that she was the one that gave them their 'shot' at a place in the proverbial sun. To 'dis' her would be, in many cases, tantamount to professional suicide. Though the clan of disciples is reasonably close knit, no one knows just how sincere the other one is with regard to their feelings for Alice. David Lebovitz, for example, talks about being trained at The Chez and how much it was a combination of work and fun. He goes on to describe his relationship with the restaurant's Chief of Sweets, but, he only briefly alludes to Alice other than to reaffirm that she gave him an opportunity when he really had little or no background or training. There's no allusion that the two of them had any sort of personal relationship of substance. I have the impression that most folks would simply like to see Ms. Waters fade away not because of any malice in their hearts - simply Alice came and changed the world and many are tired of repeatedly having to be obsequious and grateful. It's over and done - her 'time', that is - others, of even greater ability and certainly far more ingratiating personalities have picked up the mantle and are carrying the legacy forward. It's just difficult for some to admit that their students have become the teachers, particularly, when those teachers do not have obsessiveness and the need for constant approval as the mainstays of their personalities. Thanks Alice for everything and now it's time for ...........

[Paula]

Grand, Cod.

I agree with the previous commenter: what (or rather, who) is next?

[Thomas McNamee]

You are a fucking idiot--unable to see past the gentle crediting and soft set-ups. You might just check out about fifty other reviews that managed to understand that my book is very very far from a hagiography. You read, apparently, in a single dimension, while, as it happens, and as you don't seem able to notice, I write in several--at once! You find one sentence that suits your pre-settled "interpretation," and off you go. Let me say it again in case you didn't get it the first time, since you apparently have a hard time understanding English, and I'll put it simply enough for you to understand: You are a fucking idiot.

[The Gurgling Cod]

If what you say is true, I should really look for a new day job!

[Hyde]

Any writer who responds to an interpretation of their work with that kind of angry epithet filled vitriol can't possibly be worth the time it would take to read them.

[Food Slut]

Thomas McNamee:

You're SO WEAK, dude!

You LOST!

Have a great Rest of the Year! :)

[Holly]

Golly, way to raise the level of discourse, Famous Authorpants.

[maybelles mom]

alright, nothing proves an authors credentials better than when he counters criticism through cogent counterarguments just like this guy; oh wait, he counterargument wasn't even as elegantly said as a cab driver being cut off. Kind of really points to his skill as a writer?

[Skeen]

"A corner cabinet houses thick pottery plates, also of differing but harmonious styles." (McNamee)

That is one stupendously god-awful sentence.

[Gavin]

Is it possible that it wasn't really McNamee who wrote that response? I mean, that he would do that boggles the mind to the point I'm wondering if it was a sock puppet.

For me, this is timely because I am about twenty pages away from finishing this book and I just want it to be over. As much as I appreciate Alice Waters' influence on American gastronomy, I'm sick of this hagiography (which is exactly what it is) and all the loving, precious descriptions of Waters and her cooking. "Oh! She doens't even own a can opener! Isn't that awesome?" That stuff is fine for awhile, but she has plenty of critics with plenty of things to say and I can't understand why McNamee didn't think to talk to them. In "The United States of Arugula," David Kamp gets Tom Colicchio to give some cogent, well-thought but not mean-spirited criticism of Waters and I appreciate it. Even Kamp himself is willing to point out Waters' not insubstantial ego when she tales public "blame" (but really credits herself) for now common things like bagged salad greens.

And Waters earned a bit of my own enmity when she gave Julia Child tha backhanded compliment of "Who cares if she didn't know how to cook?" I wanted to backhand Waters myself for that one.

[The Gurgling Cod]

I did get an email from the account listed as his contact on McNamee's author website alerting me to the comment, so my guess is that it's legit.

[Gavin]

Wow. Well, I suppose I'm a fucking idiot too. At least I know not to waste any more of my money on McNamee's books. Why on earth would I want to provide money to an author who holds me in such low esteem?

[Tana]

Wow, for someone who brags about having "studied under the tutelage of Robert Penn Warren," you sure do write pwetty, Mr. McNamee. Did you break your keyboard with your anger? Or just bruise it with your sense of entitlement?

[Addison]

Jeez I never get called names.

Boy there are some stinkers in that book:

“It is in fact a nearly universal principle in Alice’s life that any man who has been her lover will be her friend forever.”—p. 38

“For Jeremiah, this was an opportune moment for a little sabbatical—and a chance to seek out Richard Olney in France. Richard was a culinary saint to him as much as he was to Alice. Perhaps more important, he was just the sort of whimsical, stylish, gay, and alcoholic sybarite Jeremiah adored.”—p. 112

[Cookie]

No chance of my getting around to this one, but the excerpts thoughtfully provided above put me in mind of one of my favoritest authors of late, one 'Peggington Noonington' over at Wonkette.

[punisher]

touchy touchy!

[TWM]

To publish (regardless of how many- uh- "dimensions" one writes in) is to put your work out there for interpretation; you can't choose your audience. Those familiar with the experience of being read learn quickly to process criticism. Those unfamiliar with it, well, they tend to get drunk and make asshats of themselves in public forums like this, and this.

[Shane]

Oh right, people. The AUTHOR and CREATOR is the asshole, not the critic. What EVER.

Critics are the fail. At leas the author is communicating. The critic and all his supporters here are just incestuous, self-congratulating idiots supporting something that does not even need to exist. Criticize the world as if there is some standard to appeal to. Go fuck yourselves, the lot of you.

Seriously, dude, go get a real job. Not even a day job; maybe a brothel like the rest of the whores.

[Marco]

ooohwee! hot diggity!