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"But, at some point, there has to be movement beyond the prototype stage, into the real world of practical workability."

Agreed.
Baby steps, baby. Baby steps.... And they must be making an impact because- heck- we're talking about it, starting to make choices, organics are becomig more available, even in regular grocery stores, not just health food stores.
I'm sure that she tackles the real cost issues in her restaurant every day. Just read recently about a couple of chefs who've followed her lead and taken steps to grow kitchen gardens which provide fresher foods and defray operating costs.

Making it work in the real world takes more than one person.

BTW, I wear glasses too. No, not the rosy kind.... ;o) *L*

Well, I do wear glasses, so the myopic remark is pretty on-target.

If you consider her restaurant as a prototype expression of her ideas, then I suppose it's fine.

But, at some point, there has to be movement beyond the prototype stage, into the real world of practical workability. I just wonder whether she's ever tackled the issue of cost with her restaurant. If she's never seriously considered it -- of if it never even occurred to her -- then (gasp!) the elitist word might be appropriate.

"Cost is a real issue for most people. It really should be taken seriously. If not, then the effort -- whether in respect to food or homes -- is going to be a boutique industry, irrelevant to most people for the simple reason that they can't afford it."

Yes. Cost is a real issue.

And as with any new process/product/movement, at the "beginning" of it (where we are now even though she's been promoting it for over 25 years and it until recently, has not been embraced and still meets with resistance) there are always and only a select few who can afford it; be it indoor plumbing, televisions or organic, fresh food.

But to label HER elitist because we are at the beginnings of a movement that CURRENTLY everyone cannot afford it sligtly myopic at best.

It's great that she's started a foundation, authored books, etc. Those efforts seem more likely to convey her message than the restaurant, it seems to me.

Her restaurant reminds me of an eco-friendly, green home that sells for $2 million. It's great that the design accomplishes what it does...but how many people can afford to purchase a $2 million home?

Cost is a real issue for most people. It really should be taken seriously. If not, then the effort -- whether in respect to food or homes -- is going to be a boutique industry, irrelevant to most people for the simple reason that they can't afford it.

CJ McD,

Do you realize how many people live in poverty? I'm not talking about the US, that's a very small part of the picture - I'm referring to people who make less than $1.25/day. At least one in six people in the world fit that criteria. Of those people, the overwhelming majority are severely undernourished. Millions of children starve to death every year. Do you seriously believe that they can afford to spend more money on food? What's your solution for parts of the world with large populations and very little arable land? We're all aware that this isn't an all-or-nothing philosophy; growing vegetables at home is a good thing if you can do it, and buying foodstuffs (notably fruits and certain vegetables) from local farms at the peak of freshness is an enjoyable luxury, but the ideas you espouse as "world-saving" can't really be applied to most of the planet we live on.

first to say this no one who is irrelevant could cause this much of a stir
i know not much about her but her food is wonderful
she is charged as a radical and a utopian even if true
the world needs conservatives,revolutionaries,radicals and utoponists
even if you/we don't agree because we are one of the above types we feed each others minds (food for thought ) most good things in the world have come from cross actions from the above groups but ALL bad thinks have come from just listen to one group

If her restaurant is an expression of her ideals, then those ideals (as expressed through the restaurant) will be seen by few people, for the simple fact that few people can afford to eat there.

To me that seems odd (but maybe that's just me)...

I mean, there are many restaurants that charge more than the majority of people can afford to pay for a meal (even on a special occasion); you might think it would be different for a restaurant espousing her ideals, but clearly it's not.

I don't know if anyone else finds that to be surprising, but I do.

"People are using her restaurant as an argument quite a lot, but I don't think the message behind slow food or any other healthy-eating movement is to serve at home what is cooked in restaurants.
I don't know about anyone else, but I eat much simpler meals at home than I do when I dine out."

Amen. You "get it".

It's not hard and you don't have to "duplicate". It just about good food, fresh food, real food, made accessible. For pete's sake- isn't everyone here a foodie? Like you can't figure it out and make something close? Or delicious in it's own right?

She's published books, menus, created foundations for fresh foods. has simple cafe menus amids the more elegant restauarant menus...come on.... You are foodies aren't you?

The food's not that complicated. That's the point.

If not, go ahead, eat your hostess ding-dongs, little debbies and fast food burgers. Be unhappy, feel better labeling others as elitists, I'll try to understand....

"You can make them at home for pennies on the dollar."

You wouldn't know that, perusing the menu at Chez Panisse. To the extent that she teaches people how to cook for pennies on the dollar, that is empowering people.

But the restaurant itself seems like an insider venue. If you're an insider that's probably great. Most people aren't.

To hold Waters' views is a bourgeois luxury. Period.

supagold-

”I don't understand any of your arguments. How are we missing the point? We get that she is promoting "healthy, local, organic food accessible to all". The point is that that simply isn't feasible.”

---Yes, yes it is. Glad you ask. How do you think people fed themselves prior to mass, corporate, industrialized farming and ranching?

"And if it were accessible to all, cost would be a lesser factor because more would be available."
Precisely how does this work? By necessity, Organic food is less intensive than normal agriculture, meaning that for each given acre, you get less food. If we're talking local here, then for however you define "local", that means that you are somehow going to try to feed more people from a smaller food supply for less cost. Does this sound feasible?”

---Yes it does sound feasible. Right now federal subsidies pay farmer to leave land idle. Organic farms naturally have more diversity, giving them the ability to sustain themselves and others if weather, a certain crop fails or is blighted or other hardship occurs. CSA’s support not only those who subscribe, but many farms offer “working shares” which enable the farmers to hold down costs and up their production. Join a CSA, shop at your local farmer’s market, seek out ranches/farms and purchase meats/eggs farm-direct, grow a small garden....each of these contributes to healthy, organic, sustainable food supplies.
As more people become aware and participate in conscious food choices, more foods and food suppliers will become available. Call it “market driven” if you wish.

“No one's criticizing her for providing great food, or arguing the fact that high-quality vegetables taste better. However, I believe there is some justification for the idea that she's promoting a false "social awareness", based on her head-in-the-clouds ideas about how the world works. That seems pretty elitist to me...”

---False social awareness? Head-in-the-clouds?
I respectfully disagree. If you are an active participant (which you seem to be) and read food related news, you must be aware of the changes in social food awareness, sustainability, CSA’s, organic markets and slow food movements. As with all change, it takes time. Look back over the last twenty years in food. Progress continues to be made. Organic foods are more accessible than they’ve been. Local foods have become more accessible that they’ve been in the recent past. It’s working, but it needs to continue and spread outward towards those who still have accessibility problems. Meantime, Ms. Waters keeps that social awareness on the radar screen and the momentum moving forward.

I wouldn't her elitist. That's far too exclusionary for what she's trying to accomplish. I'd call her a leader and an inspiration, challenging society to find ways to achieve.

I appreciate your asking and keeping the discussion going.

Alice Waters overlooks the fact that not everyone lives in California with year round access to good local produced food. Most of us don't have that luxury even if you learn to love what is available out of season but farmed within whatever constraints you put on yourself.
Ever cook knows the secret to good meals is good ingredients, and lacking access to them means that it is much harder to produce varied and exciting meals every time.
So yes she is elitist and unrealistic but also a force for the good.

As I'm reading some pretty extreme comments about Alice Waters, highly charged emotions behind those words, I can't help think that she's a great projective test for how people are feeling about themselves around the issues in our lives that she represents and opines about: Food politics.

Having met her and also having eaten her food, I think she is one of the most misunderstood people of our generation. Before I met her, I, too, thought she was distant and haughty, but the truth is that she's very shy and what you're seeing is a shield of sorts.

The food at Chez Panisse is very good, and back when she began, nobody but the French were putting out food that tasted like that. But I don't think that it's spectacular enough or the surroundings comfortable enough to warrant the adulation or prices. I prefer a more relaxed atmosphere and rustic food, and the Cafe upstairs at Chez Panisse and Cafe Fanny (a few blocks south) fit that bill. Both are delicious, unpretentious, affordable, convivial (the Cafe upstairs at Chez Panisse is downright raukus at times) and friendly. Each also are what I think represents the real Alice Waters, the person you don't see on television, but the woman who discovered her passion by feeding her friends and who got into the food business because she loves making great food and feeding people.

As far as an unrealistic philosophy about food, I think hers is the only rational policy left for the survival of humans on the planet. Enough with corporate farms on the other side of the hemisphere, raising pigs in overcrowded and filthy pens which are polluting the groundwater and perhaps breeding virulent diseases. And enough with flying in food out of season, gassed tomatoes so that we can eat them fresh year round. Our lifestyle and overpopulation has led to dangerous conditions that threaten the continuation of human civilization on the planet. We shouldn't have been over-building particle board subdivisions, one indistinguishable from the next, across the lands, trucking and flying in food from other regions of the country and the world to depots for distribution at big box supermarkets -- We should have farms on the outskirts of smaller communities and "victory"-farming on open lots within our cities. The "new world order", globalization that makes .02% filthy rich, but everyone else a wage slave, isn't how we were supposed to live.

What Waters talks about, a slower lifestyle in smaller communities growing what we eat locally, is going to happen, one way or other. The planet will survive what humans are doing to it, but civilization surviving is another story. The oceans are being depleted very quickly, water has become a commodity that we're going to see wars over within our lifetime (in the next 5 years), so there will be a massive die-off of people along with mass migration as extreme climate change drives people from one region to another.

Food production and preparation as Waters has talked about it is the new "smart agriculture".