Alice Waters – Food Activist Profile

Chez Panisse Owner Promotes Local, Organic & Sustainable Agriculture

Apr 12, 2009

Locavore Alice Waters is famous for her restaurant, Chez Panisse, a gaggle of cookbooks, her promotion of the slow food movement and the "Edible Schoolyard" program.

Locavore

Alice Waters advocates forcefully for farmer's markets and for sound and sustainable agriculture. In those early years, she was disgusted with the fish available in stores, so she bought a truck and sent someone down to the port to find fishermen as they docked their boats. When she could not find the baby lettuces she had loved in France, she tore up her backyard and grew her own. She found foragers to hunt for mushrooms. She persuaded farmers to let their lambs run wild through the hills. Over the course of three-plus decades, Chez Panisse has fostered a network of mostly local farmers and ranchers dedicated to sustainable agriculture

Slow Foodist

Waters is also identified with the Slow Food movement. She explained to David Weich of Powell’s Books in a 2002 interview: “Slow Food is an international movement that began in Italy about twenty years ago. It was started by a guy named Carlo Petrini in opposition to a fast food restaurant being put into the main piazza in Rome… He was interested in the preservation of traditional foods and artisan methods, and just living a slow life - really the opposite of what we're talking about with fast food: coming around the table with simple foods and simple cooking, taking time. Her slow food event in San Francisco last year drew 85,000.

The Transformative Power of Growing, Cooking and Sharing Food

In 1996 she created the Chez Panisse Foundation to support cultural and educational programs such as the “Edible Schoolyard” that demonstrate the transformative power of growing, cooking, and sharing food, a pilot project and model for schools across the country.

After Barack Obama’s election in 2008, Waters urged the Obama to set and example with a vegetable garden at the White House. For more on that and the “Edible Schoolyard” see “Obamas Birthday Gift to Alice Waters.”

Live, Work and Eat Locally

Alice Waters lives her life with much simplicity as she demands of her food. With her daughter, Fanny, and husband, Stephen Singer, a wine and olive oil merchant and painter, Waters lives in an unassuming, slightly ramshackle Berkeley house close to the restaurant.

This is in keeping with her broader philosophy: to live, work and eat locally. Stay committed to your community; nourish it and in return it will nourish you.

Alice Waters is the author –she likes to say “producer” because they are always collaborations – of eight cookbooks:

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