Tag Archives: Chez Panisse
Chez Panisse’s birthday kicks off with party to remember
Last night, Alice Waters launched the weekend-long fȇte for the restaurant she founded 40 years ago with a portrait unveiling and a food-inspired procession. Chez Panisse, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, and the art and food collective OPENrestaurant held a cocktail party Friday at the U.C. Berkeley Art Museum, where a portrait of Waters bound for The Smithsonian was revealed, marking the opening of several days of celebratory and fundraising activities.
“I just love that this portrait was … Continue reading »
The frenzy around Chez Panisse’s 40th anniversary
The next few days in Berkeley will be all about Alice. You know, Alice Waters. Forty years ago, on August 28, 1971, she opened Chez Panisse in a small shingled building on Shattuck Avenue. The inaugural dinner consisted of pate en croute, duck with olives, salad, and almond torte. The dinner was a few hours late, cobbled together by a number of well-meaning but amateur chefs, but it was good. And fresh. And it started a transformation in California cuisine … Continue reading »
Chez Panisse chef opens butcher shop in Berkeley
On Tuesday, Aaron and Monica Rocchino quietly opened the doors to their new business, an artisan butcher shop where the term “snout to tail” really comes into its own.
The Local Butcher Shop, in the old Red Hanger Kleaners space on Cedar Street in the Gourmet Ghetto, has already attracted dozens of curious foodies.
One-on-one customer service, offering cuts of meat hewed from whole carcasses, is the principal order of business. But providing some meat — most likely beef — to … Continue reading »
Fundraising underpins Chez Panisse’s birthday festivities
Forty years after a young Alice Waters opened what was to become one of the most famous restaurants in the world, the Chez Panisse owner is using the anniversary to focus less on the brown-shingled eatery and more on her mission to see kids eating healthily at school.
With this in mind, the Chez Panisse Foundation is to be renamed the Edible Schoolyard Organization this Fall, so that a program that originated in the shadow of the restaurant is now clearly positioned as where Waters is devoting most of her energies.
That’s not to say that the birthday will not be marked with celebrations, many of them guaranteed to delight the taste-buds. Indeed, Waters and her team have orchestrated a full calendar of events over the long weekend of August 26-30, from large-scale cocktail parties to intimate dinners, from educational classes to creative gatherings.
And graduates from the “university of Alice Waters” will be out in force, as Chez Panisse protegés such as Jean-Pierre Moullé, Sally Clarke, Charlie Hallowell, Russell Moore, Gayle Pirie, and Charlene Reis are put to work whipping up feasts. … Continue reading »
Tickets expected to go fast for Michael Pollan’s food class
When word leaked out in the spring that Michael Pollan would be co-teaching a class on the rise and future of the food movement, students at UC Berkeley rushed to sign up. The 10-week, two-unit course was filled minutes after it was listed online.
Now, the general community has a chance to participate in this gold rush.
UC will be releasing tickets for Edible Education 101 on a first-come, first-serve basis on August 15. There will be about 282 tickets available for each class and people will be able to sign up for just one lecture or all of them, said Carolyn Federman, director of development for the Edible Schoolyard, which is co-sponsoring and paying for the course. The tickets will be free and will be sold through Ticketweb, she said.
Pollan is co-teaching Edible Education 101 with Nikki Henderson, the executive director of People’s Grocery, a food justice organization in Oakland. While Pollan and Henderson are the co-teachers, much of the class will center around lectures given by luminaries in the food movement. Confirmed speakers include Carlo Petrini, Peter Sellars, Marion Nestle, Frances Moore Lappé, Raj Patel, Ann Cooper, Eric Schlosser, and Alice Waters. … Continue reading »
Five’s Banks White: Berkeley “keeps me on my toes”
Banks White is the executive chef of Five, which calls itself a modern American bistro. Think comfort food with au courant accents: Macaroni and cheese made with orzo, wild mushrooms, tomato jam, and smoked gouda. Slow braised short rib pot roast with mascarpone polenta. Buttermilk biscuits with white cheddar pimento cheese.
The restaurant (named for the five senses and its 5 o’clock happy hour) is housed in the historic, refurbished Hotel Shattuck Plaza, which looks like it’s been given the Dorothy Draper treatment. (This writer spent some time last fall at the interior designer’s signature space, The Greenbrier in West Virginia.) Swirling black-and-white wallpaper. Ornate red chandelier. Black-and-white marble floors and red wall sconces. Get the picture?
White hails from Texas, land of barbecue and Buds, but is trained in classic French culinary techniques. The 30-year-old has worked for several upscale boutique hotel restaurants including The Driskill in Austin and Auberge du Soleil in the Napa Valley. … Continue reading »
Pickled tongue and paté: Café Rouge butcher goes solo
Until two months ago, Scott Brennan was running Café Rouge‘s highly regarded meat market on Fourth Street — butchering whole pigs, whipping up foie gras and head cheeses and holding Monday night classes aimed at demystifying the topography of a goat carcass.
Now Brennan is venturing out on his own with a new business, The Fifth Quarter Charcuterie, where he will be making and selling his handcrafted charcuterie and selling it through local Farmers’ Markets. The only thing standing in the way of his launch is finding a kitchen.
“I am still searching for a shared kitchen space that is right for me. The East Bay is preferred, but I am open to start anywhere so long as the space is organized,” said Brennan.
Brennan’s motivation was threefold: he relishes getting out in the community, he’s ready to go it alone, and he looks forward to being able to separate the production side from the customer service side. “It’s always a struggle when you’re trying to work and help customers at the same time,” he said.
As the new business’s name implies, Brennan will be promoting the “fifth quarter” of the animal — liverwurst, beef tongue, lamb’s tongue, pork liver, as well as the more standard charcuterie such as paté, terrine, rillettes, and fresh sausages. … Continue reading »
Chez Panisse chef to open artisan butcher shop
Chez Panisse chef Aaron Rocchino and his wife Monica are bringing artisan meat to the heart of the Gourmet Ghetto with the opening this summer of The Local Butcher Shop on Cedar Street in the old Red Hanger Kleaners space.
“We think there’s a void in the market for restaurant-quality, sustainable meat for home customers,” said Monica Rocchino, who is setting up the new retail operation with her husband.
“It’s an idea whose time has come. I’m looking forward to having this shop in the neighborhood,” said Michael Pollan, who lives in north Berkeley and has done much to champion the consumption of responsibly sourced meat.
The butcher shop will feature whole animals sourced directly from farms, none of which are further than 150 miles from Berkeley. The emphasis will be on grass-fed, sustainably raised meat, and the butchering and cutting will be to order. … Continue reading »
What’s inside Chez Panisse’s meat locker?
Dog trainer Francis Metcalf, who lives in Oakland, usually makes videos of dogs and writes about them on his website, Bay Area Dog Trainer. He recently took a detour to shoot a fun and unusual glimpse of Chez Panisse.
Alice Waters goes to Twitter HQ, to tweet
Sitting in front of a laptop nursing a herbal tea at the Chez Panisse Café, or perhaps pulling up a chair at the kitchen table or even a straightforward desk, is not the way Alice Waters intends to use her brand new Twitter account.
Instead, Waters is traveling across the Bay to the Twitter offices in San Francisco this afternoon in order to post a tweet.
This won’t be her inaugural tweet because that was sent out at around 10:30am today informing us of the fact her second tweet would be “coming soon”.
The “big announcement” which was being heralded last week by Waters’ staff — and which the foodie world (the food media, Michael Pollan and Ruth Reichl included) is seemingly waiting for with bated breath – focuses on the arrangements for Chez Panisse’s 40th birthday celebrations and the concurrent campaign to support the Edible Schoolyards that are popping up all over the nation. … Continue reading »
