Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California in 1971, serving a single fixed-price menu that changes daily. The set menu format remains at the heart of Alice's philosophy of serving the most delicious organic products, only when they are in season. Over the course of three decades, Chez Panisse has developed a network of local farmers and ranchers whose dedication to sustainable agriculture assures Chez Panisse a steady supply of pure and fresh ingredients.
In 1996, in celebration of the restaurant's twenty-fifth anniversary, Alice created the Chez Panisse Foundation. The Foundation is committed to transforming public education and supports projects that integrate gardening, cooking, and the sharing of a daily school lunch into the core academic curriculum.
In 2003, Alice helped conceive The Yale Sustainable Food Project with the goal of making food an integral part of the academic experience at the university level. By supporting small-scale, organic farmers in the Northeast who care for the land, Yale hopes to set an example of responsible eating for institutions around the country.
A board member of the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, Alice is a national advocate for farmers markets and for bringing organic, local food to the general public. She is also the Vice President of Slow Food International, a non-profit organization that promotes and celebrates local, artisanal food traditions threatened by fast food and a faster pace of life in forty-four countries around the world.
Alice is the author of 9 cookbooks, including Fanny at Chez Panisse, a story book with recipes for children, and a forthcoming cook book from Clarkson Potter, The Art of Simple Cooking. Her life and work has been the subject of various documentary and feature films, as well as a best-selling biography published by Penguin Press in the spring of 2007.
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