Medium Raw

Just because the counterculture, the “revolution,” all those ’60s hopes and dreams were corrupted, co-opted, and eventually crushed by the overpowering weight and impermeability of “the system”—as we should have known they always would be—that doesn’t mean it wasn’t, at least for a while, sometimes, a beautiful thing, right? Something got better for all that, right? I can’t think now what, exactly, but I’m sure the world improved in some way in spite of all the nonsense and self-indulgence. In spite of the way things turned out.

LSD sure raised my consciousness a bit. There’s no doubt that it made me think about the world from perspectives I might otherwise never have visited. From that first barrel of “Purple Haze,” the opening bars of “Court of the Crimson King,” I’m pretty sure I achieved enlightenment of a sort. That and a few records are what I got out of the ’60s. So, maybe LSD is a good metaphor for Alice. I may not want any now—but I’m glad she was around. And I may even be slightly better for the experience.

I’m constantly having an argument with Alice in my head, an ongoing conversation/disagreement—and she always wins. Just as in life. When I met her for a panel discussion a while back, I was loaded for bear. I’d reread her biographies, consulted contemporaneous accounts, tracked down every silly thing she’s ever said, briefed myself for a showdown.

But then, there she was, a nice old lady with (literally) an armload of produce and an expression that could only be described as serene…She floated across the room, clasped my hand between both of hers, smiled warmly, and I knew then that I could never pull the trigger.

Maybe Alice’s dream is what’s important. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether that dream leads anywhere beyond where we already are—or even if it leads, eventually, to a bad place. That can hardly negate the beauty of the original idea.

So, maybe the big winner, who gets to scoop up the gold at the end of Alice’s rainbow, turns out to be Whole Foods, with their fifty-odd checkout counters and their sanctimony at any price. The bad guys always win in the end, right? She can’t have seen that coming.

If I think about Alice Waters in this fashion, it becomes much less painful.

Who cares how “great” Chez Panisse is now? Or whether or not Alice Waters was ever a “chef” in the conventional sense of that word? Looking back at that Golden Time in Berkeley, it matters not at all who was responsible for the Revolution or in what measure. If the true genius who created what we came to know as California and then New American, or Seasonal Regional, who changed menus and dining as we know it forever, was Alice or Jeremiah Tower—or Joe Baum, years earlier. Does. Not. Matter.

What we do know is that whatever happened, it “happened,” undeniably caught on, and finally exploded out of Alice’s restaurant. She created a space where something really really important came together, involving some very talented, very creative people—who in any other setting or combination would probably not have flown so far and so high. Hers was a virtual cradle of revolution. As far as map coordinates go, there’s little doubt of that.

What is also certain is that Alice appreciated the food of France—and what it might mean to us—in a way that few others did at the time. And she applied that passion in ways that no one in America had previously considered. In those days, when the Dream was new and Chez Panisse was just starting up, it was democratic, inclusive, dysfunctional, and ludicrously, admirably, unprofitable. Had someone with any business sense at all attempted to do what Alice was trying to do, it never would have happened. Surely, this was a very fine and good thing.

Alice thinks what we eat is important. So do I. She thinks it’s the most important thing in the world. I do not. But I’m quite sure that we both have made major decisions in our lives, gained and lost friends, based on what’s to eat.

Alice thinks farmers should make more money—growing stuff that’s both good-tasting and good for us. Who could be against that? I like farms. So I don’t want to work on one. I doubt very much that Alice does either. So we have that in common, too.

She thinks, as I do, that we should be aware of what’s good in our own backyards and support those things—by eating them, and growing more of them. I’m with her, to a point. But then I don’t have a backyard.

Strikingly, she is, and always has been, a carnivore. There is no question as to her position on foie gras. For decades, in the middle of Berkeley, she has unapologetically championed the use of animal flesh as food rather than as something that should someday win the right to vote. In this respect, being blissfully out of touch with what’s going on around her has served her well.