Chez Panisse: Alice Waters

In the 1960s, Alice Waters studied abroad in France – and discovered a culinary world far from the processed food popular in America. When she returned to California, she tried to find restaurants to recreate her experiences abroad, but she couldn't. In 1971, she opened a small restaurant in Berkeley called Chez Panisse, where she focused on serving fresh, local ingredients. Just a few years later, Chez Panisse was named one of the best restaurants in America, and became one of the hottest locations for fine dining in the Bay Area. Despite her success, Alice chose not to turn Chez Panisse into a restaurant empire. Instead, she continued to insist on cooking with food raised locally, sustainably, and ethically. Today, most chefs agree Alice Waters and Chez Panisse sparked the farm-to-table movement in the restaurant industry. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," how Piersten Gaines took the trauma out of salon visits for women with highly textured hair. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  You know, I had never had a wild strawberry. They were tiny, and they were so intensely flavored. And you were served a big plate of them with a little pitcher of cream on the side and a bowl of sugar if you needed it. And I couldn't have enough of them. And I wondered where they came from. And they told me, "You have to go out in the woods and pick them."

• 0:36Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 0:47Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Alice Waters created the farm-to-table movement from her California restaurant and sparked a global revolution in the food industry.

• 1:06Guy Raz?

  So if you open up the latest edition of the famous Michelin guide to the San Francisco Bay Area, you will find 57 restaurants in and around San Francisco that have been granted one, two, or three stars by the notoriously fussy Michelin reviewers. Getting a Michelin star can turn a sleepy little bistro into the kind of restaurant that takes reservations six months out, the kind of place that is essentially impossible to get into. These are considered to be the most innovative and inspiring palaces of food in the world. But one restaurant, perhaps one of the most famous in America, that does not appear on Michelin's list, is located in a converted old house in Berkeley, California.

• 1:52Guy Raz?

  It's called Chez Panisse, and today, it's the kind of place well-to-do Berkeley parents might take their children during a visit, or the kind of restaurant food tourists will seek out, mainly because of its contribution to modern cooking. Chez Panisse is a great restaurant, but you're not going to find, say, frozen orbs of aged balsamic vinegar suspended in yuzu gelée on your plate. What you will get is extremely fresh, extremely local farm-to-table food. A perfectly ripe peach with a scoop of crème fraîche, or a roasted quail with some blackberry jam made with just picked blackberries grown a few miles away. And the person behind that restaurant, Alice Waters, isn't just notable

• 2:36Guy Raz?

  for her cooking, but actually, she's probably much better known for the impact she's had on American cuisine. Because Alice Waters was really one of the first American chefs to promote the idea that food should be local, fresh, and seasonal. Today, almost every good restaurant in America pays homage to farm-to-table cooking. They tell you the name of the farm, where the chicken came from, and sometimes even the farmer who grew the crops. And Alice Waters is largely the reason why. But when she opened Chez Panisse in 1971 in that old rundown Berkeley house, she wasn't necessarily trying to start a movement. She really just wanted a nice cozy place where she could invite friends to share a meal. Alice didn't actually grow up

• 3:21Guy Raz?

  intending to be a chef. In fact, as a kid in New Jersey, she ate a pretty typical American diet of that era. Her mom wasn't exactly the greatest cook, and she focused instead on efficiency.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  She wanted something healthy for us, but she didn't know how to do that. She knew, you know, meat, potatoes, vegetable, salad, fruit cup for dessert. But most of it was from a can or frozen. She wanted brown bread, so my sandwiches were very dry and spread with peanut butter and bananas. I didn't like food very much. I was a very picky eater.

• 4:07Guy Raz?

  I mean, this was a time of a food revolution, in a sense. I mean, not the way we think about it today, but the food revolution of the late 40s and 50s was canned and frozen, and then eventually microwaveable, ready-to-eat meals.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. Right. I remember when that frozen meal came in, all prepared. You just stuck it in the oven.

• 4:30Guy Raz?

  And people saw that as this wonderful innovation. Nobody thought, ooh, this is processed food, right? They thought, amazing, look at what we can actually, we actually have more time now.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Well, I always thought we were a country that didn't have deep roots in agriculture, growing food for taste. We always grew it for quantity and shipability, but never flavor. And we, we never had a strong sense of the table as a place of conversation and pleasure. It was much more that sort of puritanical, just, we're here to eat and, and fuel up. And so when the fast food industry came in, it just pulled us up by the ruts.

• 5:27Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  It just pulled us up.

• 5:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  And we went with it. We went with the idea that it was easier to do this. It was fast, cheap, and easy. And even, you know, my parents, who had a, had a garden in the backyard, they at one point stopped canning applesauce and bought the applesauce.

• 5:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you, I guess, by the time you hit your teens, you, the family moved a bit, right?

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:58Guy Raz?

  You moved to the Midwest and then to California. Was this for your dad's job?

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Yes, it was. He was transferred to Chicago and then he was further transferred to Los Angeles.

• 6:10Guy Raz?

  So you went to, so you decided, when you graduated high school, you went to the University of California in Santa Barbara. And this is in the early 60s. And what was your impression of the place?

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Well, that was a party place then, right by the water, on the beach. And I decided to transfer to UC Berkeley in the fall of 1964.

• 6:37Guy Raz?

  So the fall of 1964, you end up at UC Berkeley, a junior in college or a sophomore in college?

• 6:44Speaker 00

  A sophomore.

• 6:44Guy Raz?

  Sophomore in college. And that really, I have to imagine, you're getting there at the time when, this is like right as the Berkeley free speech movement is starting out.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  It's starting out.

• 6:56Guy Raz?

  And were you, I mean, you get to Berkeley. Were you in any way politicized at that time? Or were you totally naive and, you know, was it not part of your world?

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Well, I certainly was naive. And I was really shocked by what was going on, but very attracted to it.

• 7:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  And my friends were sort of in the same place, but we all were drawn in on the outside of the demonstrations, listening and curious and inspired ultimately.

• 7:34Guy Raz?

  Do you remember seeing any of those leaders speak?

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, Mario Savio.

• 7:40Guy Raz?

  He was sort of the student leader of the movement.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  He was the student leader. And his words just touched me in a very deep way. And he talked about how we could change the world and how we had to work together. And when things are so wrong, we have to stop, stop the gears and put yourself on the line.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Demonstrate, I mean, be willing to take a risk. That was it. Be willing to take a risk.

• 8:17Guy Raz?

  I mean, you had grown up in this very sort of cloistered, secluded kind of 50s world. And now you were in the middle of 1960s Berkeley. I mean, the sort of the center of college radicalism, certainly in the United States. There was the war, there was the free speech movement, the sexual revolution, drugs. I mean, all these things, right? It must have been an exciting time.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  It was. I mean, it really was. And I think I must have had some of my mother's genes in me. Because when I think back, I mean, at the end of her life, she said to me, "You're living the life I always wanted to live."

• 9:00Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 9:02Guy Raz?

  So in 1965, you are a student and you had, I guess, an opportunity to study abroad and you went to France. What struck you about France when you got there? What did you discover that you didn't quite realize until you got there?

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Well, I had never been out of the country before. So it was a revelation on all fronts to arrive in Paris, that beautiful, beautiful city. I don't know. It was every part of that experience. It just was an awakening for me. It was really an awakening.

• 9:43Guy Raz?

  When do you remember thinking, there's something different about food and the connection to food here that I have never experienced before? Was it almost instantly after you arrived?

• 9:53Speaker 00

  It was almost instantly because we stood in line to get a hot baguette. And you waited and then you got it. And it was warm. And we raced back to our little rooming house. And we had some apricot champ and some butter. And we ate it on the hot bread and... I wanted to eat it every morning like that. I wanted a bowl of cafe au lait. I wanted to see what was inside of these little restaurants that were all over Paris at that time.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  They were very small and had pink tablecloths and candlelight and, you know, big bowls of food sitting on the tables as you walked in. It was a feast and I just really fell for it.

• 10:54Guy Raz?

  Did you start to, um, did you start to explore the food markets and?

• 10:59Speaker 00

  Well, I went through one of those markets, the really old Market Street, on my way to school.

• 11:07Guy Raz?

  Was it just like shockingly different to what you had seen in the US?

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Shockingly different because it was kind of, the US was the supermarket.

• 11:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  And this was, you know, live fish, you know, really alive. Beautiful, beautiful vegetables that just said, look at me, buy me.

• 11:34Guy Raz?

  And they didn't call them farmers markets. This was just the market.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  It was just markets. That's right. And all the food was really from that area in and around Paris.

• 11:45Guy Raz?

  Would you, would you walk to the markets in Paris and see produce that you had never seen before?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Oh, indeed. You know, I had never had a wild strawberry. And I talk about that a lot as being the moment when I said, oh, you know.

• 12:02Guy Raz?

  What was different about it?

• 12:03Speaker 00

  I need to eat these. They were tiny and they were so intensely flavored. And you were served a big plate of them with a little pitcher of cream on the side and a bowl of sugar if you needed it. And I couldn't have enough of them. And I wondered where they came from. And they told me, you have to go out in the woods and pick them.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  I didn't know that I was being imprinted in that way. In terms of seasonality and aliveness. Because you went around with your French friends and they were so picky about what restaurant to eat in.

• 12:49Guy Raz?

  And you weren't used to that.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  I wasn't used to that at all. And I was hungry. And they would not allow us to go into the place until they had examined the various menus. To see who had the food that was the tastiest. And did they have those clams? Where did they come from? But it wasn't just about food. It was the discourse at the table. We would sit there, maybe two hours, talking politics, talking about life. And I was fascinated with that conversation at the table.

• 13:30Guy Raz?

  So that year, obviously, was going to be a turning point in your life, which you didn't yet probably know.

• 13:39Guy Raz?

  Did that year change what you thought you wanted to do with your life? Did you think, you know, I want to be a chef, I want to be a cook, I want to study cooking? Or did you go back to Berkeley and just think, all right, I did my year in France and now I'm back?

• 13:55Speaker 00

  It was more, I did my year in France and now I'm back. But all the time, I was cooking. I wanted to eat like the French and live like the French. So that pushed me to explore the markets and try and find the taste. And I couldn't find it. You know, I wanted to eat in French restaurants in the city. I saved all my money so I could eat in the fancy French restaurants. But it didn't taste like that.

• 14:30Guy Raz?

  So you sort of finished up at UC Berkeley. You're cooking this French food at home. And what was your plan at that point? Like, what were you gonna do with your life?

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Well, I had a friend who was teaching Montessori school. And she told me all about Montessori's philosophy of teaching. And I said, oh, my goodness. She is really thinking about the world in the same way I am. The idea of opening your senses, because those are the pathways into our minds that you're touching, you're tasting, you're smelling, you're listening, you're seeing. And that's what happened to me in France. I had awakening of my senses.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  And I thought, well, maybe I could teach in a Montessori school. And there happened to be one right down the street.

• 15:33Guy Raz?

  In Berkeley?

• 15:34Speaker 00

  In Berkeley.

• 15:35Guy Raz?

  So you got a job there as a preschool teacher?

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And, you know, you must have enjoyed it. I mean, was that, did you think that, you know, this is maybe what I'll do?

• 15:48Speaker 00

  It was like that, although I was very challenged by the three- to six-year-old children. I had never been around them before.

• 15:57Guy Raz?

  Did you ever at a certain point say, you know, I think I want to take cooking classes. I want to sort of formally learn how to do this?

• 16:05Speaker 00

  No. I was intimidated by that. I thought it was, you know, complicated and that I would be exposed for my ignorance in the way that Julia Child felt

• 16:22Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  at the beginning of her cooking classes, you know. But I wasn't as determined as she was to go home and chop a pile of onions properly so that I could excel at the class. I wanted to experiment at home and just do what I thought I could do well.

• 16:45Guy Raz?

  So it's the late 60s. You're teaching at a preschool and enjoying cooking at home. How did you start to come to this idea that maybe you wanted to open a restaurant?

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Well, I was cooking for a lot of my friends at our house. I was living with a printer and he was very political. And he would invite all of his friends over for dinner. And a group was producing a magazine called The San Francisco Express Times. And so they would gather at the table and I started cooking for them all. In fact, so much so that they said, they liked it. And I started doing a little cooking column called Alice's Restaurant.

• 17:43Guy Raz?

  In that, in that paper?

• 17:44Speaker 00

  For that paper. And in total, we, we did thirty of those. But I was kind of going broke buying the ingredients. And I very naively said, well, maybe I could open a little place. And then my friends would pay to come and eat there. And I had the encouragement of this other extraordinary friend that I lived with, Tom Luddy, who was running the Telegraph Repertory Cinema. And he had dinner parties for all of his filmmaker friends.

• 18:24Guy Raz?

  Who, any, any, any ones that we would know?

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Oh, I think so. Jean-Luc Godard.

• 18:28Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  And Francis Coppola.

• 18:31Guy Raz?

  And you were just cooking for them?

• 18:32Speaker 00

  I was just cooking for them.

• 18:34Guy Raz?

  There were dinner parties and you were...

• 18:36Speaker 00

  There were. It's crazy.

• 18:38Guy Raz?

  So I'm trying to, to kind of recreate this moment. And oftentimes on the show, when we get to this moment, you know, there's a business plan and there's a, you know, very methodical kind of process. Is it, was it just like, yeah, let's just do this. Let's just see if we can do this.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  In a way, it was because Tom is a pretty extraordinary person. And he saw that I had that inclination. He said, let's just go and eat in all the little French restaurants and restaurants in San Francisco so we could get an idea of what it is that you're looking for. And we had gone to a very special restaurant out in Bolinas that was in a house.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  And I was very struck by that. Maybe it could be a restaurant in a house because then it could feel like I was cooking at home. And then I saw this place in North Berkeley.

• 19:41Guy Raz?

  This is where Shep and Eas is today, on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. What was that place? It was just a house for rent?

• 19:49Speaker 00

  It was a plumbing shop that was in a house. And all the pipes and all were out in front, in sort of the courtyard in front. And it was a very plain stucco house, two floors. And I loved the location and it was commercially available.

• 20:11Guy Raz?

  Available, yeah. So this is where I'm sort of wondering, like, you were broke because you were spending all your money doing these dinner parties. So just a business question for a moment. I mean, did you, how did you even have the money to sign a lease or to make a commitment or to refurbish the place? Did you have to go and ask friends to chip in?

• 20:34Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely. And my parents mortgaged their house.

• 20:39Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  They had always believed in me. They believed in all of their kids.

• 20:44Guy Raz?

  But I guess we should acknowledge that you also did borrow money from some other sources. Like, there's this, I don't know if it's apocryphal or it's a story that you got some money from, like, pot dealers in Berkeley?

• 20:59Speaker 00

  It's true.

• 21:00Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you get this lease. And by the way, do you remember how much money you had to raise from family and drug dealers who ever, like, whoever you did to actually have the confidence to, like, sign this lease agreement?

• 21:16Speaker 00

  Well, I don't remember exactly. But one of the people who gave me some money is still on the board of directors of Shep and Eas. And he was a friend of Tom Luddy's. Tom, he found the people that had the confidence that I didn't have. And he says, I think you need to get connected with Paul Arato. Because he has cooking skills and he's got all these copper pots. And he knows how to make a risotto. I'm sure he could be a partner for you.

• 21:54Guy Raz?

  Was it, I mean, were these people who were investing in you and the restaurant, did they think that they were investing and that they were going to get a return on their investment? Or was it just like, hey, this is a cool idea, Alice. Like, this is groovy. Let's have a place where we could all eat.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Hey, this was the seventies, the early seventies. And I would have been ashamed if I had been looking to make money. Nobody who was involved with this project expected to make money. We hoped to, but we didn't expect it.

• 22:31Guy Raz?

  Why?

• 22:32Speaker 00

  It was a labor of love.

• 22:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  And we were doing it in this very non-professional way, if you will. I thought I had a little bit of experience because I had waited on tables in a couple of places to make money in high school.

• 22:53Guy Raz?

  So when you, when you really kind of start to ramp up to open up the restaurant, I mean, you'd never run a restaurant. And running a restaurant is a, is a really challenging business. Most restaurants eventually fail. Were you in any way intimidated or nervous about all of those people who were putting their faith in this thing working or not?

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Well, I knew that if the food was really good, that people would come. I knew that, absolutely, I knew that. But I was too intimidated to cook at the beginning. And Victoria Croire was the first cook at the restaurant. We practiced at home and we read about food.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  Really deeply read about it. And so we thought we could do one menu a day. So this was not ambitious, we didn't think.

• 23:53Guy Raz?

  So when were you able to actually open the restaurant?

• 23:57Speaker 00

  August 28th, 1971.

• 24:00Guy Raz?

  And this was a French traditional or sort of traditional French restaurant, right?

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:05Guy Raz?

  It was going to be a French menu. And what did the inside of the restaurant look like? Did you have an idea of how you wanted it to be?

• 24:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Well, I had help from my French friend, Martine. And she was an artist. And she had lots of ideas about how we could find things at the flea market in Alameda. So I would go with her and find silverware, mismatched silverware.

• 24:33Guy Raz?

  This is the giant flea market in Alameda that they still have, right?

• 24:36Speaker 00

  Yes, that same market.

• 24:38Guy Raz?

  At the old base, right?

• 24:39Speaker 00

  Same market.

• 24:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  And we had red and white shekel tablecloths. I wanted flowers on the table. I wanted a candle. And Martine designed the very first poster that we had for the restaurant. We put in a frame and put out in front that night. And I greeted people at the door.

• 25:03Guy Raz?

  And what did you serve in that first meal?

• 25:07Speaker 00

  That first night, we served a pate en croute, cornichons on the side. And then we had duck with olives. And I think that was Victoria. She felt really confident in putting those trays of ducks in the oven. There was duck fat everywhere, I remember. And with olives and with some sort of potato, celery root puree, I think. And Lindsay, the pastry chef, made a pomegranate.

• 25:37Guy Raz?

  And how much was that, that set meal?

• 25:41Speaker 00

  I think it was $3.95.

• 25:47Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how that $4 meal turned into one of America's best restaurants, and eventually inspired a revolution in the restaurant industry. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 26:22Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's 1971, and Alice Waters has just opened up Chez Panisse. And she's trying to capture some of the magic she felt eating at restaurants in Paris. And pretty soon, the tables are starting to fill up. And Alice, she has to figure out how to run a company.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  I was out in the dining room, trying to make it work. And I know that everybody who worked there was passionate about the same idea. I decided that we couldn't run the restaurant without these people, who were critical to taste and to the way that the place looked and the way that the café was running. And so we formed a corporation. And we had people that brought money, bought stock in this. And that helped us to run the restaurant.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  But I also gave shares to the people that were instrumental. And we had this group of people that believed in the project and invested in it.

• 27:43Guy Raz?

  Were you-- I mean, it sounds like you were getting your own business education. As this was happening, right? Because you hadn't gone to business school. And you, I mean, as you say, you didn't go into this thinking you wanted to make money. In fact, that was anathema to you in some ways. But you still had to run a business because there were people whose livelihoods were depending on this in part.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:06Guy Raz?

  Is that what was happening? Were you kind of learning as you went along about shares and about a corporation and about how to structure these things?

• 28:13Speaker 00

  I was absolutely learning by doing, which is a big monitory idea, that actually doing that works, that you're learning about its value and what is critical and what it really means to clean up the restaurant after hours and what those people needed to be paid, what a dishwasher should be paid. I remember I got a very powerful lesson about garbage from one of, it was a guy who brought fish to the restaurant really early on, this guy, political friend of mine from

• 28:57Speaker 00

  way back, who collected mussels along the coast. And he would bring them into the restaurant. And he said to me one day, I want you to come out and see the dumpster. And I went out and he pulled it open and it didn't smell very good. And he said, I want you to get in the dumpster. I want you to know what it feels like to be not careful about the way you put garbage in this container. And it was a big wake-up call for me.

• 29:37Guy Raz?

  You were the center of this hub and spoke, and still are. But at that time, I mean, it strikes me that, and I hope I'm not sort of extrapolating, but you wanted to do this because you loved to do it and you wanted to be around people you liked and you wanted people to be happy. But a business, inevitably, you're going to run into challenges with personnel, with people who just are not working out. Did you, in those early days, you know, what if you had to fire people? Was it hard for you? What if you had to discipline people? Did you just avoid that?

• 30:16Speaker 00

  I tried to avoid that, I did. But I avoided it in a very different way. I tried to hire friends that really helped me to solve the problems. When you're working in a business and you're working, you know, 15 hours a day or whatever you're doing, I wanted to be with people I liked and that I shared the values with. And so I was willing to take the risk of it not working out. And fortunately, there were very few times where that became an issue.

• 30:59Guy Raz?

  What was it that was driving you at that time? That was really motivating you? Because you weren't making money and you weren't going to make any money for a long time. And it seems like money wasn't really a source of tension, right? I mean, is that, was that the secret, at least at the beginning? Because everyone says, "Don't hire your friends. Don't work with your friends." But if, I guess if money is not really this thing that everyone's chasing, then there's no, because money is really the center of conflicts in business.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  Yes, it is. And I wanted a place, and always have wanted a place, that I wanted to be in and that it was constantly growing and changing. And that happened when different people brought ideas into the restaurant. And I think what really has created this long life for the restaurant is the fact that we don't have one person who is the main chef of the restaurant. We have two people and they share their job. They work three days and then they're paid for five.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  And it allows them time to recover and have ideas.

• 32:25Guy Raz?

  And what about you, though? I mean, this business was your baby at that point. I mean, I have to imagine that you were working like crazy.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  I was working all of the time.

• 32:35Guy Raz?

  Like seven days a week?

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Like, just about seven days a week. We were closed on Sundays. And I just threw myself into it.

• 32:44Guy Raz?

  What was the thing that just kept? Was it? I mean, some people described the fear of failure. Some people describe, you know, the bottom line. Some people describe this sort of intangible passion. Like, what was it that kept you showing up for 15 hours a day, seven days a week?

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Well, when you have only one menu, and it's different every day, you have to find those ingredients. You have to put them together differently. People have to want to come there and taste that. So maybe I was pushed more quickly into finding ingredients. And I really believe that that sort of search led me to the doorsteps of the local organic farmers and ranchers.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  But it was that that gave a kind of life and challenge to the restaurant.

• 33:51Guy Raz?

  I guess it was maybe '73 or '74. Probably the most famous food critic in the United States at the time, James Beard, for whom the famous award is named after. He eats at the restaurant and a couple of days or weeks later says, "This is one of the four best restaurants in the United States." What happened after that came out? Because you were like this collective, communal... All of a sudden, this guy says, "This is one of the four best restaurants in the United States."

• 34:24Speaker 00

  Well, you know, it was so gratifying in one way. But in another way, it made the restaurant incredibly busy. Sort of, almost overwhelmingly so, that we weren't prepared for that clientele.

• 34:45Guy Raz?

  This is probably ultra wealthy people flying to the Bay Area for the weekend to eat at your restaurant, right?

• 34:51Speaker 00

  I think probably some of them were coming in that way. But ultimately, it led to my conclusion that my friends couldn't afford to eat there and couldn't get in. But it made me think about it really seriously. And I think again, at Tom Luddy's urging, that I get back to my roots, that I really loved simple food. And it was a trip to Italy, actually, when I saw a pizza oven in about 1978,

• 35:30Speaker 00

  that I said, we need to create a real café bistro upstairs.

• 35:38Guy Raz?

  That is more affordable.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  That is more affordable, where we don't worry about money so much because pasta isn't too expensive to make and maybe pizzas aren't. And that would be a place for friends to gather.

• 35:57Guy Raz?

  As a restaurant started to get more attention, especially after James Beard and more media attention, you started to become a celebrity. You started to become a famous person, not just in Berkeley, but nationally known. Was that strange for you? Or, I mean, did you even absorb that and assimilate that idea? Or were you just kind of doing your thing?

• 36:22Speaker 00

  I mean, you can't help but be impressed when Newsweek magazine wants to put you on the cover. You know, I never expected that kind of attention to what I thought was a pretty simple, local, community restaurant in Berkeley, California. I mean, what was clear to me then...

• 36:53Speaker 00

  And is very, very clear to me now is that we were doing something sort of against the fast food culture of this country. That we were creating a meal that was supporting a slow food movement that was actually buying its food directly from the people who took care of the land. No middleman, giving them all the money. And then they brought their values into the restaurant.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  And it changed us. And we became really political. We started writing their names on the cafe list. That this came from Bob Cannard's farm. That this came from Dal Porto's ranch. That this was Mas Masamoto's peach. And identifying the people who were growing and raising the food, we became, in a way, co-producers.

• 38:08Guy Raz?

  Did people come to you and say, Alice, you know, we gotta, we gotta make Chez Panisse cafes and Chez Panisse expresses. And, you know, you gotta branch out and open, open them all over the country and the world. And, and we can get investors and venture money. And we can do a whole Alice Waters line at Target and, and Kmart. And, I mean, that must have happened, right?

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Oh, that did happen.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  And a few times, I was almost tempted by the money.

• 38:38Guy Raz?

  What happened? Why didn't any of that happen?

• 38:41Speaker 00

  It didn't happen because I really feel like it's important that you find people that share your values. And when they do, they're the ones that breathe life into it and should make the money from it. I just couldn't imagine, knowing how franchises work, that there would ever be a way.

• 39:12Guy Raz?

  To do it, to do it in a way that, that aligned with your own values?

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. Feels like selling out.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  I hate to use that term too, but it feels like I'm doing it just to make the money. I just cannot think about it that way. But it's more than that. I can't ever imagine flying around the world to visit my restaurants. What I like about being a restauratrice is that I know the people who work there. And it's the pleasure of my everyday life. I'm friends with them. I know the customers who come in. I love that aspect of it.

• 39:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, this was, I mean, we could, if we stopped the story here, it would be impressive. And Chez Panisse was this really cool restaurant. But that's really not, I mean, that's really sort of the beginning of the story. Because what's interesting about Chez Panisse is that there's a virtual consensus among chefs in the United States that what we consider farm-to-table, you know, which every restaurant does now, or talking, describing the source of produce, like, they all agree that started at Chez Panisse in the late 70s, that this was the restaurant that really created the farm-to-table movement. How did that happen?

• 40:38Guy Raz?

  I mean, you were a French restaurant and you were serving great food, but was it just a kind of a natural evolution? Or was there a point where you thought, look, we're in California. This is like the breadbasket of North America. You know, we can actually source all this stuff locally and tell people where it comes from.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Well, it happened sort of naturally and not really consciously trying to do that. It became California without us really identifying that right away.

• 41:14Guy Raz?

  And California meant local

• 41:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:17Guy Raz?

  foods and cooked in a, just sort of a, you know, unfussed way, right?

• 41:23Speaker 00

  Well, it meant for me, for sure, a very simple kind of cooking. And we are really at the beginning in this country, discovering the ingredients that we have to cook with. And I have always been focused on the organic aspect of it, really insistent on how the animals are cared for. And what they are fed, completely. I wanted to be about purity of food. We need to be thinking about all of these different aspects for the survival of the

• 42:05Speaker 00

  planet and for our own nourishment.

• 42:09Guy Raz?

  When you started to focus on local food, farm-to-table, which I guess you didn't really call it farm-to-table, did you think that you were building a movement? Did you think that this was going to become something really big? Or did you just do it because you thought that was the right thing to do?

• 42:30Speaker 00

  Well, at the beginning, I thought it was the right thing to do. But I felt, though, in the late 70s, the early 80s, especially when the café became so successful, that we had this audience and that we need to talk about taking care of the land for the future. And it really became into my consciousness when my daughter was born. And I felt like Chez Panis could not be an island unto itself, that we were affected by everything that was upstream and around the world. And I became very conscious of that.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  And I started to actively talk about it in every way I could. Every article that was written about the restaurant, from that point on, was really talking about how dependent and how easy it is to have a relationship with the farmer and how really exciting it was to talk to that person on the phone or to see the farm and talk about the planting and all of that. The Grow Your Own, Back to the Land movement is something that I hope happens again and soon.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  Because that is what is going to bring us a rural economy. When we can find a way to bring culture to agriculture, when we can bring security to the farmers who take care of the land, when we can buy directly from them, they will want to take care of nature. And I know many are doing that, young people around the country, and I'm thrilled by it.

• 44:35Guy Raz?

  When you think about organic today, it's everywhere. It's actually a huge value add for businesses to use that term "organic" when they can, because they can charge more money. It's everywhere. You can go to Costco and Walmart and Target and buy organic gummy bears and organic salads and organic candy and organic apple juice and whatever. Everything's organic, right? Are you, I mean, part of that is connected to farm-to-table, because that's an attractive option for people. Or you go to any fast food place and it will say "farm-fresh eggs." Well, every egg comes ultimately from a farm. The question is, what is that farm?

• 45:19Guy Raz?

  When you see like, you know, when you see that everything is organic today and everything is described as farm-to-table, or, I mean, is part of you happy about that? And proud of that?

• 45:31Speaker 00

  I'm troubled by it. I'm very troubled about the labeling on packages and what, how people are taking the values of our movement and greenwashing their industrial products. And we have to learn and be educated about what those words really mean. Is it certified organic? And who is certifying it? Where's it coming from? Hmm. Are the practices at these farms humane? Are they taking care of their farm workers? Are they paying them a decent wage? What about the packaging?

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Is it all plastic? What does "fresh" mean? Hmm. For some places, it could be two weeks old. Who do you trust?

• 46:25Guy Raz?

  Alice, when you are a public figure and you are associated with a really important movement, inevitably, you will be criticized. There will be somebody who criticizes you.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:39Guy Raz?

  And you've received your fair share of it.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:41Guy Raz?

  Some people say, you know, this is what she's talking about only applies to affluent people and people who can afford her restaurants and people who have the money for organic foods. Do you, do you internalize that criticism? Do you think about it? Does it change how you think about what you do? Do you ignore it?

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Well, I don't believe in this. I don't believe in the myths of a fast food culture. Food is precious. Food is precious. It can be affordable. It can be inexpensive if you know how to cook. I mean, I say that I can buy an organic chicken and I can make at least three meals out of it for a family of four. Jose Andres says he can make six. That's affordable. I know that we can make a school lunch that can even fit into the miniscule budget of

• 47:45Speaker 00

  the USDA reimbursement. If we know how to cook and we do not buy fast food, if we buy the food from the people who are doing it right and directly. This idea that I'm talking about is delicious.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  This is not hard to do. This is about sitting with your friends and family and eating together and even cooking together. This is about human values that we forgot about. This is addressing the issue of loneliness. This is addressing the issue of meaningless work. We are cooking something that makes other people happy.

• 48:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  We are falling in love with nature. We are seeing the trees turn color. We're having an everyday pleasure of that. We're engaging in the beauty and the biodiversity. Seeing 10 colors of carrots. It's kind of thrilling. I cooked a purple and orange carrot last night and I marveled at it. And that's what is going to make the revolution, if you will. I call it a delicious revolution.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  But it's about winning people over. It's not by overthrowing. It's not by separating. We need the biodiversity of people, just like we need the biodiversity in nature to survive.

• 49:50Guy Raz?

  You won the James Beard Award. I think it was in 1992. You were named the best chef in America, which is interesting because you are, in some ways, you're not best known as a chef. I mean, obviously, you're known as a chef, but you're best known as... The person behind a movement, do you feel more proud of one than the other? Do you see yourself as a chef primarily, or do you see yourself as something else?

• 50:17Speaker 00

  I see myself as a really good cook. And I see myself as a great critic and taster. And I'm not a chef chef. Jacques Papanis said to me, Al, stop saying that, because you are a chef. You've run a kitchen, and if you've run a kitchen, you're a chef. But for me, chef goes into that, you know, a training.

• 50:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 50:48Speaker 00

  Like Julia Child did, you know, when she cooked every single thing in her book, and she wrote such wonderful instructions. That's not ever been something that I've aspired to do.

• 51:04Guy Raz?

  When you think about the success of Chez Panis, you know, whether, and it's interesting how we define success, because it's not necessarily financial success. Of course, people have done well and have been, and lived comfortable lives, but it's not, you know, a billion-dollar corporation.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  No.

• 51:24Guy Raz?

  But when you think about the success of Chez Panis, and then the kind of the movements that came out of it, and all, which we didn't really talk a lot about, but all of the chefs who kind of came out of that world too, and created their own worlds, how much of your own personal success do you attribute to just luck and circumstance? And how much do you attribute to your skill and hard work and your determination?

• 51:49Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I really consider that it was good luck that I went to France when it was really a slow food nation, that I had the opportunity at a young age to understand that I had a passion around food. I didn't know how that would reveal itself. I didn't reflect on it at the time. But I just absorbed what I call human values at that time. You know, the big picture of eating together,

• 52:33Speaker 00

  how people have done this since the beginning of time. How they've always taken care of the land because that's where the food came from. They've always thought of food as precious.

• 52:43Guy Raz?

  So to you, the biggest factor is luck?

• 52:47Speaker 00

  I guess there has been some determination. People have asked me for one word that described me, and I've said determined. Some people have said uncompromising. I'm not quite that, but I'm very determined to make something happen. And usually, when I feel this way, it happens.

• 53:15Guy Raz?

  That's Alice Waters, founder and owner of Shep & Eas. In 1995, Alice founded an organization called The Edible Schoolyard Project, which sets up organic gardens in schools and teaches children to care for, cook, and enjoy fresh produce. Today, the original Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley also offers training programs for parents and teachers to replicate the project throughout the US.

• 53:58Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for How You Built That. And today's story starts in Dallas in 2003, when Piersten Gaines was a teenager and wanted to make a change.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  I had played soccer throughout my life. I always just wore my hair in braids. And then, when I was going into high school, I decided that I wanted to wear my hair straight. Take my braids out and wear my hair straight.

• 54:22Guy Raz?

  Now, like many African-American women, Piersten has highly textured hair, but her hair is also very fine.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  If I straightened it, it would curl up as soon as I sweat, as soon as I took a shower.

• 54:34Guy Raz?

  And Piersten had never had it chemically straightened before. So she went to a stylist and got the treatment. And at first, her hair looked great. But then...

• 54:43Speaker 02

  I was in geometry class and there was a guy behind me who said, "Piersten, all of your hair is on my desk." Yeah, it was bad. It was really bad.

• 54:52Guy Raz?

  Piersten lost her hair, all of it. And it took a long time to grow back. Now, this happened again a few years later, which is why Piersten was kind of wary of new salons. But in 2016, when she moved to Boston to go to Harvard Business School, she really needed someone to do her hair.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  One of my friends said that she was going to a girl at Drybar. It is an express salon service. They only do blowouts. You know, I've never seen anyone who, with my type of hair, walk out of there. And I was scared, but I was like, I don't really have an option right now.

• 55:27Guy Raz?

  But it turns out the stylist knew exactly what she was doing.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  The experience was just amazing. I was out of the salon in like an hour and a half, which had never happened to me. And all of the times I've been going to the salon since I was a kid.

• 55:38Guy Raz?

  And her hair looked amazing. So she was hooked. Piersten booked a weekly standing appointment, but it didn't last.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  She left. She like, she moved out of the state.

• 55:49Guy Raz?

  So Piersten got just one month of salon bliss. And that didn't seem fair. But what it did seem like was an opportunity.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  For a demographic of women who spend so much time and money, so much money, we spend nine times more than any other group of people on our hair. But the services just are subpar.

• 56:08Guy Raz?

  So Piersten thought, what if there could be a chain of salons all over the country for people with highly textured hair? Whether it was thick, or coarse, or fine, or tightly curled. A salon where they could get it styled in two hours and they would leave looking great.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  I really believed that if I didn't do this, somebody else was going to do this. It was just so obvious. It was so glaring.

• 56:30Guy Raz?

  But she needed to be sure. So Pearson pulled together a few hundred dollars from her student loans. And she organized a one-day pop-up salon in Boston. She found three hairdressers to do the blowouts. And to get the word out, she emailed Black and Hispanic groups at local colleges.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  The promo material that I sent out, it said, "Finally, a blow-dry experience for you." And it had a picture of a girl with curly hair.

• 56:54Guy Raz?

  And Pearson also decided to serve green juice so her first clients could feel a little pampered.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  I thought I was going to be pulling people's teeth to try this. And it sold out.

• 57:05Guy Raz?

  It sold out. Now, each blowout was just $10, and Pearson wondered if it was just a fluke. To find out, she needed to do more pop-ups. So she went to Atlanta, and she got into an incubator there, one that was geared toward women of color. And for her next test, she raised her price: $50 a blowout. And she served something other than green juice.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  In Atlanta, it's about the experience and the mimosas.

• 57:31Guy Raz?

  And those pop-ups were booked solid. Not only did Pearson make a profit, she also had clients asking, "When's the next one? Can I reserve a spot right now?" And at that moment, Pearson knew she was really on to something.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  If we stay doing the numbers that we're doing on these pop-ups, we'll be making 1.6 million in blowouts alone.

• 57:53Guy Raz?

  This year, Pearson is back in Dallas, where she's hosting pop-ups every other week and scouting locations for her first blowout salon. And who does her hair now?

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Our master stylist and educator, she is my stylist. Her name is India. This solution was for me. I created this solution so that if I went to a new city, I could Google somebody and know someone could do my hair. This was literally for me, so.

• 58:21Guy Raz?

  That's Piersten Gaines. She's the founder of Pressed Roots. If you want to find out more about Piersten or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, howibuiltthis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this. Our show was produced this week by Rachel Faulkner, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Julia Carney, J.C. Howard,

• 59:02Guy Raz?

  Noor Kutsi, Neva Grant, Melissa Gray, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Candace Lim. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 59:32Guy Raz?

  This is NPR.