- 6 months ago
- #americanmasters
- #revolution
Documentary, American Masters - Alice Waters and Her Delicious Revolution
Every great cook secretly believes in the power of food. Alice Waters just believes this more than anybody else. She is certain that we are what we eat, and she has made it her mission in life to make sure that people eat beautifully. Waters is creating a food revolution, even if she has to do it one meal at a time.
#AmericanMasters #AliceWaters#Documentary #Revolution
Every great cook secretly believes in the power of food. Alice Waters just believes this more than anybody else. She is certain that we are what we eat, and she has made it her mission in life to make sure that people eat beautifully. Waters is creating a food revolution, even if she has to do it one meal at a time.
#AmericanMasters #AliceWaters#Documentary #Revolution
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Alice in her quest has changed the world in an extraordinary way.
00:14I remember being with Alice in an airplane flying back from San Diego and Chino Ranch,
00:22and Alice had a flat of strawberries on her lap at a time when the strawberries in America
00:28were like Styrofoam.
00:31They were big and hard, and when you cut them open, they were white in the middle,
00:37and they had no fragrance at all.
00:39And Alice had strawberries, which were red to the core and amazingly fragrant.
00:45And as we sat on the plane, the smell of these berries started drifting through the airplane.
00:52And one by one, people came up to Alice and started begging for strawberries.
00:58And Alice is giving these strawberries away and watching dessert at the restaurant vanish.
01:04She turned to me and said, you know, we're really on to something here.
01:09If you give people a great strawberry, they understand how different it is.
01:16And we've got to bring this flavor back to America.
01:20And that's what her restaurant did.
01:22Well, I'm just convinced that having this understanding about food
01:29will change the way we live in this world.
01:34And I'm really on a mission to engage people in this way.
01:44A delicious revolution.
02:04It's a wonderful phrase.
02:05And I think it speaks to the fact that in the realm of food, doing the right thing is pleasurable.
02:13And that caring about food and knowing where it comes from has these very positive environmental and social ramifications.
02:22So you can sort of have your cake and eat it, too.
02:24There are chefs in every corner of the globe who have said to me, do you know Alice Waters?
02:33There is no more influential person in American food.
02:42How are we supposed to live our lives?
02:46How should we eat?
02:48How do the choices we make about food affect our fellow humans and the land that we live on?
02:56I think food just opens your senses and opens your mind.
03:03And it's an activity that we do every day.
03:08And it can really enrich your life, your everyday life.
03:18I thought I would make a confit of tomatoes.
03:22It's just tomatoes, garlic, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper.
03:29And the idea is that you can use the very, very ripe, overripe tomatoes to make it.
03:43With the olive oil and the garlic and the basil in the bottom,
03:47you cook them very slowly for about an hour and a quarter.
03:52You can use it as a tomato sauce for just about anything.
03:56I use it for a pasta sauce.
04:01It has just this aroma and fragrance that comes from the long cooking.
04:08I think when you eat the same thing every day, it sort of dulls your senses.
04:18And so when something really good comes along, you miss it.
04:21And another experience about food is changing as the seasons are changing.
04:29And you're experiencing the whole range of different foods and tastes out there in the world.
04:36You have a very different experience in your life.
04:40And it opens you up to seeing all kinds of things in a different way.
04:46That sort of hamburger experience is so narrow and just sort of narrows your thinking in all ways.
04:58It's not just about food.
05:00It's about everything.
05:04Alice Waters has achieved a great deal.
05:07She went from being a Montessori teacher to being one of the most unlikely restaurateurs in the history of the world.
05:16No training.
05:18No administrative skills that anybody knew about.
05:22Funny looking clothes.
05:25Shy in a way and yet incredibly forceful when you get down to it.
05:31She was very interesting when I first met her.
05:34She was really with this group who were rebellion at the University of California.
05:41And she believed passionately, just like, you know, her feelings about food.
05:46She had a passion for this.
05:48And I don't think she ever really thought of Chez Panisse as a restaurant.
05:54What she was really searching for was not a restaurant, but a place where she could feed this group of rebels.
05:59Alice came out of the movement.
06:07The University of California, of course, in the 60s, was the center of the anti-war movement.
06:14And other movements allied with it.
06:18And Chez Panisse began as a kind of expression of that.
06:24It was a very interesting moment where food and politics intersected.
06:29And it happened at Berkeley, by and large.
06:30It happened some other places, too.
06:32But we seldom think about it this way.
06:35But the food revolution, which is to say the rise of organic food and also the rise of, you know, distinctly American cuisine that we've seen in the last 30 years,
06:47was a 60s movement.
06:50It was part and parcel of feminism, of anti-war movement, of environmentalism.
06:54And organic food was, it was called a counter-cuisine.
06:59There was a counter-culture and there should be a counter-cuisine to go with it.
07:02I didn't have any real vision about what the restaurant would be.
07:07I just wanted a place to eat and to eat with my friends.
07:12And I thought it could be a kind of social place for people who lived in North Berkeley.
07:20I never imagined, never imagined that it was going to be anything other than that.
07:26When Alice opened Chez Panisse, I think she thought that she had traveled in France and she would come home and she would be able to cook real French food here.
07:36And had the same disappointment that all of us who were cooking at home had, which was you couldn't make that food.
07:44And the reason that you couldn't was because it was, it depended on the products.
07:49Really, a whole new world opened up when I went to France.
07:53It was great walking through the markets, the open markets, and seeing all the beautiful food and fruits and the vegetables and smelling it.
08:17And there was something that caught my attention.
08:24I had an awakening.
08:26I think I had some sensual pleasures out in the vegetable garden when I was a child.
08:34My family, well, they always had a garden.
08:37My mother was very aware of nature and knew all the flowers.
08:44I was brought into that experience when I was young, but it wasn't until I went to France that my eyes were opened.
08:52The idea of starting with really great products, of that kind of innovation that Alice had, that simplicity, that is all very much Alice's legacy.
09:08I'm worried about that Roman squash.
09:10That'll be gone, pretty much.
09:12The cooks gathered together each morning and tried to decide how best to use the fruits and vegetables that arrived from the farms that morning.
09:23Like a 10-pound beautiful ochre.
09:25It's like purple and green.
09:26It's really, like, pristine.
09:28The most important job in the restaurant, I think, is finding these ingredients and making a connection with the farmers and with the ranchers and knowing how to work with them and how to help them to understand what we need to use and make that a really, a partnership that we have.
09:56Chez Panisse is in the middle of Berkeley and in a city, and we can't have that really idyllic arrangement of a farm right outside the front door.
10:11Now we have a network of 75 different people that we buy things from, and some of them have just one tree of peaches, and some bring in all the salads every day.
10:26Like Bob Kennard.
10:28When I talk about a domestic garden, you need a little bit of a wide range of things, and not really a crop-oriented farm, but a big home garden.
10:39Many different kinds of squashes, and a handful of different varieties of onions, and a bunch of different herbs, and half a dozen different kinds of salad greens, and maybe a few root vegetables, and that's a domestic home garden, like a kitchen garden.
10:57We decided to try to connect with the farmers who were actually growing some of the fruits and vegetables that we wanted to have at the restaurant.
11:11If we could suggest varieties that were very tasty, we could have a kind of steady supply of things coming into the restaurant from a whole number of different people.
11:23Because we have such beautiful vegetables for each season, we don't have to serve produce out of season.
11:30Well, we communicate all the time, and I prepare availability lists for them, and they kind of dream up things that they think I might be able to get for them.
11:40But every picking day, an order comes in and gets it off the answering machine, and, you know, it goes from there.
11:46Hey, Bob, this is Russ, the restaurant. I want to order for Thursday. Let's see. Two boxes of curly crests, three water crests, six mixed lettuce.
11:58And I'll augment it a little bit, and maybe I don't have something that they want, or enough of something, and so I'll jockey back and forth with them a few calls, maybe.
12:08Two green chard. All right, hope you're doing well. Bye.
12:12A raspberry that I picked for Chez Panisse, it was picked this morning, it'll be used this evening.
12:21If it's not used this evening, well, they may reduce it to a sauce or make an ice cream or something like that out of it tomorrow.
12:27But it won't be a full little raspberry for fresh table use tomorrow. It's for tonight.
12:34A lot of what being a good chef is, is choice, is saying, this is the week to serve these cherries, and they're really perfect now, and I can't improve on this.
12:53So here is a bowl of cherries.
12:55So I think it's more than aesthetic.
12:56I think it's tied to the whole ethic of the restaurant, which is to break down the walls between the producers and the consumers of food.
13:08Before the organic movement was really important, I watched Alice have these arguments with people who thought, oh, it's, you know, you can't do that.
13:19And Alice said, yes, you can, you need to, it's important.
13:24That's very much in the air today. It wasn't in the late 70s and early 80s.
13:33Alice's model for running a restaurant is to think of the restaurant as part of its community,
13:40and to think of what what you eat means to the entire community and to the world,
13:48and to think of how you behave as a person and as a business as having an impact on the world.
13:58There's a politics in that. I mean, it's a very subtle, quiet politics, but it is politics, and it has an impact.
14:06You can follow it down this food chain back to the land.
14:10And it begins with knowing the names of what you're eating and having a sense of its particular identity.
14:15They're from, they're like a Lebanese kind.
14:18And I have two cherry tomatoes, one red, one yellow.
14:24I think it's gotten better with the cherry tomatoes, for sure.
14:27I think it's hard for people who aren't a bit older to remember the time when, on an American menu,
14:35you didn't say Michigan morel or Oregon mussels or anything like that.
14:47If you wanted an extra buck or two on the entree, you said import it.
14:51I think to the extent you can make people realize they're not just eating lettuce or cherries,
15:04they begin to think in terms of biodiversity.
15:08I mean, it's an abstract word for what we're describing, but, you know, there's a direct relation
15:14between biodiversity on a plate, a lot of different things, specific varieties, maybe unusual varieties,
15:19ones that are not in commerce, and there being biodiversity on the farm and in nature.
15:24And always you're reminded, I think, of a process.
15:27No, too, but this was better, yeah, just all the time.
15:30Yeah.
15:31I'll take either one.
15:32Okay.
15:33But I think if they have, if they have the same ones as yesterday, I'll take one.
15:37Uh-huh.
15:39What Alice has done is elevated the farmer from this faceless entity that just produces
15:47these commodities to someone that has a face.
15:51Alice has given farmers a face by teaching the public the story about food and understanding
15:58that we celebrate food, not just from the chef's art, but also from the farmer's art.
16:07Peaches are our favorite dessert at the restaurant.
16:10We often make a galette, which is a kind of tart.
16:14The key to making the dough is not to blend it too much.
16:27Those little pieces of butter make it so flaky.
16:31You can't duplicate the taste of a perfect peach.
16:36When they're ripe, the less you do with them, the better.
16:41We put a little butter and almond paste on the crust and then the peaches.
16:46I love a galette because it looks so handmade and that's perfect to me.
16:56No one should do without Нke.
16:58It's just so private.
16:59It's so прочive you do with all anyone's tolerated,
17:01the only future souls is dont want to make sure you'll find lots of things out there.
17:04haft food, alias.
17:05The peaches are really only good
17:32during the hottest months of the summer.
17:35So we serve them from the end of July
17:38just until the end of September.
17:42For me, there's nothing like a perfect peach.
17:54I think there's something really special and important
17:58about knowing that you can only have a peach
18:01for a very brief moment each year.
18:07Well, as a small farmer, I just feel like she's our patron saint.
18:26She's one of the few people out there
18:28who's really popularized fresh, locally grown food
18:32and brought out the importance of it
18:34and made it really understandable to a lot of people.
18:38And going to her restaurant, I think,
18:40is for me like going to church.
18:42It's, you know, it's the high temple of locally grown,
18:45fresh, really well done food.
18:47One of the great insights of the organic movement
19:00was that the consumer is a creator, not just a consumer,
19:03that we make the world with our buying decisions.
19:06So that if we choose to buy organic and pay that price premium,
19:13we are supporting a whole chain of events unfolds from that.
19:19That decision to buy that organic lettuce
19:21instead of that conventional lettuce,
19:23that ramifies all the way back to the farm.
19:25And it supports a certain kind of agriculture
19:27and that supports a certain kind of environment.
19:29Much of our policy is food-based.
19:32Much of why we do what we do is because of food.
19:37So it's not just cultural, it's enormously political.
19:41And that is part of Alice's message,
19:44is that we need to think about that.
19:47You know, food subsidies, petroleum subsidies,
19:52much of why we go to war can be seen as, you know, based on food.
19:58And has been throughout human history.
20:04Aren't they beautiful on them?
20:08They just, I think, express something about this season,
20:15this moment in time.
20:19And they come in all these beautiful colors.
20:22When they're really good, they're irresistible.
20:25I'm always looking for ones in the market
20:27that have that, that little top on.
20:32But you just know that that's been picked that morning.
20:36When it sits like that.
20:37So we've got two tomatoes here, okay?
20:46This is the commercial variety that is available at any number of agro-business outlets near you.
20:51This is an organic tomato grown with love and compost.
20:57If I am casting a Chekhov play, or a Chekhov play, or a Greek tragedy, or Shakespeare,
21:06I can hire Sylvester Stallone to give me a really pumped-up experience that's loud and that's strong.
21:20I can hire Sylvester Stallone to give me a really pumped-up experience that's loud and that's strong.
21:33But I can guarantee you, you will not be moved.
21:37His gift is to be present while things are blown up around him.
21:42If I'm hiring an actor, and when you first look at them, you're not impressed.
21:52You're not impressed.
21:55But two hours into the piece, you find yourself unexpectedly
22:01overwhelmed and moved and crying without even noticing it.
22:09Because what that person's carrying with them is so real.
22:22As agriculture is changing, you're getting a greater division between big and small, capital,
22:34technologically intensive versus labor and management intensive, conventional versus organic.
22:41It's creating a two-tier system.
22:45One system is based on industry, business, economics.
22:50The other system, which I like to think I'm in, is based at meaning, story, the art of what we're doing.
23:08This fruit is just perfect, where it has this amber glow to it.
23:13And you could see much more vividly the signature of the leaf.
23:18Because here you see a blush coming in, and if you lift the leaves gently,
23:23you could see where the leaves have left their mark on this.
23:26Last year, when we ranked the 50 best restaurants in the United States, it was unanimous here at Gourmet that Chez Panisse was the best restaurant.
23:40What's Meche Panisse, kind of a pace-setting restaurant, is not simply how good the food is, but what the food is.
23:53Until Alice came in the scene, fine dining in America was basically these snooty French chefs in their tall white hats.
24:03And, you know, with a parametri, what we call the wall, unless you drop money on the wall, you can't get in, or you can't get your tables.
24:13Now, I remember going to one of them, the most pretentious place I'd ever been.
24:17Waiters who would look down their nose, and when you ordered, they would say, oh, very good choice.
24:23And everybody in America was terrified of going out to eat, of doing the wrong thing.
24:29French cuisine was disserviced by those types of restaurants and the great chefs, and this is what became, for most Americans, identify with real French cuisine.
24:53When, in fact, the cuisine that Alice Water does is much more French.
24:56What I see in Alice, it puts her pretty separate from most anyone I know that cooks, and that is that she, um, she's very careful not to exceed in spicing things.
25:13There's a delicate edge to all of her food.
25:16I think of her as someone who almost conceptualizes what, what ought to be cooked in a restaurant and eaten in a restaurant.
25:26And the way, the way it ought to be, and the tone of it.
25:28Alice's food is just what it is.
25:32And, and she doesn't, uh, give it all kinds of bows and ribbons and stars.
25:37Well, I don't think of myself as a chef.
25:55I think, uh, I think, uh, I think of myself as really, um, uh, more like a home cook.
26:04Uh, I'm a, I think I'm a good taster and a good critic.
26:09The chef entails that you're in charge of a group of people, that you order them, and you structure the cuisine, telling, I want this this way, I want that this way, I want the fish to be cooked this way.
26:18I don't want to use those ingredients, I want to use that, I want that presentation, I want it very simple or complicated or whatever.
26:25This is what a chef is.
26:26That is, this one chef in France means chief, you know, in charge.
26:29So, uh, she is a chef, whether she liked it or not, when she was in a restaurant.
26:34The truth is that once she'd opened the restaurant, almost from the beginning, Alice wasn't the only cook.
26:43If all she was going to do was indulge herself by being in the kitchen all the time, the restaurant wasn't going to survive.
26:51She had created a community, and, um, it was her obligation to keep it going.
26:57People think that I cook at the restaurant every night, but I really haven't cooked at the restaurant for 19 years, since my daughter was born.
27:07So, it's an illusion that I am in the kitchen.
27:13There are a lot of extraordinary cooks who collaborate in that kitchen.
27:20Essentially what Alice does is she facilitates other people's talents.
27:26She is sort of the maestro pulling the strings.
27:30I really believe that people like to, um, be asked to do something, you know, that they, they couldn't do on their own.
27:38It's like an improvisation, that you come together, and, uh, you talk about the menu, and you look at the ingredients,
27:47and you see who has the ability to, or desire to cook, whatever it is.
27:55And if you have a lot of people engaged in that project who are sort of specialists in it,
28:03it, it, it, it becomes very exciting.
28:07I mean, you just, all of a little piece that comes together, like a production, you know, a play.
28:18You know, every once in a while, you know, in theater, I have a moment of perfection.
28:21You know, that's somewhere in the middle of the third act, you know, for that second performance that we achieved two years ago.
28:31Alice is serving hundreds of meals every day, and they're all at that level.
28:36I'm going to do it in two courses, where I thought what we would do is the broth with the crouton in it,
28:41and then the, the fish with a little bit of broth in the wui.
28:45Oh, that's served in the broth in the first, in the second course?
28:47I'm always there as the critic, and giving them feedback.
28:52I think I can really help in that way.
28:55I can help get them to even another place.
28:59Is it raspberry, uh, champ?
29:01Raspberry, uh, coulee.
29:04It has a little bit of the muscat grappa in it.
29:07Frozen honey nougat mousse.
29:08I think if this piece is a little bit soft, because it's been sitting...
29:15At the last minute is when you're tasting a dish.
29:21That's the time when you can really fine-tune it, and it's so important.
29:25I think it's probably the most important part of the creation of the dish,
29:32is that, uh, that, just that little bit of, uh, of salt, or a little bit of lemon juice,
29:40or the moving of things on a plate.
29:44It's, uh, it's sweet.
29:57After all, I had to make a little bit of our infamous, uh,
30:04feel would do on it.
30:05I hate to say it, but just, it might, it might go a nice way, because...
30:11I think when we talk about the food, when we really analyze it as a group,
30:16you can get to a place that's greater than the sum of the parts.
30:19I think that peel makes every dessert better.
30:26See, I like it.
30:27I like the fresh...
30:28I really like it.
30:30It makes all the difference for me.
30:34Alice has very clear taste.
30:38Um, I could, I could look at any dish that Alice had made and know that it was Alice.
30:44And you know it, you see it, you can taste it.
30:46All good cooks have an identifiable style.
30:50I mean, Alice's is very strong.
30:52I mean, if she fries an egg for you, it's not like anybody else's egg.
30:55I mean, I watched her, she, I stayed with her once,
30:57and she got up in the morning and fried me an egg,
30:59and it was a completely different egg than I've ever had in the past.
31:04I was sort of shocked, because it was so completely different than how I would fry an egg.
31:07It was great, but it was, oh my God, it's an Alice egg.
31:11I'm making a torpedo red onion vinaigrette for the salad.
31:20I'm going to make a bed of lettuces with sliced tomatoes on top,
31:25and then the sauce will be made with a dice of red onions,
31:32vinegar, salt, pepper, and olive oil.
31:35I think of lettuce as really sort of the beginning of Alice's revolution.
31:43When I first knew her, lettuce was the thing.
31:46She personally always washed all the lettuce at Chez Panisse.
31:50And it was, the first thing she did was start finding people all around Berkeley
31:56to start growing her little lettuces.
31:59When Alice was first serving mesclin salad, nobody knew what it was,
32:05and now it's every supermarket has a mesclin mix.
32:09I can just see her picking through lettuces.
32:13It's, um, it's this sort of Ur-Alice dish, is salad.
32:22Well, one of my mentors is Lulu Perrault,
32:26who owns Domaine Tompier, winery in Bandol in France.
32:32And Lulu is a great cook, just a great cook.
32:35She's a natural cook.
32:37She just knows what to put in, and it's a very simple kind of cooking,
32:43but it's with an aesthetic that she has.
32:46It appears that she never makes an effort.
32:49She's just, it just happens.
32:51Lulu makes the quintessential boy best.
32:54Something about that big pot over the vine branches,
32:58you know, out there in the hot sun cooking that fish stew, intoxicating.
33:08Well, a buipas is really a fisherman's stew.
33:11It's the fish that came out of the Mediterranean,
33:14the rockfish that came out of the Mediterranean,
33:17cooked with garlic and onions and fennel, tomatoes,
33:24a little bit of saffron, olive oil,
33:27and brought to a boil,
33:30and so that the flavors come together.
33:35It's something that we've been cooking at the restaurant in the fireplace,
33:39and we cook it for our special occasions,
33:42for birthdays and when the shellfish is really good.
33:54Oh, it smells fantastic.
34:09Doesn't it?
34:09Yeah.
34:09Doesn't it?
34:10It's been for you for 45 minutes.
34:13I was joking with Jerome about throwing a piece of charcoal into our buipas
34:19if it wasn't smoking enough,
34:20because I love that taste.
34:22I love that, the fire in the pot.
34:26Sometimes you know a domain coffee
34:27and they throw a little piece of charcoal in it.
34:29Well, shall we try it?
34:31I don't know how they do that.
34:33They do?
34:34We'll try the broth if it's not smoky enough.
34:36Okay, we just throw one in.
34:44That's tasty.
34:46I don't feel it.
34:49Can you change your plate?
34:51Uh-uh.
34:51I think it's not tasty.
34:53Her deepest feeling, I think,
34:56is that if she could just find the right dish
35:00to feed every person on Earth,
35:03if she could get the right flavor in your mouth,
35:06you would suddenly understand that
35:10if we could make food better
35:14better grown and better grown and more sustainable,
35:18we would all care more for each other
35:20and the world would be a better place.
35:22Cooking is giving, you know,
35:23and it's the pure, maybe the purest expression of love.
35:27I mean, in the sense that you always cook for the other.
35:30I've tried before, but it must have a beautiful flavor,
35:33especially Myers lemon.
35:34Well, cooking and feeding people
35:37is a form of communication for me.
35:40It's the way I talk.
35:43It's just give them a little something to eat.
35:46This is my favorite thing to do,
35:51is to come to somebody else's garden
35:53to pick vegetables.
35:58And this is the way people have been cooking
36:00since the beginning of time.
36:02They've been picking what's locally available.
36:06They've been cooking it simply,
36:09eating it with their family and friends.
36:12It brings you completely into the whole experience of food
36:18that is irresistible.
36:22I get ideas, and I think,
36:24well, maybe we'll make a soup with these green beans
36:28or maybe we'll have the salad.
36:32My whole plan begins to take shape.
36:38At Chez Panisse, it used to be a test
36:41for the new cooks at the restaurant.
36:45They had to pound the pesto by hand
36:48for 100 people.
36:50And if they could stay focused,
36:52and if they could pound it,
36:54then they had a job.
36:55They had a try-out for a job.
36:57A pisto is a mixture of garlic and basil,
37:03and it's put into a soup, a vegetable soup.
37:08There is a recipe for pesto.
37:10There are many, many, many recipes for pesto.
37:13They all seem to have pine nuts and basil and garlic
37:17and parmesan in them.
37:19But all of these are very variable.
37:24Sometimes the basil is very spicy.
37:27When it gets hot in the summer,
37:30the basil grows very quickly,
37:31and it's got a real strong flavor in it,
37:33so you use less of it.
37:34And sometimes you cut it with a little parsley.
37:37This is one vegetable soup that's cooked with a stock,
37:41and you cook it for two hours,
37:44so all the vegetables sort of melt together.
37:47I wanted to do something with what was in the garden,
37:50and I wanted to cook something that was very simple,
37:57very aromatic,
37:57and easy to serve to a big group of people.
38:01Having an experience around the table
38:03engages our senses,
38:07opens them up.
38:08We're brought into the experience
38:10of communicating with each other around the table
38:13in this delicious way.
38:24We're born uncivilized,
38:27and we remain that way
38:28if we don't have an atmosphere
38:30that repetitively tells us
38:33that we need to interact,
38:36we need to recognize that the other person
38:39feels just as we do.
38:41The table is the ideal metaphor
38:44for this experience.
38:47It is everything.
38:48Sharing food regularly all the time
38:50with others that you share your life with.
38:54I think that to sit down with friends,
38:58have a good meal,
38:59a glass of two of one,
39:01and talk
39:02is one of the great human experiences.
39:05Tiny white navy bean.
39:07I mean, that's the only kind of bean we could get.
39:09And so when you get a product,
39:11it actually comes from a friend,
39:13you know,
39:13and you get the bean,
39:14and then you grow it,
39:14and you just feel so responsible
39:16for something great coming into this world.
39:21It's the story of Chez Panis.
39:24I mean, in 30 years,
39:27things have changed entirely.
39:30At the beginning,
39:31we couldn't find anything.
39:32And then we started to ask for it
39:34and look for it.
39:34She's really taken off
39:36in a different direction
39:37than when I was little.
39:39She's much more involved socially
39:41and with education
39:43and in a way that she wasn't
39:45when she was just working at the restaurant.
39:48I always used to consider her crusade
39:50to be her avocation,
39:52you know,
39:52that she was still the restaurateur
39:53and she was still, you know,
39:55owner of Chez Panisse,
39:57and that was her title,
39:59and then that she had this avocation
40:00that she was also dedicated to.
40:02And I always used to tell people
40:04that she loved being at Chez Panisse
40:08and doing that,
40:09but she was passionate
40:10about being at the edible schoolyard.
40:13music
40:22There was a lot of length the school had that was basically just tarred over.
40:51And she thought, we should have a garden there, and these kids could be growing food and learning how to cook it.
40:57So she contacted the principal, who's then Mr. Smith, and told him her idea.
41:03And so this is Alice, and thanks to Alice, that's why we have our garden and our kitchen now.
41:08So Alice is here today.
41:10I think if you're talking about a person who is a world-famous chef,
41:20someone who's this influential in the food world,
41:24to really take so much of her energy and divert it into a program like this, it's pretty odd.
41:32But when you get to know Alice at this point, I don't even really think of her in that capacity.
41:38To me, she is a really hard-working, incredibly hard-working visionary.
41:45Somebody who has these quite brave ideas and just doesn't give up.
41:52Well, I just wanted to see what the kids were eating here at King.
41:56I wanted to see what they had for lunch, what was left over.
41:59I always did that at the restaurant.
42:01It's just a little bit difficult to see what's down on the bottom unless you get in.
42:04Well, little Kit Kats.
42:17Seeing how badly kids eat today made me realize that we had to do something about it.
42:23This is really where the idea for the edible schoolyard began.
42:27It's not shocking to me anymore to find Coke cans and candy bar wrappers after breakfast.
42:36It's just what's happening at school.
42:41Kids either don't eat or they eat junk food.
42:44Alice has good reason to be worried about what kids in America are eating today.
42:49There is an extraordinary obesity epidemic among American children.
42:55And right now, about 25% of American children are overweight or obese.
43:01So what kids are eating is of incredible importance to their health and to our future health care costs.
43:08We already take responsibility for their bodies at school.
43:14We teach them physical education.
43:16We teach them sex education.
43:18Why aren't we teaching them nutritional education?
43:21Because we didn't think they needed it.
43:22But now we know we're learning that they do.
43:25And Alice was there early.
43:29I mean, she's ready with this curriculum.
43:31These little gem lettuces are lovely, but they also kind of collect some of the dirt when they get watered.
43:38Sometimes the dirt sort of splashes down in, and it all settles to the bottom.
43:42And somebody who's kind of in a hurry might just sort of run it under the water and then say,
43:46OK, I cleaned it.
43:48But somebody who is meticulous is going to kind of peel it leaf by leaf.
43:54Do you guys ever do that where you have a daisy and you do that?
43:58He loves me.
43:59He loves me not.
44:00One at a time like that.
44:00It's kind of like that, OK?
44:02I just see what's happened at the edible schoolyard.
44:05And they come to that table, and they behave differently.
44:13They're quiet when people are talking.
44:17They're open in a way that some of them never are.
44:24They like to do things that we would consider to be hard work.
44:30And we need rocks.
44:32We need, I don't know, 15 wheelbarrows of rocks.
44:36Do you know where am I taking them?
44:37Do you need more?
44:38I'll take them.
44:39In this garden, what we really aim to do is to make it a place that is theirs.
44:43So they are a part of the decision-making process, so that they are a part of what is happening,
44:48a part of the whole collective project.
44:50And as you look around, it's not a garden that fits any sort of standard garden design formats,
44:55but it's a garden with tremendous energy, and it comes from the fact that, you know,
44:59900 kids a year are working out here.
45:00We work in a school district that is so diverse that we have so many different backgrounds,
45:1322 different languages spoken, socioeconomic range from A to Z.
45:20And we get kids who are very privileged, kids who are very underprivileged,
45:25and I think that teaching them that your senses are really the great equalizer in terms of the key
45:31to a beautiful life, a really fulfilling life, are really in your senses, and that's available to anybody.
45:38The value of the Edible Schoolyard Project is making kids aware of where food comes from.
45:58In our suburban and urban society, most children and even most adults are completely disconnected from agricultural production,
46:07have no idea where their food comes from, how it's being made.
46:11It's a task that has a very clear course, the beginning, middle, end, the very fulfilling end,
46:19especially for kids who are hungry, and I mean physically hungry too,
46:23not just emotionally and intellectually hungry, but physically hungry.
46:27For them to come in and understand that it's not hard to make something wonderful,
46:31and that feeling of sharing it with other people is, it's almost like you can see the light coming on in their head,
46:39because just that simple exchange when you're working with somebody across the table,
46:45and they're picking the leaves off the parsley and giving them to you, and you're chopping them up,
46:49and you have this relationship that you don't have in the hallway in school,
46:52you don't have it when you're working on your computer, when you're playing your video game,
46:56but when you are working on the same thing, and then you know you're going to be sitting and eating together,
47:00all of a sudden you look at that person in a different way, and you think, I'm your friend, I like you.
47:06Alice has devoted her life to these issues, and most people never stop to think about them,
47:13and so the awareness that she has, and the lack of awareness that most people have about their food,
47:19and its consequences, isn't always easy to deal with.
47:24And now to talk about dinner, too, is Alice Waters,
47:29who is the owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California.
47:33She sort of is the one who set a standard for a kind of cuisine that came from California,
47:40and just became what everybody wanted, and she has been the person who connected the dots,
47:47making us understand that where food comes from has a lot to do with how it finally presents.
47:55For me, that's really the big question is, where does our food come from,
48:02and what are the consequences of the decisions that we make about what we eat every day?
48:10I really want to cook with what's alive and right for the moment,
48:16and I really feel like I'm just so dependent on that farmer's market and on these farmers.
48:26What she's asking us to do is cook again. I think what we have to think is, how can we do that?
48:31I mean, maybe it doesn't happen in the old way.
48:35I mean, she doesn't have the entire answer.
48:38I mean, maybe what we have to do is say,
48:40yes, you're right, we have to learn to cook, we have to teach children about food,
48:45we have to go back to the earth, and think about new ways to apply this.
48:52I think she's absolutely committed. I mean, I've never seen someone quite that committed,
49:11who acts so quickly on new information and what she thinks is right,
49:17and her menu is this tool.
49:22And on the one side, it's looking toward the consumer
49:26and keeping them interested and stimulated and delighted,
49:30and on the other side, it's looking toward American agriculture
49:32and setting an example, because her decisions,
49:36whether she's going to have grass-fed beef on her menu or not, ramifies.
49:42I mean, her menu is very influential.
49:46The onion sawn.
49:48I think on a lot of fronts,
49:51certainly including chefs whom she's trained,
49:55who are all over this country now,
49:58she's had an impact on eating habits in the United States,
50:05which is decisive.
50:11I'm hoping that we can come to a time
50:14where everything that we have on the table
50:19is something that's wholesome and pure and delicious.
50:26Oh, I think she's made a huge dent in her dreams.
50:31She doesn't think about obstacles.
50:34What she does is go to the conclusion,
50:37and then she'll work it out from there.
50:40She wants you to trust herself.
50:43She wants you to know that the good thing is out there,
50:47and if you've had it once, you can have it again,
50:51and that it's worth searching for.
50:55This isn't hard.
51:01This is not a hard job to be part of this revolution.
51:06And it's a revolution because it is a different way of thinking about the world.
51:13You're caring about the future.
51:17You're caring about the world for our kids,
51:21and you're trying to take care of it,
51:23and you're supporting the people who are taking care of the land.
51:26And there's a whole set of values that are part of that thinking.
51:31This isn't hard.
51:33It's a delicious thing to do.
51:37And revolutionary.
51:39Every year we celebrate the birthday of the restaurant.
51:44For the 30th, we had a very big celebration,
51:48with 600 people coming together at the University of California.
51:54It felt like the most appropriate place
51:57because this is where it all began for me.
52:01It was really a perfect day.
52:08Well, there we are on a beautiful sunlit day,
52:11under an arbor of trees.
52:14Long trestle, very long trestle tables.
52:17A hilarious musical interlude by Michael Tilson Thomas,
52:30the music director of the San Francisco Symphony.
52:34A kind of mock ode to Alice Hood.
52:38We'll refine obscure old goop into ecstatic soup.
52:42We won't serve a toothpick if it's not organic.
52:46A mosaic, a rainbow of types of people.
52:59It was really the foodie reunion of the decade.
53:04Writers, cooks, and lots of friends of Alice.
53:10And her parents.
53:12That was one of the great treats for me,
53:14was meeting her parents.
53:16And if you please.
53:17And if you please.
53:18We'll never stay.
53:19Shapeless.
53:20Shapeless.
53:21Shapeless.
53:22Shapeless.
53:23Shapeless.
53:24Shapeless.
53:29Shapeless.
53:30Shapeless.
53:31Shapeless.
53:32Shapeless.
53:33Shapeless.
53:34Shapeless.
53:35Shapeless.
53:36Shapeless.
53:37Shapeless.
53:38Shapeless.
53:39Shapeless.
53:40Shapeless.
53:41Shapeless.
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