Reflections on Waters

In mid-2011, NPR's "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross conducted an amusing interview with Alice Waters, the legendary chef, restaurateur, and godmother of the sustainable foods movement. It's well worth a listen.

Waters' Berkeley, CA restaurant, Chez Panisse, has made ingredient sourcing into an art form, with a staff that includes professional "foragers" who hunt down the best meat, fish, fruits and vegetables. The farmers are given top-tier billing right alongside the chefs. To a company like Sprouts, which also holds the growers in high esteem — even though our high volume necessitates the use of many different growers — that just feels right.

In the interview, Waters reminisced about how bad a cook her mother was, and how, as a schoolgirl, Waters would try to peddle the awful banana-on-whole-wheat sandwiches that her mother sent with her to school. Kind of just goes to show that a bad culinary upbringing need not turn you off from food forever. (Though it also reminded us of the great Tom Lehrer song lyric about how "Our old mess sergeant's taste buds had been shot off in the war; but his savory collations add to our esprit de corps.")

Waters said that her proudest creation on the Chez Panisse menu was the fruit bowl. That's right — the fruit bowl. No custard filling, no dark chocolate/sea salt/caramel drizzle. The Chez Panisse staff sources fruits that are so good, and so unique, and pairs them so perfectly, that the result is a creation worthy of inclusion on one of the most rarified restaurant menus in the country. And at only $8 or $9 or $10 a pop.

The founding of Chez Panisse, in 1971, is generally thought to be the starting point of the natural foods movement (although, we can't help but observe that by 1971 the Boney Family had already been in natural foods retailing for nearly 30 years). That means that this push back to the earth, to natural, organic foods and to sustainable farming, has been going on for almost as long as the processed foods movement ever did. A peek at the ingredient labels in any conventional supermarket aisle in the US will tell you that we still have a long way to go. But we are getting there, one banana-on-whole-wheat sandwich at a time.

From the September, 2011 edition of Fresh Off the Press