Category: Environment

Advocating locally grown food has taken Alice Waters far beyond Berkeley, home of Chez Panisse, the restaurant she founded in 1971.

Waters is author of nine cookbooks, head of the Chez Panisse Foundation, vice president of Slow Food (as in the opposite of fast food) International. And this week, she will be rubbing elbows with the global muckety mucks attending the World Economic Forum in Davos. (Story continues below interactive map.)

Sessions on the forum agenda include “Rethinking the Food Chain” and “Are We Being Bio-Foolish,” topics close to her heart.

Waters has been called a food revolutionary for her belief in organically grown foods, served only when they are in season.

Chez Panisse serves only one meal a day, using meats, vegetables and other foodstuffs provided by a carefully developed network of suppliers. Without knowing what the menu will be, diners reserve tables months in advance.

“Chez Panisse is a much larger enterprise than a restaurant,” wrote biographer Thomas McNamee, in Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. “It is a standard-bearer for a system of moral values. It is the leader of a style of cooking, of a social movement, and of a comprehensive philosophy of doing good and living well.”

Waters also pioneered the Edible Schoolyard project, in which schoolchildren prepare and eat food they grow themselves.

Now she is planning an event for Labor Day weekend, called Slow Food Nation, in which farmers and chefs will demonstrate earth-friendly foods.

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