BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS
The Dish
Alice Waters annoys the living sh*t out of me. We’re all in the middle of a recession, like we’re all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There’s something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic … I’m suspicious of orthodoxy, the kind of orthodoxy when it comes to what you put in your mouth.” –Anthony Bourdain to Eater SF
Yesterday, we ran a little ditty about how items in specialty grocery stores are not life’s necessities. In today’s Wall Street Journal online, Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters essentially refuted that statement in an interview – claiming that yes, indeed, slow food-type living is a necessity. More so than your big, luxury car. But you can’t really have a discussion about Alice Waters without mentioning Anthony Bourdain, who as you can tell from the quote above, has had some issues in the past with her philosophies.
Towards the end of her interview (read it here), Waters addresses the absence of celebrity chefs in their restaurants and even relates the seduction to expand to any chef who opens a second location of their restaurant, especially ones that don’t take into account the local culture.
“If someone asked me to go to Arizona, I’d open a Mexican restaurant.But they want Chez Panisse there; they don’t want a Mexican restaurant. It seems so disconnected.” –Alice Waters
What’s all that mean? Besides that expanding chefs are essentially shunning locavore-ism, it means we’re not getting a Chez Panisse anytime soon.
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