[birdsong]
[Waters] Very early on, I was invited to New York for this big food event,
and I thought, "I'll make a salad."
[lively music playing]
[Waters] I had gone to visit the south of France,
and discovered the mesclun salad.
Rocket and frisée and chervil.
I just loved it.
But I didn't want to pick the salad before I went to the event,
so I took the salad in flats of soil,
and I put them on the ledges on the plane.
When I arrived in New York, I was nervous.
I was the only woman,
and all the rest were New York chefs.
They were doing caviar,
and I had a salad.
Everyone thought that that was crazy.
No one thought a salad was important enough.
No one.
But in the end, it was a salad that people hadn't seen before.
It became my calling card.
The New York Times even wrote about it.
So, from that moment on,
when people told me that it's impossible to do something,
immediately, the French phrase came to my mind.
Impossible is not a word in the French language.
[chuckles]
[Vivaldi's The Four Seasons playing]
[music fades]
-[birdsong] -[traffic passing]
-[woman] Ceci, do you wanna come down? -[child] Down.
Okay, let's go down.
One at a time. One at a time!
Do you wanna go see what Nonna's doing?
-[Waters] Is that… -[mother] Lettuce.
Would you like a salad?
-[Ceci] No. -[Waters] No? Oh.
-[mother laughs] -[Waters] No.
[woman] In a world that is all about more, more, more…
-[mother] You can try it. -[woman] …faster, faster, faster…
-[mother] What do you think? -[woman] …bigger, bigger, bigger,
Alice Waters holds on for dear life
to a vision of a different world that's better,
and more beautiful and delicious
and extraordinary for all of us to live in.
[gentle music playing]
[Nosrat] Alice Waters is the mother of the farm-to-table movement.
We can trace it back to her values,
to her uncompromising way,
and to her restaurant, Chez Panisse.
At Chez Panisse, the menu has changed every single day for over 50 years.
And always what's on the menu is what's the freshest,
what's in season, and what is the most pristine from the farms.
Chez Panisse was the first restaurant in America
to point at the farmers, to put their names on the menu.
Here was one of the most famous restaurants in America
saying, "These are the important people."
[Nosrat] There was a time where
restaurants didn't have to stand for anything,
chefs didn't have to stand for anything.
There was no activism built in.
But Alice is probably the most opinionated person you'll ever meet.
And she has always taken any opportunity to make change
by going straight to the top.
[Pollan] In Alice's utopia,
everybody would have a home-cooked meal grown from organic farms.
She's always had a political agenda to take care of our health
by growing healthy food without chemicals.
But the industry has fought back. I mean, they're really tough.
[Nosrat] Over the years, she's been called out by all sorts of people
for being such an idealist.
But it's her uncompromising way
that pushes us to do things we didn't think were possible.
[inspirational music playing]
[Pollan] Alice's secret power is realizing food is the connector
of a whole lot of other things.
It's a means to an end.
She wants to change the world.
[tool snipping]
[Waters] This one's great.
[woman] Yeah, I thought you'd like these.
[Waters laughs] Yes. I do.
[woman] I thought this one was beautiful.
-[laughs] -[Waters] Oh my God, it's just…
[woman] They've got grace, besides beauty.
-Gorgeous. -[Waters] Uh-huh.
I'm grateful to my mother, because my mother loved flowers.
[intriguing music playing]
[Waters] When I was a little baby,
we would drive out to see different flowers
in the spring and in the fall,
and to look at the trees.
She put the mosquito netting over the baby carriage,
and she put me out under the apple tree.
So the blossoms would drop onto the mosquito net.
I remember my childhood as being so much about that.
The beauty of flowers.
It really got me in touch with seasons.
I know what kind of flower happens at this time of year,
and I look forward to it.
I think that same way with food.
When I started Chez Panisse,
I always wanted the fixed-price menu,
just what was really special that day.
[man] Rockfish, clams, and calamari with a saffron broth.
No choice of anything else.
I'm not trying to do things that have never been done before.
Taking care of the farmers,
eating food that's locally produced,
sitting at the table with our families and friends.
I still believe that there are those human values
buried in the ground,
and we have to dig them up again.
[music fades]
[woman] Winter vegetable salad.
We are using, uh, red cabbage, mustard frills,
curly cress, and parsley leaves.
We have Treviso radicchio tonight,
tardivo, escarole, and frisée.
Local chanterelles keep coming in.
These are from Canyon, just up in the East Bay Hills, not too far away.
[Pollan] The first time I ever ate in the restaurant,
I was working on this piece for The New York Times
on the industrialization of organic agriculture
and how it was kind of losing its vision.
I was hoping to get a pissed-off quote from Alice
about how they were ruining organic,
and she just would not say anything negative about anybody.
So it was very frustrating.
[lively music playing]
[Pollan] At the end of the meal, this bowl of fruit shows up.
Just fruit.
It hadn't been cooked. It hadn't been prepared in any way.
It had just been chosen.
It had been selected for perfection.
And I thought, "How audacious."
Or humble. I wasn't quite sure.
[Nosrat] Coming to Chez Panisse, people are expecting to be wowed.
And then people come there, and they're, like, "Wait."
"This is just, you know, some fruit in a bowl?"
But to make that fruit plate possible,
she's supported a network of farmers for the last 50 years.
This is not the same fruit you can buy at the farmers' market.
This is the most perfect fruit
that is ripe at the moment that you order it.
I didn't know fruit could taste like that.
In a world that focuses so much on the chef's artistry,
the chef's brilliance,
removing yourself from the equation and saying,
"This didn't need me to be better,"
is quite radical and revolutionary.
[Waters] We can't make that taste.
That taste comes from those farmers.
Nature does it better than anyone.
[music fades]
-[woman] This is the spigariello. I think… -[Waters] Oh.
[man] Isn't it nice?
-It's like a broccolini at this stage. -Yeah, sure.
Um, but it has, like, the little tinier leaves.
-[Waters] You could eat the stalk too? -[woman] Yeah, the stalk is super tender.
Up until about a month ago, we were just harvesting the leaves.
And the leaves, it's this really nice flavor.
They taste like broccoli, but you cook 'em like kale. So, the spigariello.
Okay. Send these.
[Waters] I was born in Chatham, New Jersey,
about 17 miles from Newark.
[poignant music playing]
[Waters] My parents had a garden,
and they really ate out of that garden,
because they didn't have so much money, and they had four girls.
They didn't grow food for pleasure.
They grew it for necessity.
My mother didn't have any training about cooking.
It was very simple.
Vegetable, potatoes, and meat.
We couldn't have sweets.
We had brown bread,
and we had to eat everything on our plate.
Needless to say, when I went to school
and I brought my whole wheat bread and peanut butter sandwich,
I didn't want to eat it.
I wanted to eat what the other kids were eating.
Sugar and sweets.
That white bread that was so soft.
[chuckles] Cheese.
All of that.
It was very difficult.
[clattering]
[Waters] My last year in high school,
I thought I was gonna go to Middlebury in Vermont,
but my parents couldn't afford it.
Thank goodness for the University of California,
because it only cost $97.
[rock music playing]
[Waters] When I arrived in Berkeley in 1964,
it was during the free speech movement.
[man] There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious,
you've got to indicate to the people who own it
that unless you're free,
the machine will be prevented from working at all!
[cheering]
[Waters] There were hundreds of people protesting about the war in Vietnam,
civil rights.
There were sit-ins.
Many of my friends were arrested.
But in Berkeley at that time,
there was a camaraderie.
Every night, my friend would invite over all these radicals to dinner. [chuckles]
And that's where I learned to cook.
During that time,
I felt the power of all of us together,
and how it influenced the way the university responded.
And the way the world responded.
That's when I became an activist.
[music fades]
[ship's horn blares]
In 1965, my friend Sarah and I found out
that there was a course in French cultural history
at the Sorbonne.
So we got on that plane, went to France,
and then took a bus to Paris.
[jaunty music playing]
[Waters] When I went to France,
it was still a slow food nation.
I had heard about eating in Paris,
but I had no idea about farmers' markets.
The market was just alive.
Everybody was shopping there.
There was no supermarket.
No one had any food that wasn't grown nearby.
People waited in line for a baguette for 20 minutes.
And I said, "What are they doing?"
And then I did it.
People went home from their jobs, had lunch with their family.
It was so new to me.
In the United States at that time,
we disengaged with cooking our food.
There was an introduction of fast food and TV dinners.
In France, food was important.
[camera clicks and winds]
[Waters] Living there for a year
really showed me another culture
of nourishment and beauty.
[camera clicks and winds]
[music fades]
[grasshoppers chirping]
-[Waters] I'm crazy about watercress. -[man] The mâche…
-[woman] It's delicious. -Watercress soup is one of my favorites.
-[man] You know… -Two things I learned to eat in France.
-Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. -When I came back, I wanted both of them.
[man] Yeah. Yeah.
[Waters] When I got back home,
I knew that I wanted to live like the French.
Then I thought if I opened a French restaurant,
maybe that would come.
[lively music playing]
[Waters] When I started Chez Panisse,
we tried to find ingredients that really did taste like France,
but we couldn't find that.
-[sous-chef 1] Mm-hmm. -[Waters] Needs way more olive oil.
[sous-chef 2] Not really getting that.
-[sous-chef 1] Yep. Yeah. It… -Here. Taste it.
[sous-chef 2] Thank you.
[Pollan] Alice was looking for a taste she'd had in France,
but by this period, what had been a very piecemeal, localized food economy
became a national food economy.
We were breeding for shipability.
We were breeding for looks.
We were breeding away from flavor.
So to recreate that experience from France,
she needed to change the system.
[Waters] I realized that I couldn't have that taste
unless it's picked when it's ripe
and brought directly to the restaurant.
So we went to visit all of the farms that were within one hour of Chez Panisse.
Only one was crazy enough to work with us.
Bob Cannard was a regenerative organic farmer,
just letting nature do its thing.
And when I tasted those vegetables,
it was the taste that we were looking for.
[music fades]
[machinery whirring]
[Nosrat] Over the years, Alice was growing, one by one,
the network of farmers, fishermen, and bakers.
All the different people to create her farm-to-table vision.
-[Waters] Squash or carrot? -[sous-chef 1] Carrot.
There's a little fennel and coriander seed in there too.
[Nosrat] From day one, it's been,
"If it doesn't exist, then let's create the market for it."
"Let's build this network out."
And the network is what is truly incredible about Chez Panisse.
[inspiring music playing]
[Waters] Laura Chenel had an organic goat farm up in Sonoma.
I heard about her,
and I said, "Oh my God. It tastes just like the French cheese."
So I put it on the menu,
and it became a signature dish for Chez Panisse.
[Nosrat] The Chez Panisse goat cheese salad
is a beautiful salad of leafy greens, perfectly acidic.
There are these coins of goat cheese breaded in breadcrumbs,
baked in the oven for five, six minutes until molten and perfect.
It's just the most wonderful thing.
It's been on the menu most days since 1981,
and it really was the goat cheese salad that introduced Americans to goat cheese.
Now Laura Chenel is known as the mother of goat cheese
in this country.
You can draw a direct line from that happening
to a choice that Alice Waters made.
It doesn't get tracked back to her,
and she would never walk around and say, "This is here because of me."
But if you know, you know.
[music fades]
[geese calling]
At that time, people wanted to fight for something and stand for something.
People wanted to go against the grain.
That countercultural vibe set the tone
for a restaurant that was gonna break all of the rules.
-[lively folk music playing] -[man whoops]
[Waters] We were a part of that counterculture.
People from the free speech movement and civil rights
came to the restaurant because of that.
[Waters on film] We were cooking like we were eating at home.
That's really how we ran this place.
[Waters] It was very informal.
I loved that about the restaurant.
So it was a rude awakening
when I discovered we were in debt.
-[man] ♪ Hey! ♪ -[music fades]
[somber music playing]
[Waters] We weren't charging enough for the food.
We didn't want to make it too expensive, so that our friends couldn't come.
We were in trouble.
I really thought it was the end of the restaurant.
I really did.
I was very, very anxious,
and I remember sitting in the backyard,
and I just… I couldn't see.
I had gone blind.
It was a panic attack.
That was a big wake-up call.
There was something so valuable at Chez Panisse
to so many of the people who worked there and came there.
And I knew I had to change it in some way.
[music fades]
[Waters] Early on, we never had a head chef.
I never thought about the chef in that way.
My friends were the ones working in the kitchen,
and we saw the running of a kitchen in a very different way.
It wasn't in that classical pyramid form.
[Nosrat] For many years, it was sort of a hippie production in there.
Not wearing the chef's coat.
Not responding, "Chef this, Chef that."
Jeremiah Tower was the first real Chef with a capital C
to come through the restaurant,
and that changed everything.
[elegant music playing]
[Nosrat] He and Alice were a little bit like oil and water,
but they were also really complementary to one another.
Alice had the vision and the idealism and the spirit.
He had more of that formal knowledge,
the culinary understanding.
[Waters] When he came to Chez Panisse,
we were not just trying to do the easy things.
We were challenging ourselves.
That experimentation was very important to me.
[Nosrat] Working together on this daily changing menu
based on seasonal food,
they pushed the restaurant forward,
and their vision really dovetailed to create something amazing.
[Waters] When Jeremiah was there,
it had exhilarating moments.
During that time, the restaurant had quite a bit of fame.
But it was a difficult time.
He felt that he was in charge,
that the chef was at the top of the pyramid.
I appreciated what he did,
but he didn't see the family at Chez Panisse.
[Nosrat] Jeremiah needed to be the center of his own world.
That was why she and Jeremiah had tension and went their own ways.
[music fades]
[Waters' daughter] Should we go check… check out what else is goin' on?
-[Ceci] Nonna! -[daughter] Yeah, Nonna's out there.
-[laughs] Oh! -[Waters laughs] Really!
[daughter] What's for dinner tonight?
[Waters] This is a kishu.
-Kishu. -[daughter] You wanna have a kishu?
-[Ceci] No. -No!
[Waters] Ten years in, I was still at the restaurant and cooking.
[daughter] Thank you!
[Waters] But when my daughter was born,
I needed to be there for her.
[inspiring music playing]
I couldn't cook in the restaurant six days a week.
So I dreamed up this crazy idea.
What if there were two chefs in every key position?
Alice decided the head chef, downstairs, upstairs, and then pastry,
would be divided between two people,
but they'd still get a full-time salary.
A lot of people didn't think that was really possible.
-[sous-chef 1] Right, time for a taste. -[sous-chef 2] Time for a taste.
[Nosrat] At that time, restaurants in America
were trying to squeeze as much from as little as possible.
Alice said, "We don't want to be part of that culture."
[Waters] Everyone thought that that was extravagant
and said I was extremely naive.
But it did work.
It really did.
-[Waters] What do you think? -[Ceci babbles]
[Waters] After that decision, I never had chefs leaving.
The cooks felt great when they came in.
They were not exhausted.
They came in with new ideas.
It was the most important decision I ever made for Chez Panisse.
[music fades]
[birdsong]
When I was working at Chez Panisse, 60 Minutes came to do a profile of Alice.
They were filming for a long time,
and we were all really excited to watch it.
[stopwatch ticking]
[woman] To prove to us that healthy, slow food is worth the money,
and can be fast and easy,
she invited us to her house for breakfast.
[Nosrat] I was watching it at home, and Lesley Stahl was like,
"Let's cook something together. Something simple."
[rustling]
[Nosrat] Alice was gonna make a fried egg with some tomatoes,
but instead of using a cast-iron pan,
something that everyone has at home,
she built a fire in her hearth,
and she did it in this egg spoon.
This beautiful hand-forged iron and copper spoon.
[Waters on film] I love the taste of olive oil with eggs.
I think it's very Italian.
[Stahl] This is a campfire place in the kitchen.
[Waters] It's true. It is.
[Stahl] Wow, look at that.
[Nosrat] I literally fell off my couch
because nobody knew what an egg spoon was,
which made her look totally out of touch,
and unrelatable, totally unrelatable.
[poignant music playing]
[Stahl] People say Alice Waters is self-righteous and elitist.
And these are words I've heard over and over.
[Anthony Bourdain] As a chef, I'm not your dietician or ethicist.
I'm in the pleasure business.
My responsibility is to give you the best-tasting tomato
that I can afford, given the circumstances,
and maybe increase the likelihood that you get laid after dinner.
She had this opportunity to connect with the broad American audience
and bring them into her vision,
and instead, it turned a lot of people off.
It was a real disaster.
[music fades]
[Nosrat] The 60 Minutes interview really fed the people
who've always accused her of being elitist and out of touch.
But she never apologized for it.
I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege,
and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides.
And everybody deserves this food.
That's not elitist.
[inspiring music playing]
[Nosrat] She just thought, "Why can't it be organic?"
"Why can't it be grass fed?"
And at the time, that seemed impossible and so far away.
[Waters] People were telling me we couldn't change in this country,
but I never wanted to give it up.
I said, "We will find the people to make it happen."
"Those chefs that wanted to make a difference,
those farmers that took care of the environment."
And we did.
[Nosrat] One by one, she created an entire network
to create the actual lasting change that she wanted.
Alice wanted everyone to eat farm-to-table.
And guess what?
Now literally every restaurant you go to has a farm-to-table menu.
Alice wanted organic things available.
And now you can go to the farmers' market and buy something organic.
Alice wanted all the beef grass-fed.
And now there are fast-food restaurants where you can buy a grass fed burger.
Her commitment to her values
had a huge effect on how we eat in this country.
And we all get to be the lucky beneficiaries of that.
[music fades]
[murmur of conversation]
[Waters] I was looking around at public schools for my daughter to go to,
and King Middle School was right between my house and Chez Panisse.
I was, of course, very curious about what these kids were eating.
And so I went out to the dumpster, and I just got in. [laughs]
I was so shocked by it.
But I had this crazy idea. [laughs]
I wanted to make a kitchen and garden classroom
to give these students a new understanding about food.
[uplifting music playing]
[woman] If you can hear my voice, clap once, when everyone's--
Oh wow! Oh my gosh.
Thank you. So, what's the theme of our week this week?
Can somebody raise their hand and tell me? Yeah, go ahead.
[boy 1] Food that gets wasted.
[teacher 1] Yeah, food waste. We're talking about food waste.
[Waters] When we first started in Berkeley,
it had to be an academic subject.
[girl 1] Usually, one-third of the food grown and cultivated in the US
is actually thrown away.
[teacher 1] Yeah. That's something that happens
when we have food as a commodity.
But here at the Edible Schoolyard, we grow our own food.
[Waters] The idea was teaching to the standards,
but using the education of the senses and learning by doing.
[teacher 2] To harvest kale, you'll need both hands.
Those are pretty. Good job, guys.
[Waters] It was an amazing way of teaching,
because children were not outside after school.
They were inside, on their computers, on their phones.
They weren't really deeply in touch with the world.
[teacher 2] These carrots look incredible. Can I see?
[gasps]
-How fun is it to pull up carrots? -[boy 2] Very.
[teacher 2 laughs]
[Waters] That was the beginning of a much bigger picture for me.
And how it would unfold, I was unsure.
[music fades]
[teacher 1] Ms. Hayes is gonna be teaching julienning at the red table.
Ms. Sophia is gonna be at the blue table teaching chiffonade.
That looks good.
You're growing up. [laughs]
-Becoming an adult. It's happening. -[teacher 2] We only have…
[Pollan] Alice wasn't gonna change how this culture eats
working just with adults.
Food habits go really deep,
and they have to be shaped early in life.
And so Alice's focus on children was really important.
[uplifting music playing]
[Waters] I wanted to grow the Edible Schoolyard Project.
There was a lot of enthusiasm,
and we had proof of concept.
So I called my friend in LA,
and I said, "Would you be interested?"
She said, "I would love to do that."
Another close friend said, "I want one in Brooklyn."
And another friend said,
"Maybe we could start one in New Orleans."
And it kept growing until I had 6,500 schools.
And then ten years ago,
Michelle Obama wanted me to talk about the Edible Schoolyard Project.
And from that came the idea
that she should plant a garden at the White House.
I wanted it, of course, on the front lawn. [laughs]
We didn't get that.
But the beautiful part was
that she brought children from the schools in Washington
to help her plant that garden.
I knew that there was power there
that could be used in all kinds of ways to make change.
And that's really important,
because I have a big message that I wanna send out in the world.
[uplifting music intensifies]
[Waters] How are we supposed to live our lives?
How should we eat?
I'm not ever trying to tell people what to eat.
I want them to know about where their food comes from.
Let us subsidize real food instead of fast food.
-Let's do that right off. -[cheering and applause]
Let's feed every single child in school
breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack
for free,
and feed them real food.
[woman 1] Fresh salad. Look at that. It's all dressed.
Right, okay. Take these, and then each…
[boy 1] Yeah! Okay!
-Get ready for… -[woman 2] I'll make them again.
-[boy 1] They're for each… -[woman 1] These croutons are amazing.
-[boy 2] That's good. -[boy 3] Yeah. This one's…
[Pollan] Alice set her path by a certain northern light,
and she hasn't been blown off course.
I'm not naive that it's easy to change the system,
but all this can be done.
[gentle music playing]
-[Waters] Which book? -[Ceci babbles]
This one or this one?
This one. Okay.
[Waters] I want to change the values of this world.
I do.
-What's that? -[Ceci] Apple.
Yeah. You're eating one right now.
[Waters' interview] Harry Truman said,
"In the long view, no nation is healthier than its children
or more prosperous than its farmers."
[Waters] Thank you.
[Waters' interview] That's the world I wanna live in,
a place where we treasure our farmers and teachers.
[teacher 1] Look what you made!
-[boy] I'm so proud of you guys. -[teacher 1] Beautiful! Beautiful.
[Waters] It's so thrilling to see this next generation
caring about where their food comes from.
It gives you hope,
and that's what this is all about.
It's about hope for our future.
[uplifting music continues]
[child laughs]
-[waves breaking] -[gulls calling]