I feel simultaneously cutting edge and completely blase “been there done that.”
A couple of weeks after Michelle dug up the South Lawn at the Whitehouse, and the same day Maureen Dowd wrote about Northern California’s food snobbery and its grand doyen, we ourselves went to Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse. We went to the cafe rather than the formal restaurant, mostly because M. is an a la carte kind of guy rather than price-fixe. Hell, when I met him and he was knee-deep in Linux versus Windows versus Mac OS discussions and open-source evangelism, his mantra was “choice.” (Of course, a mantra I shared, but for feminist reasons rather than technological.)
The funny, not quite disappointing thing, about last night’s dinner was it was a long time coming and later than our honestly come by food smugness had already begun to crystallize. I tease M. that when we met his “car” was a 12-speed bike and his budget was fried rice and chicken wings. In fact, he was so friendly with a restaurant down the street from my house that oftentimes the wings were thrown in gratis along with a spare pint of Toscanini’s ice cream, another business neighbor.
Now, his car is sporty and his budget is more aged, superior cut steak than hamburger.
But, back in the olden days of our relationship, when I first came out to visit him here in California on vacation, he showed me where he first came to the U.S. in and around Berkeley. He stayed at a resident’s hotel around University and about five blocks from where Alice Waters founded her movement. As he pointed out where he stayed and ate and wandered, he told me that he would take me to Chez Panisse. For what is essentially our six-year anniversary (we’re a bit vague on the actual date, although Tax Day figures in as a convenient demarcation), he made good on the promise.
It was a great meal. We shared a salad with smoked pork, and I had an Indian-influence vegetable stew. I ordered the dish with the most vegetables in a “when in Rome” kind of decision. And, damn, I don’t actually eat that many vegetables, much, much preferring fruit and carbohydrates, but it was tasty. I would probably eat more if I knew how the fuck to cook like that.
The sad part about this dinner delayed was it was far from the priciest dinner we’d had in these parts at this point. I think that honor may go to the Brazilian barbecue place in San Francisco. The brutal irony of that meal was that I used to live in a heavily Brazilian/Portuguese neighborhood in Cambridge, and the local barbecue buffet was a great, affordable night out of maximum meat eating.
It was also arguably not the freshest meal we’ve ever had. Alice Waters succeeded in making a food movement take hold here. There are literally dozens of restaurants now run by folks who passed through her kitchens and went on to do their own things. And, climate and farming such as it is around here, it just ain’t a struggle to find quality ingredients. It’s a world where I picked a dozen organic lemons in my pajamas just today.
Ultimately, it seems pretty fated that I ended up here appreciating good food (and wine). I grew up in marketing revolution of the 60s and 70s that promoted “convenience” and vitamin-enriched boxes of processed foodstuffs. We regularly ate cartoony cereals and fluorescent orange cheese from Velveeta (actually less expensive, store-brand) to mac and cheese. Pat stretched the meat with Hamburger Helper and boxed taco kits from Ortega.
Knowing full well she would never be the mom to bake the whole of my elementary class cupcakes or cookies, Pat did teach me to bake. The more I learned the more I realized that “bread” in a plastic sleeve (suitable for encasing your foot inside your snowboots) and proudly advertising uniformity and no air holes is not the same as a fresh, hot loaf, where I myself watched the yeast take hold.
There were also convenience foods with which Pat held no truck. Her scalloped potatoes were real butter, milk or cream and honest-to-god potatoes. It was rarer than rare for her to grab a box of desiccated russets even if she never realized that Minute Rice was unnecessary. (Seriously, it takes 10 minutes to cook Minute Rice. My rice cooker takes about 18 minutes. And the beauty of those extra 8 minutes, I’m doing other things and the cooker doesn’t need any help from me.)
Now that my appreciation for good food is gaining its stride, we have to continue arguing which part of our lawn gets dug up for vegetables.
I’m advocating getting political and digging up the front lawn.
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