Uber-Chef Alice Waters Comes To Washington: Inauguration Week's Best Dinner

WASHINGTON--Uber-chef Alice Waters says "I never voted again" after her great friend, journalist-activist Bob Scheer, lost his 1966 anti-Vietnam primary challenge to the Democratic establishment's congressman. The man whose campaign Waters ran from her Bay Area apartment, helped spawn a movement to end the war.

She channeled her own considerable zeal into Chez Panisse, the world-class Berkley restaurant she built by championing local/organic/seasonal/sustainable food. In later years, she pushed for home and schoolyard gardens, along with a national crash course in the making of affordable, good-for-you meals.

Fast forward to 2008, when Waters, 64, returned to politics, raising big bucks for Barack Obama and smaller bucks for Hillary Clinton. In November, she cast her first presidential vote in 42 years.

Now she's heading east to celebrate, and to start prepping for what is easily the Inauguration's hottest foodie fete: a dinner for 150 people who've ponied up $500 each to sup on whatever she buys during her Sunday morning visit to a local farmers' market.

Aided by a group of local culin-istas, Waters hopes the Monday night menu will features Chesapeake Bay oysters and crostini; rockfish soup and a confit of saffron-spiked tomatoes, though if the fish don't look so great, she'll shift to winter vegetables; shoulder of local lamb with salsa verde, and an apple tart.

There will no fussy wine pairings, "just a red and a white" from California donated by friends. Yes, she knows the Veuve Cliquot Champagne, made in France and provided by the vineyard for the toast to President-elect Obama, is hardly carbon neutral.

"You try to eat as locally as possible but then you make exceptions" for such long-distance staples as olive oil and good bubbly.

Waters also knows that in tough economic times, people struggling to pay the rent or stay employed might find organic food too costly. This is why she thinks all our homes, including the White House, should have vegetable gardens, why we should learn to can and pickle summer's bounty for year-round eating, and why we should buy whole chickens rather than pricey parts, and use even the necks, backs and bones.

Waters--whose dinner is at the Phillips Collection, that temple of Impressionist art near Dupont Circle--is one of a dozen famed chefs from around the country preparing meals Monday night, though the other dinners are in Washington-area homes.

Proceeds from these feasts ($350 of each $500 ticket) will go to two city soup kitchens
and to FRESHFARM Markets, which oversees eight markets in DC and Maryland; last year it gave more than eight tons of leftover crops gleaned farm fields to anti-hunger groups.

"In Washington," she says, "we are trying to come back to the table, where we gather friends and family, where we want to eat together because the food is nourishing and tasty."

And--who are we kidding?--because Alice Waters is in the kitchen.

Comments

[slycowboy]

I met Alice when she was pregnant with Fanny and she came into my store looking for an antique rocking chair. I've been a fan ever since. I really think she is on to something by saying we should ALL have a backyard garden. With this depression Bush has given us, it would be perfect timing to be able to start watching Backyard Garden with Alice Waters on PBS! There is even a preschool TV show just getting started where they made all of the sets & props out of reused/recycled materials so it looks like alternative TV is gaining a foothold in the American psyche, even for three year olds. I think it's called Toy Rescue with Skip & Molly. Three cheers for Alice!!!

[angelv]

Great idea. One doesn't need too much space to have one or two plants, and a selection of herbs. A tomato plant, a few carrots, a head of lettuce or two, some fresh basil and mint. Good place to start.

[propitiousmoment]

"we should ALL have a backyard garden

What about people that don't care to mess around with plants and soil and such? I'm perfectly happy to labor on something else and spend my hard-earned money on food that someone else grew and harvested. I'm not unsupportive of earthfriendly ways of doing things but jeez, do we all have to be little carbon copies of each other?

[SolarPowerGuy]

"What about people that don't care to mess around with plants and soil and such?"

I always tell such people that they should move to a townhouse or a condominium. Don't want to steward a piece of land? Then leave the land to someone who does. Most people who own land but who dislike gardening end up with LAWNS -- which are among the most wasteful, chemically-intensive garden choices.

When I'm old and can no longer tend a garden, I'll probably sell my house.

[skippyB]

Please ask your neighbors if they'd like to use some of your space - it could be beautiful and some people love to do it - you could share the produce.

[WilliePilgrim]

Alice Waters is a National Treasure and has influenced the hearts and minds (both literally and figuratively) of the Nation and the world, and that is not an exaggeration. She wasn't the only one and hasn't done it singlehandedly, but she has been a constant and intelligent voice from the early days of the modern reneaissance in good food appreciation, advocating a sane and healthy approach to our diets, making evident the crucial link between what we eat and who we are. Obama will do well to have her creat not just a special menu for an event but in planting a seed which results in changes so that Ketchup is no longer considered a vegetable by the Dept of Agriculture. Cheers.

[stringer]

I have no idea who this woman is. But as long as her food is great and if she is half as cool as those of you who knew her from decades before I was born claim she is, then awesome!

[myna]

Alice Waters has impacted my tastes and approach to cooking more than any other person dead or alive. She's my foodie heroine. Best ever cooking video is Waters showing Julia Child how to make salads in Julia's "Lessons with Master Chefs" series.

[meleon]

I highly recommend Alice Water's book The Art Of Simple Food to as a must for even a non-foodie. It's just about one of the best read's ever if you're interested in what you eat, where it comes from, and how it can be transformed into all it's possibities without losing any of it's integrity. So simple, informative and on a mission, it makes perfect sense that this American culinary icon would cast her first vote in over forty years for someone with a similar approach to their passion.

[JFaye]

Thank you ... good information for an evolving foodie.

[JFaye]

Kudos to Chef Waters ... This is one ball I would love to attend. In support of all the good she returns to the world and brings up from the earth, I just placed one of her books in my cart on Amazon.

Hopefully as more Americans began to purchase whole foods, particularly organics and support our local Farmers Markets the exorbitant prices will fall. Trader Joes offers good value; perhaps Whole Foods will follow soon ...

[partyofone]

Alice Waters never voted for 42 years? That is really shocking to learn. I don't think voting is about politics, I think it is about citizenship and responsibility.

[PrairieDog]

Really...& even if you are skeptical of the national political parties there are local elections. That was a surprizing revelation.
And all the good ecological & political reasons aside, one good reason to shop local markets is better value, even if the upfront price is more. I can get farmer's market spinach or asparagus, say, & it will still be in great shape in my fridge 1 1/2 weeks or more while store-bought produce might get mushy & dark in a matter of days.

[bikerdude]

How cool is that??? Thank you Alice...

[JScott]

Is that Michael Pollan in he background next to her?

[nevergiveup]

Yes, it is. They are rocking the food world for all of us.

[GoodKarma]

Yeah , too bad Obama hasn't given any consideration to what either Pollan or Waters actually stand for in terms of principle. Obama's choice of Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture isn't exactly their idea of sustainable:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98417440

Maybe Waters can use her culinary skills to sway Obama into the light while letting someone else serve Vilsack some agribusiness corn chowder from a can.

[AriannaFan2]

Allright! Alice & Michael--amazing souls. Would that Obama has the courage to plant an organic Victory Garden as they have opined (this time, it means Victory over fear, greed, and global warming) instead of the wasteful pesticided White House lawn!
These folks are True American Heroes!

[VOTER]

Kudos to Alice Waters.
Have a great time in DC, dear lady.

AirForceVet/Vietnam

[cbertel]

Alice Waters deserves more main-stream press recognition.

[murphy80]

Alice is great...

[MFKsWolf]

Alice's critics, on this board and elsewhere, gleefully accuse her of snobbish elitism because her restaurant is "too expensive" and because she is a proponent of good, clean, fair food. But they conveniently ignore the massive amount of work she has put in, along with the Chez Panisse Foundation and Slow Food, on food justice and children's health, on world hunger and fair trade.

The notion that just because a person meets with professional and/or financial success in life s/he is therefore hoity-toity and not-worth-listening-to is utter nonsense.

There is cuisine in this country beyond steak-and-potatoes and what we stole from the French because of three people: James Beard, Julia Child, and Alice Waters. Saying Alice has not had important and meaningful effects on food (and therefore American culture) is like saying Louis Armstrong had no effect on Jazz.

Oh, and to poster "Janinei" - you got treated roughly. Welcome to the restaurant business.

[partyofone]

she has clearly benefitted substantially from American free enterprise and has worked to educate others to her perspective. I do not admire that fact that she did not vote. I thank that is an obligation of citizenship that comes with all the benefits of being American. Stop voting when you are passionate about a candidate and cause that loses an election? I am delighted that Obama won her attention and her vote, but it is not a particularly inspiring story.

[VOTER]

I get your point and agree with you, however, I, can, also,
understand this woman's total "political breakdown" from the
Vietnam War Days.
You really had to be here or there during that time to understand
what it was like.

Kudos to Alice for her talent and generosity
and "Welcome Back" to full voter participation.

January 20th 2009!

[adzeman]

I heart Alice Waters bigtime. The best restaurant I've ever eaten in, one of my favorite cookbooks and I embrace the Waters philosophy. Aside from the culinary thing, I like her politics and thinks she's simply beautiful.

[NyPrincess]

Wonderful! I wish I had a dinner ticket.