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Chez Panisse Turns 40!
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Imagine, if we had approached you in 1982 (some 10 years after Alice Waters and colleagues opened Chez Panisse) and said you need to be paying attention to Alice's quirky restaurant where she serves food crafted only from locally and seasonally sourced produce, dairy and meats, many of you would have thought us nuts. After all, in an era marked by the rapid expansion of over-wrought chain restaurants where the food itself was often an afterthought (think Hard Rock Café, Chuck E. Cheese, etc.) such a trend would have seemed patently absurd.
Fast forward to the present, where not only nearly every restaurant in America is following Waters's lead with ever-more complicated menus detailing the pedigree and lifestyle circumstances of each ingredient, but the venerable center-store of the mainstream supermarket is no longer relevant with consumers who have moved beyond the highly industrialized foods of yesteryear in search of fresher, higher quality and often times, more local food products.
A new generation of food manufacturers and retailers has been quick to embrace the spirit of all things fresh and local recognizing that consumers are more than willing to pay price premiums for goods and services that deliver on the upper end of the quality experiential scale.
As food culture evolved, consumers have begun to devote attention to more serious matters, namely, enjoying food on their terms, in a cultural fashion (via the food world and not the food industry's world) and for the food's sake.
Throughout this food culture evolution, consumers have been transitioning away from exercising careful nutrient-based choice at the shelf and at mealtime toward a more holistic understanding of high-quality food. Here our understanding of food shifts from something that must exist under our control to something that can be elevated to art for the sake of passionate enjoyment.
Where is this heading? Current cutting-edge restaurant trends suggest it is already time to begin thinking about the future. Specifically, we are finding that the general historical transition from food we control (the past) to food we begin to celebrate (the present) will become fully realized in the (not-too-distant) future. There we will stand in awe and amazement — and work hard — to enjoy our food as an elevated, quasi-religious experience.
Thanks, Alice. Happy Birthday, Chez Panisse
See where Alice Waters sits on our Greater Food Culture map!
