On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, Doug Henwood wrote:
> I can't remember the name of the French chef who made that critique of
> Waters, but there's a truth in its nastiness. I got a Chez Panisse
> cookbook years ago and was floored by the 10 or 15 pages on lettuces.
> They were all of a kind that I couldn't get on the Upper West Side of
> Manhattan, one of the best neighborhoods for retail food shopping in the
> USA. If I couldn't get 'em, who could? Only people who grew them in
> their Berkeley backyards, I guess.
Actually they get them by contracting with local farmers to grow them and promising to buy them. It's one of the best things about her project from a social relations point of view. And supposedly it's a large part of what will always give the restaurant uniqueness. But tastes differ, of course, and no one hits a home run for your palette every time. And it does sounds like it makes the idea of a cookbook kind of an artifact rather than a guide.
Michael