>
> On Apr 17, 2009, at 11:26 AM, Alan Rudy wrote:
>
> Doug, have you eaten at Chez Panisse? or the Greens Restaurant?
>>
>
> Had lunch at Chez Panisse once, about five years ago. I was really
> disappointed. That kind of cuisine might have been revolutionary when Waters
> was first on the scene, but she's spawned so many imitators that it just
> didn't do it for me.
>
> 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.
>
The Greens meal was far better than the few I've had at Chez Panisse... and there is an effete and classist affect to Bay Area Slow Food tradition absent from most all other CSA's and the Slow Food movement in Italy - where, as far as I know, it started. I like Deborah Madison's cookbooks better for a number of reasons, one of which is your point... it is actually possible to find the stuff in her recipes most of the time. I am beginning to like Heidi Swanson's book/website ( http://www.101cookbooks.com/ ) even more. -A