YouSaid · the spoken record

Alice Waters

lines on the record: 68
first: 2019-04-08
most recent: 2019-04-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Master stylist and educator. She is my stylist. Her name is India. This solution was for me. I created the solution so that if I went to a new city, I could Google somebody and know someone could do my hair. This was literally for me.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess there has been some determination. People have asked me for one word that described me, and I've said determined. Some people have said uncompromising. I'm not quite that, but I'm very determined to make something happen. Unusually, when I feel this way, it happens.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I really consider that it was good luck that I went to France when it was really a slow food nation, that I had the opportunity at a young age to understand that I had a passion around food. I didn't know how that would reveal itself. I didn't reflect on it at the time. But I just absorbed what I call human values at that time. You know, the big picture of eating together how people have done this since the beginning of time, how they've always taken care of the land because that's where the food came from. They've always thought of food as precious.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you think about the success of Chaponese, and it's interesting how we define success, because it's not necessarily financial success, of course people have done well and live comfortable lives, but it's not a billion dollar corporation. But when you think about the success of Chaponese and then the kind of the movements that came out of it, and all which we didn't really talk a lot about, but all of the chefs who came out of that world too and created their own worlds, how much of your own personal success do you attribute to just luck and circumstance and how much do you attribute to your skill and hard work and your determination?”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I see myself as a really good cook and I see myself as a great critic and taster. And I'm not a chef. Jacques Papin said to me, I'll stop saying that because you are a chef. You've run a kitchen. And if you've run a kitchen, you're a chef. But for me, Chef, goes into that, you know, a training. Like Chico. Know when she cooked every single thing in her book and she wrote such wonderful instructions. That's not ever been something that I've aspired to do.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You won the James Beard Award. I think it was in 1992. You were named the best chef in America, which is interesting because you are, in some ways, you're not best known as a chef. I mean, obviously you're known as a chef, but you're best known as. The person behind a movement, do you feel more proud of one than the other? Do you see yourself as a chef primarily, or do you see yourself as something else?”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is addressing the issue of meaningless work. We Cooking something that makes other people happy. We are falling in love with nature. We are seeing the trees turn color. We're having an everyday pleasure of that. We're engaging in the beauty and the biodiversity. Seeing ten colors of carrots. Kind of thrilling. I cooked a purple and orange carrot last night. I marveled at it. And that's what is going to make the revolution, if you will. Call it a delicious revolution. But it's about winning people over. It's not by overthrowing. It's not by separating. We need the biodiversity of people, just like we need the biodiversity in nature to survive.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't believe in this I don't believe in the mists of a fast food culture food is precious. Food is precious. It can be affordable. It can be inexpensive if you know how to cook. I mean, I say that I can buy an organic chicken? And I can make at least three meals out of it for a family of four. Jose Andres says he can make six. That's affordable. I know that we can make a school lunch that can even fit into the minuscule budget of the USDA reimbursement. If we know how to cook, and we do not buy fast food, if we buy the food from the people who are doing it right and directly. This idea that I'm talking about is delicious. This is not hard to do. This is about sitting with your friends and family. And eating together and even cooking together. This is about human values that we forgot about. This is Addressing the issue of loneliness.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you've received your fair share of it. Some people say this is. She's talking about only applies to affluent people and people who can afford her restaurants and people of the money for organic foods. Do you internalize that criticism? Do you think about it? Does it change how you think about what you do? Do you ignore it?”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm troubled by it, I'm very troubled about the labelling on packages and what how people are taking the values of our movement And greenwashing. Their industrial products. And we have to learn and be educated about what those words really mean. Is it certified organic and who is certifying it? Where's it coming from? The practices at these farms humane? Are they taking care of their farm workers? Are they paying them a decent wage? What about the packaging? Is it all plastic? What does fresh mean? For some places it could be two weeks old. Who do you trust?”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And how really exciting it was to talk to that person on the phone or to see the farm and talk about the planting and all of that. Grow your own back to the land movement. It's something that I hope happens again and soon. Because that is what is going to bring us a rural economy when we can find a way to bring culture to agriculture, when we can bring security to the farmers who take care of the land, when we can buy directly from them, they will want to take care of nature. And I know many are doing that. Young people around the country, and I'm thrilled by it.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the beginning, I thought it was the right thing to do, but I felt though in the late seventies, the early eighties, especially when the cafe became so successful that we had this audience and that we need to talk about taking care of the land for the future. And it really became into my consciousness when my daughter was born. And I felt like Japanese could not be an island unto itself, that we were affected by everything that was upstream and around the world. And I became very conscious of that. And I started to actively talk about it in every way I could, every article that was written about the restaurant. From that point on was really talking about how dependent and how easy it is to have a relationship with the farmer.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you started to focus on local food, farm to table, which I guess you didn't really call it farm to table, did you think that you were building a movement? Did you think that this was going to become something really big or did you just do it because you thought that was the right thing to do?”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it meant for me for sure a very simple kind of cooking. And we are really at the beginning in this country, discovering the ingredients that we have to cook with. And I have always been focused on the organic aspect of it, really insistent on how the animals are cared for and what they are fed. Completely I wanted to be about purity of food. We need to be thinking about all of these different aspects for the survival of the planet and for our own nourishment.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It happened sort of naturally and not really consciously trying to do that. It became California without us really identifying that right away.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was it just a kind of a natural evolution, or did you, was there a point where you thought, look, we're in California. This is like the breadbasket of North America. We can actually source all this stuff locally and tell people where it comes from.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes feels like selling out I hate to use that term too, but it feels like I'm doing it just to make the money. I just cannot think about it that way. But it's more than that. I can't ever imagine flying around the world to visit my restaurants. What I like about being a restaurant trees is that I know the people who work there and it's the pleasure of my everyday life. I'm friends with them. I know the customers who come in. I love that aspect of it.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It didn't happen because I really feel like it's important that you find people that share your values. And when they do They're the ones that breathes life into it and should make the money from it. I just couldn't imagine knowing how franchises work, that there would ever be a way”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we became really political. We started writing their names on the cafe list, that this came from Bob Kennard's farm, that this came from Dal Porto's ranch, that this was Mas Masamoto's peach and identifying the people who Who were growing and raising the food, we became in a way cobra choosers.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you can't help but be impressed when Newsweek magazine wants to put you on the cover. You know, I never expected that kind of attention to what I thought was a pretty simple local community restaurant in Berkeley, California. I mean, what was Clear to me then. And it is very, very clear to me now. Is that we were doing something sort of against the fast food culture of this country, that we were creating a meal. That was supporting a slow food movement that was actually buying its food directly from the people who took care of the land. No middleman giving them all the money. And then they brought their values into the restaurant. And that it changed us.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a restaurant started to get more attention, especially after James Beard and more media attention, you started to become a celebrity. You started to become a famous person not just in Berkeley, but nationally known. Was that strange for you? Did you even absorb that and assimilate that idea or were you just kind of doing your thing?”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is more affordable where we don't worry about money so much because pasta isn't too expensive to make and maybe pizzas aren't and that would be a place for friends together.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eat at your I think probably some of them were coming. That way. But ultimately it led to my conclusion that my friends couldn't afford teeth there. And couldn't get in. But it made me think about it really seriously, and I think again at Tom Letty's urging that I get back to my wrists, that I really loved simple food. And it was a trip to Italy, actually, when I saw a pizza oven in about 1978 that I said We need to create a real cafe bistro upstairs.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was so gratifying in one way, but in another way it made the restaurant incredibly busy. Almost to overwhelmingly so that we weren't prepared for that client”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess it was maybe 73 or 74, probably the most famous food critic in the United States of the time, James Beard, for whom the famous award is named after. Eats at the restaurant, and a couple days or weeks later says, This is one of the four best restaurants in the United States. What happened after that came out? Because you were like this collective... Communal, all of a sudden, this guy says this is one of the four best restaurants in the United States.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For when you have only one menu, and it's different every day, you have to find those ingredients, you have to put them together differently. People have to want to come there and taste that. So maybe I was pushed more quickly into finding ingredients and I really believe that that sort of search led me to the doorsteps of the local organic farmers and ranchers. It was that that gave a kind of life and challenge to the restaurant.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it is. And I wanted a place and always have wanted a place that I wanted to be in and that it was constantly growing and changing. And that happened when different people brought ideas into the restaurant. I think what really Has created this long life for the restaurant is the fact that we don't have one person who is the main chef of the restaurant. We have two people and they share their job. They work three days and then they're paid for five. And it allows them time to recover and have ideas.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tried to avoid that. I did, but I avoided it in a very different way. I tried to hire friends. That really helped me to solve the problems. When you're working in a business and you're working, you know fifteen hours a day or whatever you're doing. I wanted to be with people I liked, and that I shared the values with. And so I was willing to take the risk of it not working out Unfortunately there were very few times where that became an issue”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You were the center of this hub and spoke, and still are, but at that time, I mean, it strikes me that I hope I'm not sort of extrapolating, but you wanted to do this because you loved to do it and you wanted to be around people you liked and you wanted people to be happy. But a business, inevitably you're going to run into challenges with personnel, with people who just are not working out. In those early days, what if you had to fire people? Was it hard for you? What if you had to discipline people? Did you just avoid that?”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was absolutely learning by doing, which is a big monastery idea, that actually doing that work that you're learning about its value. And what is critical and what it really means to clean up the restaurant after hours. And what those people needed to be paid, what a dishwasher should be paid. I remember I got a very powerful lesson about garbage from one of the guy who brought fish to the restaurant really early on, this guy, political friend of mine from way back who collected muscles along the coast, and he would bring them into the restaurant. And he said to me one day I want you to come out. and see the dumpster. And I went out and he pulled it open. It didn't smell very good. And he said, I want you to get in the dumpster. I want you to know what it feels like. Be not careful about the way you put garbage in this container.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was out in the dining room trying to make it work. And I know that everybody who worked there was passionate about the same idea. I decided that we couldn't run the restaurant without these people who were critical to Taste and the way that the place looked and the way that the cafe run was running. And so we formed a corporation. And we had people that brought money. Bought stock in this. And that helped us to run the restaurant. But I also gave shares to the people that were instrumental. And we had this group of people that believed in the project and invested in it.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At first night we served a pate en croute cornichones on the side. And then we had duck with olives, and I think that was Victoria. She felt really confident in putting those trays of ducks in the oven. There was duck fat everywhere, I remember, and with olives and with some sort of potato celery root puree, I think. And Lindsay, the pastry chef, made a pump tart.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If that same base, right? Same And we had red and white checkered tablecloths. I wanted flowers on the table. I wanted a candle. Martin designed the very first poster that we had for the restaurant. We put in a frame and put out in front that night. And I greeted people at the door.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Now, I had help. From my French friend, Martin, and she was an artist, and she had lots of ideas about how we could find things at the flea market and Alameda, so I would go with her and find silverware, mismatched silverware.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I knew that if the food was really good that people would come. I knew that, absolutely, I knew that. But I was too intimidated to cook at the beginning. And Victoria Croyer was the first cook at the restaurant. We practiced at home and we read about food. Really deeply read about it. And so we thought we could do one menu a day. So this was not ambitious we didn't think.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when you really kind of start to ramp up to open up the restaurant, you'd never run a restaurant. And running a restaurant is a really challenging business. Most restaurants eventually fail. Were you in any way intimidated or nervous about all of those people who are putting their faith in this thing working? Or not”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a labor of love And we were doing it. In this very non-professional way, if you will, I thought I had a little bit of experience because I had waited on table stuff. In a couple of places to make money in high school.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Investment Hey, this was the 70s, the early 70s, and I would have been ashamed if I had been looking to make money. Nobody who was involved with this project expected to make money. We hope to, but we didn't expect it.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't remember exactly, but one of the people who gave me some money is still on the board of directors of Chefennes. And he was a friend of Tom Luddy's. Tom, he found the people that had the confidence that I didn't have. And he says, I think you need to get connected with Paul Arito because he has cooking skills and he's got all these copper pots. He knows how to make a risotto, and I'm sure he could be a partner for you.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For rent? It was a plumbing shop that was in a house and all pipes and all were out in front in sort of the courtyard in front. And it was very plain stucco house, two floors. I love the location Anna was commercially.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“See if we could do this in a way it was because Tom is a pretty extraordinary person and he saw that I had that inclination. He said, let's just go and eat in all the little French restaurants and restaurants in San Francisco so we could get an idea of what it is that you're looking for. And we had gone to a very special restaurant out in Bellinas that was in a house. And I was very struck by that. Maybe it could be a restaurant and a house because then it could feel like I was cooking at home. And then I saw this place in North Berkeley.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For And in total, we did 30 of those. But I was kind of going broke buying the ingredients. And I very naively said, well, maybe I could open a little place. And then my friends would pay to come and eat there. And I had the encouragement of this other extraordinary friend that I lived with, Tom Luddy, who was running the Telegraph Repertory Cinema. And he had dinner parties for all of his filmmaker friends.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was cooking for a lot of my friends at our house. I was living with a printer and he was very political and he would invite all of his friends over for dinner and a group was producing a magazine called The San Francisco Express Times. And so they would gather at the table and I started cooking for them all. In fact, so much so that they liked it. And I started doing a little cooking column called Alice's Restaurant”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was intimidated by that I thought it was, you know, complicated and that I would be exposed for my ignorance in the way that Julia Child felt. At the beginning of her cooking classes, you know, but I wasn't as determined as she was to go home and chop a pile of onions properly so that I could excel at the class. I wanted to experiment at home. And just do what I thought I could do well.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was like that, although I was very challenged by the three to six year old children I had never been around them before.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I had a friend who was teaching Montessori school. And she told me all about Montessori's philosophy of teaching. And I said, Oh my goodness. Really thinking about the world in the same way I am. The idea of opening your senses because those are the pathways into our minds that you're touching on. You're tasting, you're smelling, you're listening, you're seeing. And that's what happened to me in France. I had awakening of my senses, and I thought, well, maybe I could teach in a Montessori school, and there happened to be one right down the street”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That pushed me to explore the markets and try and find the taste, and I couldn't find You know, I wanted to eat in French restaurants in the city. I saved all my money so I could eat in the fancy French restaurants. But it didn't taste like that.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we were smaller, I did my ear in France, and now I'm back. But all the time I was cooking. I wanted to eat like the French and live like the French.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that year, obviously, was going to be a turning point in your life, which you didn't yet. Probably know. Did that year change what you thought you wanted to do with your life? Did you think, you know, I want to be a chef. I want to be a cook. I want to study cooking. Or did you go back to Berkeley and just think, all right, I did my year in France and I'm back.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wasn't used to that at all, and I was hungry, and they would not allow us to go into the place until they had examined the various menus to see who had the food that was the tastiest. And did they have those clams? Where did they come from? But it wasn't just about food. It was the discourse at the table. We would sit there maybe two hours. Talking politics, talking, talking about life. And I was fascinated with that conversation at the table.”
2019-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chez Panisse: Alice Waters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT