Addison on Chez Panisse: "I endured mere perfection."

Addison misses exactly the same points Soleil Ho did.

Alice Waters wanted the food at Chez Panisse to be akin to what you’d get at a one-star country place in France. They achieved that long ago. If the food disappoints you because it’s not “creative” or whatever, go somewhere else.

What Waters truly reimagined was the way restaurants treat their employees: health care, profit sharing, retirement plans, reasonable hours including having co-chefs that worked three days a week instead of six. Consequently the restaurants’ “graduates” weren’t burned out or broke and were far freer to pursue their own projects than is typical in the industry.

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Warrior: the David Chang quote about figs on a plate is ironic given that we recently ate a dessert at Majordomo that consisted solely of sliced peaches on a plate. But I do remember finding Chez Panisse super boring when I ate there 20 years ago. I suppose its contributions to social equality were lost on me as well.

In the 70s and early 80s, to eat like that, we could go to Chez Panisse or fly to Europe.

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I don’t say this often, but I could not agree with you more.

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