Alice Waters

The chef and entrepreneur who
started a food revolution.

It is impossible to discuss women entrepreneurs who have turned a passion for food into a business without mentioning the name Alice Waters.

Alice Waters, it is often said, has single-handedly changed the American palate. Her devotion to seasonal cooking and her emphasis on using local, organic ingredients have helped farmers' markets all over the country flourish. Her Berkeley, California, restaurant, Chez Panisse, is considered a "mecca of the culinary world," according to The New York Times. Gourmet Magazine named it the "Best Restaurant in America" in 2001.

Alice graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967 with a degree in French Cultural Studies. She trained at the Montessori School in London before spending a seminal year traveling in France.

After graduation, she taught at a Montessori school and cooked for her friends every night. When she realized that she preferred cooking to teaching, she and a friend decided to open Chez Panisse. Her father mortgaged his house and the restaurant was launched with a $10,000 investment. It was eight years before Chez Panisse showed a profit, staying afloat through loans from friends.

Today, Alice Waters makes a comfortable living. The restaurant celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2001 and some members of her staff now own shares in Chez Panisse.

A few years back, her focus shifted from the restaurant to a wider universe. In 1994, she began working on the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, a project she conceived after driving by the burned-out lawn and seeing the graffiti on the windows at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.

"The cafeteria had been abandoned for 15 years and most of the kids didn't eat breakfast or lunch," she said. " I envisioned a place where the kids could serve each other the lunch they would grow."

The project directly involves children in planting, gardening, harvesting, cooking, and eating, with the goal of illuminating the relationship of food to life and teaching children respect for one another and for the planet. It was intended to play a significant role in the school's curriculum, while also resuscitating its school lunch program. Conceived as a pilot project, Waters hopes it will serve as a model for schools across the country.

In 1996, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Chez Panisse, Alice created the Chez Panisse Foundation to help underwrite cultural and educational programs such as the one at the Edible Schoolyard.

She also serves on the international board of governors and is the leader of the local Berkeley "convivium" of Slow Food, an international, non-profit organization that promotes and celebrates local, artisanal food traditions threatened by fast food and a faster pace of life.

Alice is convinced that the best tasting food is organically grown and harvested by people who take care of the land for future generations. The quest for such ingredients has largely determined the restaurant's cuisine. For years, Chez Panisse has shown diners the pleasures of vegetables just out of the garden, fruit right off the branch, and fish straight out of the sea. In doing so, Chez Panisse has stitched together a patchwork of more than 60 local suppliers whose primary values, like those of the restaurant, are environmental harmony and optimal flavor.

The author of eight cookbooks (see sidebar), this chef and entrepreneur has spanned a delicious revolution and changed the way we eat. "Every day," she says, "my job is an excruciating pleasure."