What I Like About Alice Waters as a Chef and Person

Alice Waters: Bringing Fresh Food to California Before Alice Waters came along, California cuisine was a barren landscape of fast food joints and inauthentic diners. No one catered to the local produce market or used local growers to provide that distinctive, fresh and "local" flavor and color that both connoisseurs and ordinary diners could enjoy. Waters was determined to change all of that.

By focusing on seasonal foods and authentic pairings, Waters created a naturalistic cuisine that brought real food styles from France (the Old World) back to America (the New World) where they had been lost in the fast food market of recent years. Starting out with little more than instinct and what she had learned from her French exposure, Waters' restaurant grew into a world-renowned phenomenon and kicked off a veritable "revolution" in the food industry.

Alice Waters is a great inspiration for me because she has become not just a great chef but also a great activist in terms of promoting healthy food awareness. A significant proponent of the organic foods movement, Waters is perhaps best known for her Chez Panisse, which uses locally-produce organic foods. She started the habit of using local organic foods while living abroad in France.

In college she had already begun French Cultural Studies, so when she actually went to the country, she was prepared to immerse herself in the food environment. She later acknowledged that she learned primarily by surrounding herself with this culture -- that is, she simply allowed the culture and environment of France to seep in: and that included the country's usage of local, organically produced foods, which she used for her everyday table (CBSNews, 2009).

What sets Waters apart is that she continued this practice when she returned to California -- and transformed the food industry in that state. She opened her restaurant and made it a point of pride to use only the freshest, locally produced organic foods on her customer's plate. Thus, she not only supported local growers in her own community but also supported a healthy diet that did not consist of mass-produced food items or genetically altered products.

In other words, she was an American pioneer for healthy organic foods in an age when authenticity was going the way of the do-do. Her respect for product was based primarily on taste and flavor -- what was freshest and most effective in pleasing people was what was locally and organically grown. She knew that by experience, from her time in France, and using these ingredients to make "slow food" popular in a "fast food" world, Waters began a career took her to the top of the game.

Therefore what Waters has accomplished in her career, from her restaurant, to her sense of hospitality and desire to please people, which began at an early age and continued on into her travels in Turkey where hospitality was an important part of their culture, continues to motivate me and fill me a sense of appreciation and wonder (McNamee, 2007).

Not only has she reinvigorated the art of cuisine by instilling in us a sense of pride in our local producers but she has also got us back on track with nature -- which in our country is nothing short of a miracle. Moreover, she has not stopped there: she has coupled with some of our nation's leaders, women like Michelle Obama, to carry on the Edible Schoolyard idea/tradition into the Let's Move campaign's goal of fighting obesity.

Waters' edible education and her Edible Schoolyard was based on the idea of introducing the concept of healthy eating to children at a young age and encouraging them to produce their own foods, how to grow fruits and vegetables, and how to enjoy a healthier, tastier lifestyle (Waters, Littschwager, Duane, 2008). Waters has even called on President Barack Obama to plant an organic garden at the White House in order to set an example for the rest of the country (CBSNews, 2009).

This, it must be remembered, is the same White House that gave Monsanto, the genetically altered food producer the right to produce harmful foods without being tested by scientists. The fact that Waters could get the White House to give a 180 degree u-turn example of how the best food for us is the food that we ourselves grow in our own gardens is a phenomenal achievement.

In short, Alice Waters is not just a great chef, but also a great person -- an individual who cares about our well being because she aims to please and wants us all to do well, eat well, and live well. She is the kind of person I admire on many levels.

In conclusion, I am honored to be able to speak about Alice Waters because she is such a terrific role model, both for chefs who want to aim to please and realize that using all-natural ingredient locally grown is a great way to do.