Chez Panisse

[ngatti]

Lunch at: Chez Panisse Cafe

Chez Panisse has been on my ‘must dine’ list for many years. While I was not able to fulfill my wish for a dinner reservation, I was able to obtain a reservation for lunch in the café’. I considered myself fortunate to be dining here at all and I must say the experience did not disappoint. It is fitting that we make the trip on my 49th birthday as it makes a grand present to myself. My wife and I traveled from downtown San Francisco to Berkeley on the BART. A short stroll down Shattuck Avenue places us in front of the fabled wood building. I’m in awe! Pinch me!

As with most of our restaurants this trip, we have arrived early for our 1:30 reservation. We climb the stairs to the café passing a very disappointed couple; who has attempted to ‘walk-in’. This ain’t the Cheesecake Factory (though they were seated at 2:30). We relax in the small sitting area next to the bar and enjoy a glass of wine (2000 Macon-Charnay, Domaine Manciat-Poncet for my wife) and a pint of India Pale Ale for me.

After a short wait, we are seated in a charming windowed elevated alcove in the front of the restaurant; completely relaxed yet, at the same time, filled with anticipation. I’m like a kid on his first day trip to Disney World. I switch to a glass of Rioja (1998,Vina Hermina, Crianza).

The Acme bread is good and crisp and the butter!! Yes the butter: from the ‘Strauss Family’ and incredibly good. Certainly better than the Plugra that I use. Rich and distinctly flavored, not sour, just…lots and lots of taste, sort of like…what butter has been supposed to taste like all along, only I’ve never tasted it properly in my life until now. The polite and efficient waitress takes our lunch orders. For my wife: the “Heirloom tomato and Atlantic cod salad with marjoram and aioli”. For myself, the “Boston Mackerel baked in the wood oven with cumin, cilantro, and lime”.

Many of you have been to Chez Panisse, so I feel as if I’m preaching to the choir: but I must gush. The distinct fresh flavors of every ingredient in both dishes, the impeccable pristine freshness and perfect cooking of the fish. Heirloom tomatoes that taste picked off the vine and carved into the salad just before serving it. The best aioli I’ve ever tasted (better than mine). Bold, beat you over the head flavors filled with gently fading back notes of subtle nuance. Bite after bite of simple exploding flavor.

Second course: “Penne past with zucchini, tomato, basil, and pecorino”, for my wife. I had the Grilled pork and garlic sausage with sautéed nettles and sweet corn polenta. Here is where the sole misstep occurred. The penne pasta was grossly overcooked. Otherwise the vegetables were in line with the rest of the fresh produce. Impeccable. The pasta dish contained super olive oil and the sharp pecorino provided good counterpoint to the dish. The sausage was excellent. Two skinny, gnarly looking long sausage, roasted in the wood oven, served over very flavorful and rich polenta with fresh corn kernels stirred in. The nettles, which looked a little like broccoli rape, tasted very good: buttery and tender. All was served with a rich glace for a sauce. Super lunch dish.

Time for dessert. The Cheese course for me. The waitress smiled approvingly at my knowledge of Cashel Blue. Other cheeses on the board were Comte, and a very good Reblochon accompanied by more slices of the walnut bread. I also ordered a Bowl of Pluots and blueberries. My wife had the Yellow and white peach cobbler. Her dessert was as homey and tasty as it sounded. My pluots, or rather my one very large pluot was like eating a big purple ball of sugar: one of the finest pieces of fresh stone fruit that I’ve ever eaten. Good coffee for me and a cup of tea for my wife.

At this point I asked the waitress for a favor: Being as how it was my birthday,…and that I’m in the business,…and (most important of all) that I’m from New Jersey , would Alice mind autographing my menu. She responded that Alice waters, though in town, was not in the restaurant this particular day. But being that I was from New Jersey, Alice would certainly have wanted me to have the pluot as a gift. Cute. We were then invited to stroll the Café and look at the open kitchen and to walk about through the downstairs kitchen of the restaurant proper. We were allowed to talk to the cooks and chefs and ask whatever questions we wanted. I did note that the number of kitchen staff was tremendous (IMO). Especially as they all seemed intent on that evenings Moussaka (that evenings selection in the restaurant).

We then left and walked back to the BART. That evening’s reservation was at Aqua and that was only four hours from now.

It was a fine meal. Certainly our best lunch. Chez Panisse is a culinary Mecca and all should complete a hajj to this most seminal restaurant.

Thanks for listening

Nick

[Fat Guy]

Thanks for the report, Nick.

[John Whiting]

Thank you, Nick. It was almost as good as going back again myself.

Yes, the staff *is* huge. The last time I had a figure, Alice's "family" numbered somewhere around a hundred and fifteen or twenty. (A Michelin 3* scrapes by with a mere fifty or so.)

If you go back and edit your report, you might want to change Shattuck Street to Stattuck Avenue.

[Jinmyo]

Better than your own aioli, Nick?

Great report. Thanks.

[robert brown]

The last time I dined at Chez Panisse (about 2-1/2 years ago), I noticed that the Cafe offered some modicujm of choice while the main restaurant had its menu worked out for the entire calendar month. Now if Alice Waters is guided by using the best, freshest ingredients available, why does she compose her menus up to 31 days in advance? Not living in the area, I wonder if she make switches if a certain product isn't up to snuff the day she planned to use it. Both times I have been, the menu was as advertised. One meal was the best I ever had in the USA, the second just so-so. Does anyone have any insight or experiences to pass along in this regard?

[pirate]

For years when I visited Berkeley I had a meal at Chez Panisse, either upstairs and down. I recall having some splendid dishes and I love the bread, but there have been mediocre dishes especially recently.

[Toby]

Glad you mentioned the Strauss Family butter. It really is everything butter should be.

[CathyL]

Nick, thanks for the terrific report. Your descriptions are so vivid and precise I can almost taste each dish.

[Bux]

Chez Panisse was one that got away, the one time we visited the bay area. Thanks for that report. I enjoyed it very much.

[robert brown]

Nick, I forgot to ask you if you could eat out more often and write about it.

[Jinmyo]

I'm with Robert on that, Nick. Your reporting here is as fine as anything on eGullet.

[Steve Plotnicki]

I love eating in the cafe. When I was there in 1999, I ordered the Niman Ranch ribeye and it was super. But one day for lunch in December 1998 I just wandered in and got myself a table. Every city should have a place that cooks like this. Thanks for the great report.

[Gavin Jones]

a pint of India Pale Ale for me.

Great choice of aperitif, Nick.

And a great report too.

[robert brown]

I'm still waiting for a comment on how you can base a culinary philosophy on using the best available ingredients of the day and compose your menus up to 31 days in advance.

[ngatti]

I'm still waiting for a comment on how you can base a culinary philosophy on using the best available ingredients of the day and compose your menus up to 31 days in advance.

I think the menu is probably pretty dynamic (I don't know this). I know my own menus can sometimes look quite different by the time of service.

I guess that the original menu is more of a wish list that is open to change as the day of execution approaches. Open to changes induced by the vagaries of the various markets. In this age of computers menus can change several times a day if need be.

Nick

[mixmaster b]

Thanks, Nick, for the great report on your experience. I have many very fond memories of Chez Panisse, and reading your notes brought them back.

I have only had wonderful experiences there, but have not been in several years.

Don't know about the menu planning, either, but her commitment to serving really fresh, perfect stuff was always front and center in my experience, so it would be odd if there was not a fair amount of flexibility...

[Jonathan Day]

When I lived in that area, many years ago, Chez Panisse only posted its menu for the current week. I had the impression that the menu was fixed once a week for the week ahead, giving them the flexibility to adapt to what suppliers could deliver or what they could grow themselves. Paul Bertolli, in Chez Panisse Cooking, says the same thing: once a week he had the task of fixing the menu for the week to come. And the website lists only the current week's menu.

Robert, where did you get the impression that they planned 31 days ahead?

[John Whiting]

If you go to the Chez Panisse website, you'll find the menus posted a week at a time. http://www.chezpanisse.com/downmenu.html Robert may be confusing the menus with the reservations, which are in fact taken a month in advance.

Edit: It's easier for Chez Panisse to plan ahaed than it is for most restaurants, since so much of their produce is grown to order.

[Kathy Kobata]

My experience with Chez Panisse is merely that "I'm glad I got a chance to go, but I'd never go back unless someone else was paying for it and that was the only place they would go". Both my husband and I were disappointed, just as we were with French Laundry (I know, we are in the minority - people look at us like we're crazy), Gary Danko (food was good, service was AWFUL), Masa's, Lutece, Lucas Carton (okay, I'm going outside of California now).

[Kouign Aman]

Menus - how far in advance can a cuisine based on 'whats good and fresh today' be planned?

I'm thinking a weeks about it.

[tupac17616]

Menus - how far in advance can a cuisine based on 'whats good and fresh today' be planned?

I'm thinking a weeks about it.

I think a week is about right for the purposes of getting the neccesary orders to the purveyors. Same-day changes (sometimes fairly large) are not at all uncommon, though.

[prasantrin]

Chez Panisse just lost its Michelin star. Any thoughts on the current Chez Panisse? Was the demotion deserved or not?

[Carolyn Tillie]

Definitely deserved to lose a star. While they pioneered the farm-to-table concept, it is now de rigeur and the bar is set so much higher to maintain those good ratings. Much of what they are preparing and serving these days is commonplace and far from exceptional.

I'm actually surprised it didn't happen sooner.

[HungryC]

My last meal at the cafe (early '08) was certainly tasty, but it was much as Carolyn Tillie describes: perhaps revolutionary two (or more) decades ago, but not exactly exciting or new in the 21st century. An herbed chicken paillard, a pizette, two gorgeous salads, some other food I can no longer recall...the dessert, nothing more than tangerines in a hammered brass bowl, actually made me laugh out loud. I have tangerines in my backyard--I flew to Cali to get a bowl of tangerines? Frankly, I was more impressed by the sourdough pizza at the Cheese Board down the street.