Alice's restaurant

David Lance Goines, poster

The one regret I have about living in Berkeley in 1976 is that I never went to Chez Panisse, the famous restaurant Alice Waters and Paul Aratow started in 1971. It was (and still is) located in a craftsman house on Shattuck Avenue.   We couldn't afford it and besides-- few people realized Alice was on to something really big. That would have been like guessing what young Bill Gates would do with the rest of his life, because he dropped out of Harvard about the same year I was wasting time in Berkeley.

Anyway, year after year, Chez Panisse is listed as one of the top 100 restaurants in the world. Alice Waters is credited with inventing California cuisine.  And not those "wood fired" pizzas we eat at the Wolfgang Puck airport empire.

I vaguely remember walking by a poshed-up hippie cafe in an old house.  Alice was a food activist, which meant using seasonal organic produce, local sourcing, cooking quality ingredients simply and buying from a network of farmer cronies.  Old stuff now, but then-- revolutionary. From the beginning, the restaurant had a fixed menu that changed daily and they were usually sold out.  The kitchen staff partying was legendary.

Eating at Chez Panisse in 1976 would have been cheaper than Denny's is now, but when we had a little extra money, we would go for quantity over quality (Indian, Chinese, maybe a steak splurge.) So I missed out on a great line I could have casually dropped at dinner parties for the next 50 years:  Oh yea, I ate at Che Panisse once back in the 70's. 

The famous Berkeley artist David Lance Gones (b. 1945) has been friends with Alice Waters since they were teenagers. During the 1960s, Goines enrolled at UC Berkeley as a classical literature major.  Ironically, his participation in the Free Speech Movement led to expulsion, and in 1965 he left school and apprenticed to a Berkeley printer. Two years later founded the Saint Hieronymus Press. He's best known for his wonderful California poster art, and calligraphic classic called A Constructed Roman Alphabet.

Every year Goines creates a Chez Panisse anniversary poster and he illustrates the many Alice Waters cookbooks. He also designed the logos and lettering for other Berkeley-based businesses.  The label he created for Ravenswood Winery has appeared in this house from time to time on Zinfandel bottles.

An interesting side-note to this fascinating person: Goines is an advocate of the voluntary blood donor system, and claims to have donated a total of 17 gallons of blood so far during his life. 

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan