The 40th Birthday of Chez Panisse Rolls Through Berkeley

As you already know if you live in or anywhere near Berkeley, this Sunday is the 40th anniversary of the opening of Chez Panisse Restaurant & Cafe. On August 28, 1971 Alice Waters opened her little restaurant serving carefully selected and prepared locally grown foods in a home on Shattuck Avenue. The birthday means it is also the anniversary, of sorts, of the sustainable food movement, which Waters is credited with instigating. 

Birthday events will be happening all around town this weekend. Most are sold out, including the $2,500 a plate dinner at Chez Panisse as a benefit for the Edible Schoolyard, Alice Waters’ project to bring healthy, locally grown food to U.S. public school cafeterias and lessons about growing food to classrooms. But you might still have a chance of getting into one or two events - if you time it right – that are open to the general public.

 The UC Berkeley Art Museum in collaboration with OPENrestaurant and Chez Panisse, will host an exhibit on Saturday called “OPENeducation” about food – farming, production, consumption of it. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. the public is invited, free of charge (although reserving a space is recommended) to participate in an experience about creation, production and consumption of food as collective performance.

According to OPENrestaurant, the exhibit is “Part demystification of the lore of the kitchen and part tracing the genealogy of Chez Panisse and its influences – from the free speech movement to Edible Schoolyards – OPENeducation invites participants to collaborate with students, educators, farmers, cooks, and artists in constructing the elements of a lunch menu in a series of independent classrooms.” 

The museum, situated on Bancroft Avenue on the UC Berkeley campus, will become a classroom and kitchen. Visitors will be provoked to think about the food they eat and whether it comes from factory farming and mass production or something more thoughtful. OPENrestaurant, which created the exhibit, is a collective of restaurant professionals who explore and present food and restaurants as medium for artistic expression.

Then on Sunday, at 1 p.m. and at 4 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum - Pacific Film Archive will screen “The Baker’s Wife” by French filmmaker Marcel Pagnol at the Pacific Film Archive Theatre at the museum.  The 4 p.m. filming is sold out – probably because it includes an introduction by Alice Waters.  But tickets for the 1 p.m. are still available and that film will be introduced by acclaimed producer Tom Luddy, former director of the PFA, as well as Nicolas Pagnol.

“The Baker’s Wife” screenings are part of an August 12 through August 31 presentation of Pagnol films, presented by the museum and PFA in honor of the Chez Panisse birthday. Apparently, Waters chose the name of her restaurant from inspiration drawn from Marcel Pagnol’s films.

If neither of these events work out, Chez Panisse is encouraging people and other restaurants to host their own dinners of locally grown, healthful food and donate proceeds to the Edible Schoolyard.  They’re calling these grassroots eating celebrations Eating for Education.

So get your Chez Panisse on this weekend.