{"id":26593,"date":"2023-05-19T12:23:23","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T19:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=26593"},"modified":"2023-05-19T12:23:23","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T19:23:23","slug":"i-got-a-taste-of-being-rich-at-chez-panisse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/05\/19\/i-got-a-taste-of-being-rich-at-chez-panisse\/","title":{"rendered":"I got a taste of being rich at Chez Panisse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SFGATE columnist Drew Magary dined like a baller at the most famous restaurant in the country and left hungry<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SFGATE
Images via NYT & SFGATE; Illustration by SFGATE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Drew Magary<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 18, 2023 (SFGate.com)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been around enough to know that there are places in this world that are available only to the rich and that make you want to be<\/em> rich: Le Bernardin in New York, the Petit Ermitage hotel in Los Angeles, the Cap Juluca resort in Anguilla, a first-class seat on British Airways. You can weasel your way into plenty of seemingly<\/em> rich places out there \u2014 Las Vegas offers no shortage of them \u2014 but when you find yourself inside a real-deal, no-bulls\u2014t haven for the well-to-do, you know the difference. You feel<\/em> it, and you understand that you can complain about the rich people all you like while also accepting that living the way they do feels AMAZING.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chez Panisse gives you a taste of that life, if not much else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you live in California, you probably know the deal with Chez Panisse already, but allow me to give you a refresher just in case. It was founded in 1971 by the now legendary chef Alice Waters,\u00a0enemy of microwave ovens<\/a>\u00a0and godmother of a farm-to-table movement that is now so widespread that your average mall restaurant will claim to be part of it. It uses only locally sourced ingredients, changing its menu every night to accommodate for the availability of those ingredients. If you want to give credit to anyone for transforming America from a land of mayonnaise casseroles and Jell-O molds to a country that actually\u00a0cares<\/em>\u00a0about what it eats, Chez Panisse is a good place to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SFGATE sent me to Chez Panisse to determine whether the restaurant has kept up with the very revolution it spawned. A grueling assignment to be certain, but I accepted it all the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"FILE:
FILE: Alice Waters by the bar at her restaurant\u00a0Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif.JASON HENRY\/NYT<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Chez Panisse is split into two restaurants. Its upstairs cafe, which is where I finagled a seat, has an a la carte menu<\/a> and is the more affordable option, if you consider $35 entrees to be affordable. The downstairs plays home to the formal restaurant, which has a rotating set menu<\/a> every night that costs $175 per person, booze not included. Nothing on the formal restaurant\u2019s menu looks objectionable. How many Silicon Valley executives and Los Angeles film producers have eaten at the cafe but demanded to order s\u2014t off the formal restaurant menu? All of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before leaving my hotel, I called my mom to tell her where I would be dining out for the evening. My mom was an acolyte of Waters\u2019 revolution. During my childhood, she evolved from serving us Hamburger Helper for dinner to braised chicken with poached pears for dessert. She still has a copy of the Chez Panisse cookbook, which she bought decades ago, in her kitchen. My goal with this phone call was to make her horribly, horribly jealous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I failed. She\u2019d already eaten at the mother restaurant decades ago, near the peak of its virality. What\u2019s more, she didn\u2019t think much of it. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that impressive,\u201d she told me, before twisting a knife in Waters\u2019 escarole. \u201cIt was nothing, really.\u201d Maybe I should\u2019ve turned down this assignment and grabbed a burrito instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"FILE:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Views inside Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, Calif. (SF Chronicle via Getty Images)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I didn\u2019t. I walked along the main drag of Shattuck Avenue before coming upon a two-level Craftsman surrounded by enough landscaping to count as its own ecosystem. I didn\u2019t need a shingle hanging above the door to know I had found the place. I went upstairs and immediately felt an ease that one only usually feels if they have $5 million stashed away in an offshore account. I was surrounded by warm wood paneling, soft lighting, piano music playing at the exact right volume, white tablecloths, and servers who didn\u2019t walk so much as they sashayed from the kitchen to the dining room and back again. This was one of the most confident restaurants I\u2019d ever entered, and the next hour of my life would prove why.

I sat down and eagerly pored over Chez Panisse\u2019s offerings. My ordering game was tight. Everything on this menu was predictably tempting<\/a>, but I kept my focus. I knew I wanted the smoked black cod as an app. I knew I wanted rhubarb galette for dessert. And while I was torn between the duck and the pappardelle with basil-walnut pesto for an entree, I knew, on instinct, that my server would tell me which item he actually preferred, and not merely which item was selling poorly that evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The server sashayed his way over, not a hair on his head out of place. Right away, we hit it off. I love to hit it off with my server. Makes me feel charming. I asked him which entree he preferred, and he didn\u2019t hesitate. He loved the pappardelle. It wasn\u2019t an item that knocked you out when described on the page, but some of my greatest ordering mistakes had come when I passed on a seemingly boring dish that a great restaurant could make extraordinary. I wasn\u2019t making that mistake again. I ordered the pasta and, to keep our flirtation up, asked him his opinion on the galette for dessert, even though I already knew I was gonna order it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI love it, but I\u2019m a bit biased!\u201d he said, with a chuckle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A dish of pappardelle with spring vegetables at Chez Panisse Caf\u00e9, on Tuesday, May 16, 2023.\u00a0Drew Magary\/ Special to SFGATE<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am here for your bias,\u201d I told him. \u201cYour bias matters<\/em>.\u201d I almost wanted to ask him out, even though I was faithfully married and also not gay. Instead, I asked for an elderflower spritzer as my kickoff mocktail and then eagerly watched him scamper off to place my order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can always judge a restaurant by its bread basket. Some restaurants give you day-old French bread they got at a local Safeway. Some have a bread boy walk over to your table, using a pair of shiny tongs to dole out a selection of fancy multigrain and white rolls, like he\u2019s selling cigarettes at a speakeasy in 1923. Some give you pita bread tastefully cut into wedges, like a sad pizza. Some give you no bread at all. And some give you bread only if you pony up an extra $8. At Chez Panisse, I got a complimentary basket of country bread that was nice and spongy on the inside, with a good chewy crust. I smeared it with fresh salted butter and sipped on my spritzer, spontaneously thinking of things to celebrate in my head: my daughter finishing her AP tests, my marriage, Dan Snyder officially agreeing to sell his team on this same day, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I scanned the room, and everyone else seated had a similarly festive glow to them. While Chez Panisse is in Berkeley, its clientele is clearly at arm\u2019s length from both the city and perhaps its ideals. This was an older crowd. A moneyed crowd. The dress here was casual, as California culture mandates, but these people themselves were anything but. Airlift them all to Nantucket and they wouldn\u2019t have looked out of place. If any of them had gone to UC Berkeley, they acquired Stanford brain not long thereafter anyway. Don\u2019t let Chez Panisse\u2019s history, or its philosophy, fool you. This is a restaurant for rich people. It is exclusive in all the naughtiest ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"FILE:
FILE: Overview of the\u00a0Chez Panisse Caf\u00e9 upstairs during lunchtime, as seen on Wednesday,\u00a0Feb. 20, 2019, in Berkeley, Calif.\u00a0Liz Hafalia\/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And I loved every second I was inside. I\u2019m not afraid to confess in this space that I love fancy s\u2014t. I love Sevruga caviar. I love luxe hotel rooms. I loved Veuve Clicquot before alcoholism struck and I remanded myself to fancy soda, like the elderberry spritzer. And I love restaurants like this one, where every day feels like IPO day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I luxuriated in my time at Chez Panisse, eating my smoked cod at a reasonable speed, which was wise because there were only about five bites of it. I even ate the beets accompanying the cod even though I normally hate beets. When I finished my app, I asked my hero server \u2014 and this was the first time I\u2019d ever done this in my life \u2014 to actually wait until I\u2019d finished my second mocktail before serving me my entree. I wanted to sit. I wanted to breathe in the rarefied air. I regretted that I had to eat here alone but little else. After all these years, this place still makes its customers feel amazing.

Then I got hungry and told the server that no, I actually wanted my food now. He obliged. Soon, I was presented with a plate of pasta that tasted as bright as it looked. If you\u2019re an American, you\u2019re used to brown food. We even have a whole holiday built around it. But when you taste bright<\/em> food, you know the difference just as surely as you know the difference between rich and poor. This dish was so light, in fact, that I openly flirted with ordering a second<\/em> entree, that duck, once I\u2019d finished. But I didn\u2019t because that would have been too gauche. I had succumbed to Waters\u2019 aggressive modesty, and THAT I would later regret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A rhubarb galette with vanilla ice cream at Chez Panisse Caf\u00e9, on Tuesday, May 16, 2023.\u00a0Drew Magary\/ Special to SFGATE<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But first, dessert. Out came my rhubarb galette, with a candied glaze on its crust that must have been milked from the horn of a unicorn. I ate it in five bites. To finish the meal, I asked my server for a decaf cappuccino with oat milk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe actually don\u2019t have oat milk,\u201d he told me. I was stunned. Of ALL the restaurants not to have oat milk, man. No matter. I got my \u2018cino with common milk, sucked it down, and then quickly ordered another. I got my check (about $150, without alcohol) and floated back out into the California sun, immensely pleased with my life. If you\u2019re young, you might find this kind of restaurant underwhelming, perhaps a touch pretentious. Fortunately for me, I am NOT young. I am now a man of wealth and taste, which means I can walk into a place like Chez Panisse and feel like it was built for me and me alone. I felt pampered. I felt well cared for. I felt like a billionaire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I also still felt hungry and strangely unsatisfied. If there was any heat in my dinner \u2014 save for a dash or two of black pepper \u2014 it eluded me. The spice levels at Chez Panisse could have fueled a thousand Paul Mooney jokes and perhaps did once upon a time. While this restaurant remains fanatically devoted to the California cuisine that it helped pioneer, it doesn\u2019t seem to have accounted for the ways in which California, along with its dining options, has changed since the restaurant’s opening half a century ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not revolutionary food anymore. Quite the contrary. It\u2019s very traditional and, at times, painstakingly white. I loved everything I ate, yet so much felt missing. I should\u2019ve ordered that second entree. I probably should have ordered a third. But even then, I don\u2019t think I would\u2019ve gotten quite what I was looking for. What had<\/em> I eaten on this night? Nothing, really. Looking back, I think I liked the bread more than anything else I had. If I ever eat here again, it will be for lunch, because then I know I won\u2019t go to bed hungry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A view through the front window of\u00a0Taqueria La Familia on Shattuck Avenue, in Berkeley, Calif.Image via Yelp user Vu T.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When I left Chez Panisse, I went right to an ice cream parlor to pack in extra calories. It still wasn\u2019t enough. I\u2019d remain hungry all the way through the next night, when I stumbled into a neighborhood Mexican joint, also on Shattuck, called Taqueria La Familia. I ordered a wet chile verde burrito \u2014 the kind of monster burrito you tell yourself you can\u2019t possibly eat all of and then do anyway. I ate it all. It wasn\u2019t the greatest burrito<\/a> I\u2019d ever eaten, but it was somehow the most necessary one. It had spice, and it cost me $12.50. That\u2019s almost nothing for a whole lot of something. My mother would have approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 3:30 p.m. on May 18 to correct information about the bill. Our columnist states that the bill was “about $150.” It was $109.65 including tax and 17% service charge. Our columnist tipped $35 on top of the service charge.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written By Drew Magary<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drew Magary is a columnist for SFGate and a co-founder of Defector. His new book, “The Night the Lights Went Out,” is available right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SFGATE columnist Drew Magary dined like a baller at the most famous restaurant in the country and left hungry Drew Magary May 18, 2023 (SFGate.com) I\u2019ve been around enough to know that there are places in this world that are available only to the rich and that make you want… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[607],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26594,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26593\/revisions\/26594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}