Calvin Trillin on Chez Panisse

Calvin Trillin, in the introduction to 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering, by Alice Waters:Although I tend to prefer eating in the upstairs café at Chez Panisse rather than in the formal dining room downstairs, I find it comforting knowing the latter exists. For fifteen years, starting in the late sixties, I spent my time traveling to a different town every three weeks for *New Yorker* assignments, and my strategy for finding a decent meal was to ask a local motel clerk for the place they would visit not for a formal anniversary dinner, but for the meal they craved after returning home from a long stint away—like thirteen months in Korea—and I am pleased to say that in Berkeley, those two options are the same restaurant.