Chef's Report

Chez Panisse, Bekerley, San Francisco

Susan Holland cooks and eats at Chez Panisse Café

Chez Panisse is both restaurant and café. The restaurant has a prix-fixe menu which changes every night, designed to be seasonal and composed to highlight the finest available ingredients, including meat, fish and poultry. Monday nights are simpler and more rustic than other evenings. As the week progresses the menu becomes more elaborate and the price drifts up, from $50 on Mondays to $95 by Saturday (not including service). The café offers a moderately priced à la carte menu, from an open kitchen which features a wood-burning oven and charcoal grill. The menu is inspired by the market and consequently changes every day.

I worked for a week at Chez Panisse in January. At the end of that week, I came away not only with new ideas, but also with inspiration that came from working with such a passionate and motivated team. A team totally committed to the Chez Panisse philosophy of staying true to the seasons, using local organic produce, and eating well and simply. (Easier to do in California than in Ireland!)

I worked in the café preparation kitchen, where I peeled and chopped winter vegetables, like cardoons, artichokes, endives and all sorts of winter cabbages. There was a lot of cleaning of wild chanterelles, and much picking of crab meat. Essentially mundane jobs, but here also a chance to learn about who grew what, where things came from, what the pigs were fed on (in this case hazelnuts and goat's whey), who fished the fish. At the same time we'd be discussing such topics as black and white movies from the fifties, and the latest restaurants in the bay area.

Interview strategy for new recruits includes questions about favourite cook books, favourite restaurants, and what's cooked at home. The tryout is given a pasta dish to cook - twice - using the same ingredients, but the result must be totally different. The Spanish dish of pork and clams, which was on the menu, has its origins in medieval Spain, when it was given to strangers as a sinister ruse to find out if the stranger was a moor or a jew. The young man who told this story, after noticing the dish on the menu, got the job.

There are meetings and tastings twice a day, so that everyone knows what the food tastes and looks like. This includes both floor-staff and cooks.

I worked with chefs with fine art degrees, chemical engineering degrees, as well as ex-advertising managers, all now totally committed to working at this marvelous institution.

On the last night, we ate in the café. It was perfect. We ate well and simply. The attention to detail made it special. Here's the menu:

Chez Panisse Café Dinner Menu
Friday, January 14, 2005

Cannard Farm cardoons with anchovy, egg, and sorrel, $9.00

Chicory salad with blood oranges and walnut vinaigrette, $9.50

*Grilled Big Valley buffalo salad with leeks, beets, and salsa verde, $10.75

Watercress, curly cress, and fennel salad, $8.50
Garganelli pasta with new potatoes, rocket and rosemary, $12.00

Pizzetta with pancetta, roasted onion, and tomato, $13.00

Pizzetta with wild nettles, $13.00

Cheese with garden lettuces, $8.75

Garden lettuce salad, $6.75

Chicken brodo with carrots and chervil, $6.75

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Hooks and line-caught Atlantic cod baked in the wood oven with Dungeness crab, Manila clams, saffron, and aioli, $25.00

Buttermilk fried Hoffman Farms quail with coleslaw and new potatoes, $21.00

Grilled Laughing Stock Farm pork leg and sausage with winter squash and cavolo nero, $26.00

Grilled Willey Farm artichokes with black trumpet mushrooms, cannelloni beans, and radicchio, $17.75

Side orders: a plate of olives, anchovies, Parmesan cheese, or Tuscan olive oil, $3.50 each

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Desserts

Artisan Cheese Selection: Nevat, Garazi, and Roccolo, $8.50

Sierra Beauty apple tart with Calvados ice cream, $9.00
Blood orange upside down cake with Grand Marnier cream, $8.50

Panna cotta with candied kumquats and biscotti, $7.50

Fairview Gardens Clementine sherbet, $7.00

Cream with chocolate sauce and toasted hazelnuts, $7.50

Jim Churchill's Kishu tangerines and Barhi dates, $6.50

Service charge: 17%

Corkage: $20 per bottle, limit two (750ml.) per table.

All our produce, meat, poultlry, and fish comes from farms, ranches, and fisheries guided by principles of sustainability.
We accept reservations for the Café up to thirty days in advance. 510-548-5049

Please refrain from cellular phone use wthin the restaurant.

*while available

Directly opposite Chez Panisse there is a marvelous pizzeria which is part of a cheese and bread co-op. One kind of pizza only per day, but each day different. It's always crowded and while you line up you are entertained by great jazz musicians busking in the shop. Berkely Bowl in downtown Berkeley is an amazing supermarket with lots of organic produce.

Around Berkeley there are farmers' markets two or three times a week. There is also the very famous San Francisco farmers' market at the ferry terminal building. Really wonderful! It's a great town!

Sue Holland