But she struggled to find high-quality foods. Waters firmly believed that a restaurant could be no better than the ingredients it had to work with. In the United States, alas, вЂњEverything is fresh all year round and is never quite fresh, if you see what I mean.вЂќ Dining at the Pavillon, a 1962 book about New YorkвЂ™s Le Pavillon, quoted its notoriously arrogant owner, Henri SoulГ©, ruefully observing that he was unable to obtain things that the ordinary French shopper took for granted: young partridges, primeurs (early spring vegetables), Mediterranean fish like red mullet or rascasse and properly aged cheeses.

Elsewhere, imitators were more preoccupied with sauces, technique and fashion than with what actually went into their dishes.Д®ven if chefs wanted better raw materials, the industrialization of US agriculture and livestock production made them difficult or impossible to find. There, basic products such as chickens from Bresse, oysters from Belon or saffron from Quercy were exemplary and sought-after.

In 1970, the food writer Mimi Sheraton commented, вЂњYou canвЂ™t buy an unwaxed cucumber in this country вЂ¦ we buy over-tenderized meat and frozen chicken вЂ¦ food is marketed and grown for the purpose of appearances.вЂќДЄt that time, high-end dining was still defined, as it had been for 300 years, by France. Where food came from and even what it tasted like were less important. The importance of starting with good-quality ingredients seems so obvious that itвЂ™s hard to understand why this was an alien idea 50 years ago.Дespite some grumbling about tasteless tomatoes, restaurant diners and shoppers in the 1970s cared primarily about low prices and the availability of a variety of products regardless of season. Today, Americans value local, seasonal and artisanal products on restaurant menus and at the market. Alice Waters, who founded and still runs Chez Panisse, didnвЂ™t invent gourmet food as I write in my book Ten Restaurants that Changed America, her great innovation was to orient fine dining toward primary ingredients. There were too many waiters and not enough utensils.Д«ut this seemingly quirky eateryвЂ™s food was more vivid and flavorful than that of French restaurants that were more elegant and expensive.

28, 1971, was pГўtГ© baked in pastry, duck with olives, a salad and an almond tart, served for a fixed price of $3.95. When a small restaurant called Chez Panisse opened its doors 50 years ago in Berkeley, California, it wasnвЂ™t obvious that it would change how Americans thought about eating. This article is republished from The ConversationВ under a Creative Commons license.

Happy farmer restaurant