THE ‘80s A Special Report :...

“What I really want,” Alice Waters once said, “is a restaurant where you just give people good bread and good wine and good olive oil and then you lead them to a wonderful garden and say, ‘There it is--help yourselves.’ ”

In a sense it is what Alice Waters did do. When she first opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley in 1971, it was like every other little French restaurant in America. But then Waters had an inspiration: what was good about French food wasn’t the recipes--it was the food itself. It changed the way America eats.

Waters became a missionary, preaching the gospel of freshness. When she couldn’t find good produce, she grew it herself. In 1982 Waters published her cookbook, and the gospel spread. Americans learned that they could grow their own. Chefs--even French chefs--began to admit that the once laughable quality of food in America, was now no joke.

But it wasn’t until a Midwestern Hotel executive told her that the public had forced them to put a little green salad on their menu that Waters knew she had had an impact. “It’s made of little baby lettuces grown in the garden,” said the executive. “We call it the Alice Waters salad.”

The Taste Makers project was edited by David Fox, assistant Sunday Calendar editor.