Lunch in the café

Berkeley, March 18, 2011—

WHAT A FINE tribute to Julia Child today at Chez Panisse, where each week leading up to the fortieth birthday this August the menu is dedicated to one or another person — cook, chef, writer — who has inspired the restaurant over the years.

I thought the lunch was classically French. Cordon Bleu, in fact. I began with a salad: curly endive and snow peas with smoked bacon and soft-cooked egg, in a mild vinaigrette nicely balancing the other flavors.


Came then the plat principal: halibut with asparagus, pommes à la vapeur, and chervil butter, where the operative word is butter.


What I mean by Cordon Bleu is the way the flavors all dissolve into the unifying, binding medium — in this case, of course, the butter. Italian taste, and "California Cuisine," opts for single, pointed flavors, co-existing or soloing; classically French cuisine prefers the art of merging. My Chez Panisse memories go way back, nearly forty years, to its undeniably French primal inspiration; it's nicenow andthen to be reminded of those days, which now seem oddly both more innocent and more beholden to a kind of subtle sophistication (or sophisticated subtlety) than we often now countenance.

Sauvignon blanc,Natural Process Alliance, Russian River Valley, 2010 (fresh, still fermenting, fruity, a little cloudy, pleasantly bitter around the edges, quite unique)

Café Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley; 510.548.5525

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