Famed Chez Panisse Celebrates 40th Birthday Today

As you already know if you live in or anywhere near Berkeley, today, Sunday, is the 40th anniversary of the opening of Chez Panisse Restaurant & Cafe. On August 28, 1971 Alice Waters opened her little restaurant serving carefully selected and prepared locally grown foods in a home on Shattuck Avenue. The birthday means it is also the anniversary, of sorts, of the sustainable food movement, which Waters is credited with instigating. 

Birthday events will be happening all around town this weekend. Most are sold out, including the $2,500 a plate dinner at Chez Panisse as a benefit for the Edible Schoolyard, Alice Waters’ project to bring healthy, locally grown food to U.S. public school cafeterias and lessons about growing food to classrooms. But you might still have a chance of getting into one or two events — if you time it right — that are open to the general public.

The UC Berkeley Art Museum - Pacific Film Archive today will screen “The Baker’s Wife” by French filmmaker Marcel Pagnol, whose films inspired Waters and the name of her restaurant. The 4 p.m. filming is sold out — probably because it includes an introduction by Waters.  But tickets for the 1 p.m. are still available and that film will be introduced by acclaimed producer Tom Luddy, former director of the PFA, as well as Nicolas Pagnol.

“The Baker’s Wife” screenings are part of an August 12 through August 31 presentation of Pagnol films, presented by the museum and PFA in honor of the Chez Panisse birthday.

Chez Panisse is encouraging people and other restaurants to host their own dinners of locally grown, healthful food and donate proceeds to the Edible Schoolyard.  They’re calling these grassroots eating celebrations "Eating for Education."