Alice Waters Wants to Transform the Way California Students Eat
The renowned chef at L.A.’s Hammer Museum is working alongside the UC system to help the campuses shift their dining options to an entirely regenerative program over the next five years. Enter Lulu, Alice Waters’ new restaurant at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles by going through a maze of guests rocking side to side in one of a dozen Herman Miller Magis Spun chairs strewn about the courtyard. You find your way to the host stand then pass a long, reclaimed table topped with wooden bowls and copper platters of fresh farmers market finds, like the Kishu mandarins that grace the dessert menu.
Lulu at Hammer Museum. Photo by Thomas J. Story You might stop to inspect the indigo pillows lining both indoor and outdoor booths, or the fabric mosaics woven into art pieces above the bar. All are made by Los Angeles local Christina Kim, entirely from scraps at her studio. Kim also designs all of Waters’ clothes, the renowned restaurateur and author tells me, sporting a navy-patterned caftan dress as we speak over spritzes and salads adorned with faultlessly poached eggs, broccolini, and lentils at the bar.
These details are no surprise, as Waters and chef David Tanis aren’t attempting to reinvent the wheel at Lulu. They are instead revisiting their roots with basic preparations of the best ingredients in a restaurant where even the smallest elements are treated like rare gems.
This echoes the type of space I first stepped into about 10 years ago when I interned at Chez Panisse. I spent four weeks in the pastry department of Waters’ iconic Berkeley restaurant, sorting through trays of blueberries for the fresh fruit bowls that graced the dessert menu. The final step of preparing the dish for service required me to head into the backyard and trim grape leaves from a tree that hung over picnic tables, where we ate staff meals on sunny days. The leaves needed to cover just enough of the serving bowl so that they climbed up the edges when the fruit was placed on top. And they all needed to be a similar size so that, as was explained to me, if a table got two fruit bowls, they would appear consistent.
How did I end up as an intern at the young age of 14, might you ask? The summer before I started high school, I wowed some family friends, who worked in the kitchen at the time, with a galette that I brought to a dinner party. They felt confident I could learn and grow leaps and bounds at Chez Panisse, and my mother agreed, permitting me to take the bus from downtown Oakland before 7 a.m. for a month.
Lulu is one part of a series of ambitious projects by Waters that are nearing fruition: She is working alongside the UC system to help the universities shift their dining options to an entirely regenerative program over the next five years involving local farmers, while also integrating farmers markets on campus and furthering education around land stewardship, nourishment, and community building. The initiative will begin with The Alice Waters Institute at the University of California, Davis, which will soon operate as a resource and cultural center for both the university and surrounding Sacramento community. The project will soon expand to UCLA, and Waters hopes to help convert the entire UC system to regenerative sources by 2027. — Magdalena O'Neal, April 7, 2022
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Sunset website.
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