Alice Waters

Alice Waters is one of the most influential figures in the history of American food. She opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, in 1971, and over the following five decades built it into the restaurant most responsible for creating the American farm-to-table movement.

Inspired by her time in France as a student in the 1960s — where she experienced the connection between local farms, seasonal markets and restaurant cooking that was simply the norm in provincial France — Waters returned to Berkeley determined to cook that way in the United States. At a time when American food culture was defined by industrial processing, frozen ingredients and chain restaurants, Chez Panisse insisted on building direct relationships with local farmers, fishermen and ranchers who shared her values about how food should be grown.

The Chez Panisse menu has always been a single, fixed multi-course dinner changed daily based on what is best at the market. This seemingly simple framework was revolutionary in the early 1970s and remains at the core of the restaurant's philosophy 50 years later.

Beyond Chez Panisse, Waters is perhaps best known for the Edible Schoolyard Project, which she launched in 1995 — a program that integrates organic kitchen gardens and cooking classes into school curricula, now active in thousands of schools globally. She has been the most prominent advocate for a national school lunch programme in the United States that prioritises fresh, seasonal, sustainably grown ingredients.