Counterculture Meets Gourmet
Berkeley, California’s “gourmet ghetto” was a major influence in the transformation of American food. There, out of the counterculture, a community emerged that was committed to fresh, local, seasonal, and artisanal foods.
Alice Waters and the restaurant she founded, Chez Panisse, were part of this extended community that cooked, baked bread, made cheese, raised goats and poultry, farmed vegetables, and foraged for wild foods. The Bay Area’s pioneering reinvention of local food was coupled with its renewed interest in importing quality coffee and olive oils. These trends appeared and reverberated elsewhere, including Seattle, Boston, and Boulder, changing the types of food available to Americans throughout the country.
Menu, Zinfandel Dinner, 1976
Gift of Darrell Corti
Chez Panisse restaurant, the cornerstone of the Berkeley gourmet ghetto, was the center of a commitment to the sourcing and presentation of food that was fresh, local, organic, seasonal, and delicious. The Zinfandel Dinner, which became an annual event, acknowledged the new excellence of American wine.
This poster by David Lance Goines was commissioned by Corti Brothers Grocery in Sacramento to celebrate the introduction of some of the first extra-virgin olive oil made and sold in the United States. Many credit Corti for introducing high grades of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and other foods that have become staples across America.
Steve Sullivan, the first bread baker for Chez Panisse, and his wife, Suzie, opened Acme Bread Company in 1983. They supplied artisanal bread to many Bay Area restaurants. David Lance Goines’s poster features their bread-loving daughter and pet rabbit.
Banneton basket, around 1986
Gift of Steve and Suzie Sullivan
Acme bakers used linen-lined baskets to raise (proof) the dough for their Italian bread (in the French bâtard shape). Such sturdy French baskets replaced the original and not-very-durable bannetons, made by the bakers themselves from baskets and canvas.
Pike Place Market sign, early 1970s
Gift of Pike Place Market, PDA
This section of a menu board hung in Seattle’s Pike Place Market after its major rebirth and renovation in the 1970s. The menu reflects the influence of egalitarian and nonviolent ideals from the counterculture, with vegetarian and “Utopian” sandwiches.
Alfred Peet, a Dutch immigrant from a coffee-trading family, started Peet’s Coffee and Tea in Berkeley in 1966. Peet’s coffees satisfied a hunger for European tastes and flavors. His dark-roast brews started a coffee fanaticism that led to chains of coffeehouses with locations around the globe.
Laura Chenel went to France in the 1970s, returning to California inspired to raise goats and make the cheese she had come to love abroad. She was one of the first suppliers of the “new” chèvre for restaurants like Chez Panisse. As demand for goat cheese spread across the country, artisanal producers multiplied.
