Chez Panisse Cafe - gourmet at a discount
Written: Jul 05 '02 (Updated Nov 05 '06)
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Pros: Excellence in every detail, exquisitely fresh produce and high quality ingredients.
Cons: Limited possibilities for vegetarians, not recommended for vegans.
The Bottom Line: A comparative bargain for a gourmet meal in a deservedly legendary restaurant. Very highly recommended.
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| lyagushka's Full Review: Cafe at Chez Panisse |
As a long term resident of Berkeley, California I've eaten at Chez Panisse Café a number of times over the years for special occasions. To be very brief, I've never been disappointed with the food or the service and I think Chez Panisse is one of the few legendary restaurants which still lives up to its stellar reputation.
Chez Panisse Café is located just upstairs from the Chez Panisse Restaurant. Both are located in the "Gourmet Ghetto" neighborhood of Berkeley, where you can also enjoy wonderful breads and cheeses from the Cheese Board collective, browse over an excellent selection of California wines at the North Berkeley Wine shop or indulge your yen for New York Jewish deli food at Saul's. This pleasant neighborhood straddling Shattuck Avenue has lots of pedestrian traffic and many independently owned businesses.
Chez Panisse itself (both the Café and Restaurant) is an unobtrusive presence on this street and many out-of-towners pass it by without any inkling of its identity. There is a stylish wooden fence enclosing a tiny patio in front of the restaurant. The weekly menu for the restaurant is posted on the fence where the curious can peruse it from the sidewalk. Inside the patio are two wooden benches where you can wait if you're a little early for your reservation.
The atmosphere in the Café can be described as casually refined and elegant. There is a lot of wood in the restaurant, including paneling and an unusual arbor-like support for a large sunroof at the back of the café. The light fixtures are unusual as well, made with marbled glass in a very modern Tiffany stained glass design. Overall the architecture of the space reminds me of something by Julia Morgan, but there is also something of the French café style here. The wood helps to dampen down the noise level in the café, so it is never difficult to have a quiet conversation.
A little background on Chez Panisse
Alice Waters, the owner and executive chef of the restaurant and café is enamored of French cuisine. I'm not speaking here of Escoffier's 14 hour bechemel sauce or sorbets made with 20 pounds of violet blossoms. Rather, Waters embraces the cuisine of the French countryside which relies heavily on locally available, absolutely fresh produce and hearty servings of meat to accompany everything. She has adapted this cuisine slightly to fit the tastes of the California diner for more vegetable and less meat. However, for a California dining establishment, let alone one in Berkeley, her menu features a lot more meat than you might expect. At the heart of Waters' approach to food is the belief that the quality of a dish can only be as good as the poorest of its ingredients. Waters started the trend of working directly with the producers of her ingredients and identifying them by name on her menus. Anytime you read a menu and see the producer's name mentioned for cuts of meat, artisanal cheeses or produce, you are seeing the effects of the Chez Panisse revolution on American dining. The menu states that, "Most of our produce and meat comes from farms and ranches that practice ecologically sound agriculture."
The Menu
The menu for the Café changes daily, so I won't be able to recommend my favorite dish for you. But I can describe the sorts of things that appear regularly on the menu. The daily menu is divided into three sections, roughly corresponding to appetizers, main courses and desserts. Typically there are 8-9 appetizers and five main courses. Looking over the daily menus from the times I've eaten there, 5-6 of the appetizers were entirely vegetarian and 2-4 were suitable for vegans. One or two of the main courses were vegetarian and none vegan. There is typically one poultry and one fish main course as well as another dish or two of pork, lamb or beef. There is always an individual pizza offered on the menu. It is often but not always vegetarian. There are always side orders of things like olives and cheese available. Hearty slices of wonderful freshly baked bread with sweet cream butter are offered as soon as you have ordered.
The last time I ate lunch at Chez Panisse Café I chose a garden lettuce salad with baked Sonoma goat cheese. There were two very generous disks of warm goat cheese and a mixture of incredibly fresh baby lettuces lightly dressed with a mild vinaigrette. The portion of goat cheese was so large that I gave one of the disks to my husband, who had ordered just a green salad. His salad was exactly like my greens. Our appetizers were priced at $6.75 and $8.75.
For a main course, I had pollo al mattone, chicken "cooked under a brick" with mashed potatoes and tiny little baby turnips. The meat consisted of a half chicken breast with the first joint of the wing still attached: the classical French cut for a chicken breast. The skin was still on the breast and it had a beautiful, deep golden brown color and crisp texture. The flavorful mashed potatoes seemed to be Yukon gold potatoes, although the menu did not specifically identify them as such. The baby turnips still had about 1/4" of green stem attached to their tops. Their diameter was about that of an American quarter or a 1 euro coin. They were sliced in half from top to bottom and very tender and sweet. A thin but rich au jus sauce unified the plate. Everything was delicious; I cleaned my plate. My husband had sheep's milk cannelloni with morel mushrooms for his main course and was very pleased with it. My dish was priced at $17.50, his at $16.75.
For dessert we shared a tall slice of Hawaiian ginger cake with fresh peaches and cream. We were sold on this dessert because the peaches came from a local fruit producer whom we were familiar with from the biweekly Berkeley farmer's markets. We were not disappointed. We devoured the peaches in a flash and our server brought us more. We devoured the extras too and lingered over the cake. Our dessert cost $8.00. There were six desserts to choose from, including a fruit plate, ice cream, a fruit crisp and a chocolate espresso custard as well as a plate of three artisanal cheeses.
The Café offers an excellent selection beverages including aperitifs; sparkling wines; red, white, rose and dessert wines; beers on tap, in bottles or draft cans; bottled water, organic milk and juices; and coffee and teas actually served in a pot (my personal version of heaven!). Although the wine selection is relatively modest, every wine listed is available by the glass. I think this is a laudable practice that more restaurants should follow.
Prices for appetizers range from $6.75-$12.00, for main courses, $15.75-$18.75 and for desserts $5.50-$8.50.
Service
The approach to service at Chez Panisse Café is slightly unorthodox. There does not appear to be an individual server assigned to any given table. Instead the entire waitstaff is divided into teams which serve areas of the dining room as a group. In theory, this could prove problematic since no one is individually accountable for any table, nor working directly for the tip left by a given party. I have never found the service to be at all lacking however. On the contrary, the staff circulated frequently through the dining room, checking to see if anything was needed at any table. This was done not so much by constantly asking patrons as by visually scanning each table. There was obviously good co-ordination among the staff; I saw a waitress note a need for more bread at a table and another waiter delivering it, while she spoke with diners at another table.
On the whole, service was excellent and attentive without being intrusive or overbearing. Waitstaff were extremely knowledgeable about the menu and the wines. Meals proceed at a comfortable pace; I never felt rushed to get through my meal so that the table could be turned over. As in most European establishments, the check arrived only when it was requested.
The bottom line
Every time I've eaten at Chez Panisse, my entire experience has been like a little dash of luxury. The business approach here is one of excellence in every detail. From the exquisitely fresh produce to the attractive, meticulously neat and clean dining room and open kitchen to the thoroughly professional waitstaff, each aspect of the diner's pleasure has been considered and planned for. I recommend Chez Panisse Café very highly.
Details, details...
This brings me to the practical details of this review. Chez Panisse Café serves lunch and dinner six days a week and is closed on Sunday. Reservations, while not technically required for the Café, are a practical necessity. Both the Café and Restaurant are extremely popular places to eat. Do yourself a favor and get a reservation. In the past the Café's reservation policy was a bit difficult, but they now take lunch and dinner reservations up to a month in advance. The Café closes between lunch and dinner (see below for complete hours). You may check the menu for the Café on-line on the day of your visit. (Actually, the menu for the following day is posted after closing the night before.)
I'd also recommend a meal at these restaurants:
San Francisco
• Boulevard - hands down, the best restaurant in San Francisco
• Woodward's Garden, which is almost as good as Boulevard
• Betelnut - highly recommended for a fun night with a group
• Helmand - little known but excellent Afghan place and a great value
• Suppenkuche - unpretentious German bierhaus charm in Hayes Valley
East Bay
• A Coté - lively pan-Mediterranean tapas in a sleek but fun atmosphere
• Café Rouge - best choice for steak or high quality meats in the East Bay
• Cha-ya - vegetarian Japanese restaurant in the Gourmet Ghetto
• Lalime's - superb New American fare in an intimate setting
• Manpuku - a cheap and simple ramen bar in the Elmwood
• Nan Yang - fantastic Burmese in north Rockridge
• Oliveto - exquisite Italian in Rockridge
• Pho 84 - paradigm-shifting (really!) Vietnamese in downtown Oakland
• Rick & Ann's and La Note - both offer excellent choices for breakfast
• Shen Hua - great Chinese in Berkeley's Elmwood neighborhood
On the other hand, I can't recommend
• Café Cacao - part of the Scharffen Berger chocolate empire
• Pizzaiolo - pretentious, outrageously priced pizza served by hipper-than-thou servers
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: No
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations Be sure to make reservations.
Best Suited For: Friends
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