In challenging the American throwaway culture built on entitlement and instant gratification, Alice Waters has changed the way we think about food
Read an excerpt from Alice Waters’s newly published memoir here.
A time of unapologetic excess when shoulder pads are massive, hair a three-foot-high fire hazard, and meals are served on gleaming black charger plates the size of hubcaps. I’m standing at the back of the original Dean & DeLuca in Manhattan’s SoHo, where I’m working as the cookbook department clerk. Early one morning, before the rush – the gallerist Mary Boone buying a $10 tomato, Jean-Michel Basquiat trying to not fall into the chevre display – the front door blows open and a petite lady dragging a heavy, two-piece, cast-iron Tuscan fireplace grill huffs and puffs her way down the aisle to where my boss and I are waiting.
“I’m just back from Tuscany,” she says in a breathless pant, “and I’ve fallen in love with it! Can you find someone to make these over here?’
Related: Chef and activist Alice Waters: 'Beauty is the language of care'
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