Chez Panisse Cafe - Living on Reputation?

Epicurean Exploits - Food and Recipes
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My wife and I had been looking forward to our meal at Chez Panisse Cafe for quite a while. The restaurant’s farm to table ethos, commitment to fresh, seasonal ingredients, and lack of pretension really appealed to us. However, the actual experience was much less rewarding than anticipated.

Before I get to the food, there were a few miscues. We were staying in San Francisco and had a hard time getting a taxi to take us to Berkeley and once we did, it was over $100 round trip. Upon arrival, we walked up the stairs to the cafe and were curtly greeted by the maitre’d who immediately thrust menus in our hands and told us to check out the “list” while he checked on our table. We were seated quickly but almost immediately noticed that the restaurant was warm (figure 75-76 degrees). I chalked it up to the brick oven and open kitchen and figured it would cool down and/or we’d get used to it. Instead, I broke a light sweat that lasted the entire meal.

The menu changes nightly and in hindsight, it’s probably pretty difficult to put out high quality dishes when you aren’t repeating things (and perfecting them). My wife started with a squash, sunchoke, and fennel salad that was an excellent combination of flavors and textures, however, it was swimming in it’s dressing. I started with a pizzetta that had wild nettles, chanterelle mushrooms, and pecorino. My first two bites of mushroom left me with a mouthful of grit which to me, indicated that these mushrooms were dried and rehydrated, but not cleaned well. I could be totally wrong, but that’s my gut feeling. Otherwise, the pizza was good, but nothing inspired. We both had the grilled porcini mushrooms, with crispy polenta served over shell beans as our entrees. The flavors were good (the polenta could have been crispier)

We skipped dessert because the room was getting hotter and we literally were sweating. Towards the end of the evening, my wife went to the bathroom and when she returned, she told me that the air conditioning was working elsewhere in the restaurant, but not in the wing that we were seated in. Our server was excellent, knowledgable, and attentive. However, I was surprised that the busboy who poured our water, brought the bread, and cleared the table had an apron on that was disgustingly dirty. I’m all for casual, but clean would be nice. On our way out, I politely mentioned the temperature issue to the maitre’d who acknowledged the problem, but didn’t apologize for it. It should be noted that if I was told that the AC wasn’t working well (or at all) in the area we were being seated in I would have waited for a table in the other wing of the cafe or gone somewhere else.

The wine list was fun, eclectic, and well priced. We enjoyed a wonderful bottle of 2008 A&P DeVillaine Les Saint Jacques Rully.

In general, I found the restaurant to be tired, uninspired, and sadly boring. I would make an arguement that the meal we ate could have been prepared by me at home at a similar level. I’m not one for pretense and I’ve eaten in many, many great restaurants where I paid a premium for fancy, fussy food. I’ve long ago come to the realization that I’m looking for a restaurant that serves top notch ingredients that are simply prepared in a casual environment. Chez Panisse fell flat on almost all fronts.

FWIW, in contrast, we ate at Zuni Cafe (a restaurant with a similar vibe) the night before and loved it.

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“Lack of pretension”. Having seen Alice Waters speak I can tell you there is NO lack of pretension there. Sorry about your meal.

JD

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I’ve found the restaurant competent but not thrilling.

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Mike,

Did you eat in the “cafe” upstairs or the “restaurant” downstairs. I have eaten at both and think the cafe pales in comparison. Don’t remember having a choice of apps or entree’s at the restaurant either. Just sit down and your food comes out.
Some of the most enjoyable (read not stuffy, quality food, pleasant surroundings, good value, great wine) meals my wife and I have ever encountered and we too have eaten all over the world at most top establishments. Just good wholesome “real” food in a simple setting.
Sorry your experience wasn’t the same. Sometimes anticipation ruins the actual experience because you are expecting so much.

Last time we ate their we were invited to eat in the kitchen at the chefs table (2 seats) right in the middle of the action. Great time.

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Looks like the cafe by the subject.

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Tom,

We ate upstairs at the cafe. I agree that sometimes the anticipation can lead to disappointment. I’ll give the restaurant downstairs a chance down the road, but Chez Panisse is going to have to get to the back of the line for now.

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I would rate the cafe the same as I would a top chateau’s second wine. Good yes, great no. They opened it as an overflow because of popularity of downstairs. Theres a reason you have to book the restaurant months in advance.

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I have had good meals at the Cafe, but there is no comparison. However, even at the restaurant, some people will leave with that “I could have made that at home” feeling (though probably almost all of those people are wrong). There are no tricks. Chez Panisse is like the ultimate home cooked meal.

One time when I went (to the restaurant) the main course was a very simple roast quail. There was nothing fancy about it, but I remember it more vividly than any dish I had at the French Laundry. The quail itself was the plumpest and juiciest one I have had, perfectly cooked, and served with a thin piece of oven-roasted bacon that is still the best piece of bacon I’ve ever had - by a wide margin.

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Craig,

The reason that my wife and I were so excited to eat at Chez Panisse Cafe is exactly what you say…it should be the ultimate home cooked meal. A meal that is precisely cooked using the freshest, best ingredients. In theory, a meal that seems like you could make it at home, but in reality have no chance of pulling it off. The reason that we ate at the Cafe rather than downstairs at the restaurant is that my wife doesn’t eat certain foods and it’s tough for her to dine at a restaurant that doesn’t offer a choice. Turned out to be a good idea because we peeked at the restaurant menu and she wouldn’t have eaten two of the four courses they were serving that night.

Thus, a large part of my problem with the Cafe was that I didn’t feel like there was anything done that I couldn’t reproduce at home and there were certain ingredients (the chanterelles on the pizza) that I’m pretty certain were formerly dried and rehydrated. I base this on the amount of grit and texture that they had.

I give Alice Waters a ton of credit for changing the way that we think about food and the way that we cook. However, I’m certain that I could have reproduced this meal at home (how hard is it to put out a pizza and an overdressed salad?) and I can promise you that the meal that I put out would be served by a guy (me) in a clean apron and you would have been greeted at the door (by me) in a pleasant manner and if the AC at my house was on the fritz, I’d tell you about it right away and apologize for it.

Much like Tom Moore above, I’ve had the good fortune to eat at many of the top restaurants in the United States and Europe and I’ve increasingly found myself coming back to the bistro type meals. Meals that take top notch ingredients and prepare them in a simple, non-fussy, but precise manner. In theory Chez Panisse should be the at the pinnacle of what I’m looking for in a meal. To put it lightly, they fell flat. I felt like CPC’s attention to detail was really lacking.

FWIW, see my review of Zuni Cafe, a similar style restaurant. We loved Zuni and were wildly disappointed with CPC. We also ate at Bouchon in Yountville on this trip where I had duck confit over lentils. It’s not a fancy dish, but it was prepared perfectly.

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Tom,

I understand your analogy above and was expecting that. Problem is that we got the Bourgogne level experience instead of the Premier Cru level experience we were expecting. :slight_smile:

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But… you went to the Bourgogne part of the establishment. I guess what mystifies me is that, if you wanted to really see what Chez Panisse was all about, you’d go to the cafe vs the restaurant.

The problem for CP is that the Café SHOULD be at least a village level experience. Good, competent, but not necessarily top notch. Oh and all of the people who say “i could do this at home”, well… why go to someplace like CP? It’s not about meals you can’t make technically, it’s about making elegant, simple food with the best ingredients. If they don’t do that, they quickly drop into the ‘coulda stayed home’ category, but even at their peak, the experience isn’t a French Laundry one and isn’t intended to be.

Some of the rep, too, is based on the fact that they were one of the first to really do this. Now, there are a lot of places in many cities that do the ‘prepare food with high quality fresh local ingredients and let the flavors shine’ thing.

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No, I went to the Premier Cru part of the establishment, one step down from the Grand Cru part and got a Bourgogne level experience.

As I mentioned above, my wife won’t eat certain things so going to a restaurant that puts out a fixed menu with no choices doesn’t work for us.

Either way, no matter what my expectations were, this was a disappointing meal. Forgetting for a second that the food wasn’t very good, the maitre’d’s weird behavior, the temperature issues, and general sloppiness of one of our servers alone made for a bad meal. Add food that just wasn’t very well prepared or good and it’s not a recipe for a successful meal.

One would think that a restaurant that’s been around for so long could perform at a higher level. Thus, the title of this thread (Living on Reputation?)

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Mike, my comment about the ultimate home-cooked meal was about the restaurant, not the cafe. I would have expected much better than your experience, but I don’t know if it reflects at all on the downstairs restaurant. It’s like having a bad meal at Bouchon and trying to determine how it applies to Ad Hoc. The Cafe is a good restaurant but it is definitely not what I would mean if I say “Chez Panisse experience.” I love Zuni and the Cafe has to be at its best to be in Zuni’s class - but either one is worlds apart from Chez Panisse downstairs.

My wife is also finicky but she ate at the restaurant twice and liked it a lot. We didn’t ask them to change anything but I’ve heard that they will accommodate your requests to avoid ingredients or swap out dishes.

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No, you didn’t. At best, the Cafe is village in this paradigm. I’m not excusing your experience, but it makes no real sense to go to the Cafe if you want to see what Chez Panisse is all about.

Personally, I think it’s always a mistake for a top notch restaurant to offer a Cafe kind of experience in an attempt to be accessible. It sometimes works, but it confuses expectations.

One would think that a restaurant that’s been around for so long could perform at a higher level. Thus, the title of this thread (Living on Reputation?)

I agree that the meal sounds significantly below what you’d expect at something that carries the CP name. Still, if you wanted to see what the place is about and whether the reputation was deserved you should have been downstairs. The answer to your question is… perhaps. . Especially based on one experience.

PS: Ah, rereading the title, I see you’re asking something different than I thought you were. The Café certainly leverages the main restaurant’s rep. Whether it doesn’t live up to it regularly or whether your experience was a bad but atypical one, well, we’d need more reviews.

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Cafe vs. restaurant aside, this is the issue, imo. What made Chez Panisse revolutionary in its early days is more commonplace today. In other words, the revolution was pretty successful.

We had a few meals there after moving to the San Jose in 2002 but found it hard to justify treating it as a destination restaurant after meal 3. Actually, pretty hard for us to treat anyplace as a destination at this point. We love Zuni but only eat there as part of a bigger day in SF.