Ensayo

Jonathan Rodriguez
Nombre del Chef
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Titulo del Ensayo
Nowadays the culinary industry has gotten harder and more competitive. There are many circumstances that stand in the way of a chef that wants to stand out and make a difference in the world of culinary. There are many world changing events and technological advances that can become a problem for a chef that hascertain beliefs, but there is one Chef that was able to make a difference no matter how hard the circumstances might be. Teaching us that no matter how small the idea is as long as you have the initiative to help others, you will always make a change. Executive Chef Alice Waters was born on April 28, 1944 in Chatham, New Jersey. Alice’s father was a business psychologist and management consultantand Alice’s mother was a typical stay at home mom of the era. Alice mentioned they had a “victory garden” a holdover from world war 2.In this time the government suggested that families create a garden where they could grow their own foods and vegetables for themselves and their neighbors in order to conserve much needed rations for the troops. These gardens were called “Victory Gardens”. Thisperiod made and encouraged American families to cultivate in their backyards. In 1943, a year before Alice was born, the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden in the white house lawn encouraging Americans to do the same in their backyards. Alice Waters and her family like many others, rolled up their sleeves and planted a victory garden. She grew up eating fresh fruits and vegetablesand turned that experience into her life’s work. In 1947 huge munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, switched over to making chemical fertilizers. After the war the government had found itself with a great surplus of Ammonium Nitrate, the main ingredient for explosives, which also happens to be a great source of Nitrogen for plants. The government was thinking on spraying America’s forestswith the surplus chemical, to help out the timber industry. Agronomists in the department of agriculture had a better idea: Spread the ammonium Nitrate on farmlands as fertilizers. Alice spent two years in the University of Santa Barbara and then transferred to the Berkeley campus in California where she majored in French studies. She spent her junior year abroad in France. She loved to study theircuisines and became enthralled with
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the ways Europeans prepared their foods and also the way they savored their meals. She read extensively on the subject and found English guides on the cooking tomes of Elizabeth David and Richard Olney, herculinary inspirations. In 1967 when Alice graduated she went back to Europe for a postgraduate study at the Montessori school in London and to study and taste the European cuisine again. Waters came back to Berkeley and taught at a Mont-essori school there. She also began writing cooking columns for a newspaper ran by some friends. In 1971, Alice Waters borrowed 10,000 dollars and opened doors to herrestaurant “Chez Panisse” in Shattuck avenue. The name “Panisse” came from a character in trilogy of works by French filmmaker Marcel Pagnol, whose films Alice loved. Alice had to offer a fixed priced menu, she also relied on local farmers to bring her produce. Waters admitted that it took them a long time to become profitable because they didn’t know anything about running a restaurant. Alicealso had to face another challenge when opening her restaurant, this was the growth of fast food. By 1963 McDonalds was already selling 1 million hamburgers per day. When Chez Panisse opened in 1971 there were over 1,600 McDonalds restaurants in all 50 states and four other countries. In 1972, McDonalds reported over 1 billion dollars in sales just one year after chez panisse opened. In 1975, the...