Good Vibes for Old Hippies: US of Arugula

Good Vibes for Old Hippies: US of Arugula

I was up most of the night reading The United States of Arugula, David Kamp’s chronicle about “how we became a gourmet nation” (which you may not believe we are, but then again, you may not have lived through the Eisenhower years, so it could be hard to realize just how bad it was in the days before McDonald’s started serving mesclun).

What kept me going in particular was the section on Alice Waters and the role she and her cohorts played in the development of American cuisine in the Berkeley of the 60s. An associate of Mario Savio and others in the Free Speech Movement, Waters said that “It’s not enough to liberate yourself politically, to liberate yourself sexually. You have to liberate all the senses” According to Kamp, Waters believed that eating together (communally, if you will) was a socially progressive act and a bulwark against “fifties American-TV, frozen food culture.” I love that.

Some think Waters is a blowhard, and maybe she is, I don’t know, but it’s warming (especially on a day like today) for an aging SDS punk to think that something good came out of all that, and that all you maybe need is lovingly prepared food.

David “All power to the pickles!” Hammond

If you liked that argument, look at Warren Belasco's Appetite for Change that covers the same territory in somewhat more detail and depth.

I enjoyed this book and found it immensely educational and very entertaining.

In another thread, I wrote:

...I found the story to be a little heavy on the 60s counter-culture influences, but for someone like me who wasn't even born when Chez Panisse opened, it was quite an interesting read.

Kamp kinda lost me when he was giving me every sordid detail of Waters' love life and accounts of her associates drug use. There were about 20 pages of fawning over Waters and her crew that I think could have been summed up in a couple paragraphs without any loss of substance.


While it is divided into a lot of little chapters, the book can be really divided into three parts:

--The Beard Gang (Julia, Jacques, Claiborne, and the rest)
--Alice in the 60s
--Puck, the 80s and the rest

I think part 3 is glossed over at the expense of part 2.

I would have liked to have read a little more analysis of the current landscape and seen the author connect the dots a little better between the old and the new. It would have been a more cohesive book, but with a shorter shelf-life.

In spit of my criticisms, I do recommend it.

Best,
Michael

eatchicago wrote:I enjoyed this book and found it immensely educational and very entertaining.

In another thread, I wrote:

...I found the story to be a little heavy on the 60s counter-culture influences, but for someone like me who wasn't even born when Chez Panisse opened, it was quite an interesting read.

Kamp kinda lost me when he was giving me every sordid detail of Waters' love life and accounts of her associates drug use. There were about 20 pages of fawning over Waters and her crew that I think could have been summed up in a couple paragraphs without any loss of substance.


While it is divided into a lot of little chapters, the book can be really divided into three parts:

--The Beard Gang (Julia, Jacques, Claiborne, and the rest)
--Alice in the 60s
--Puck, the 80s and the rest

I think part 3 is glossed over at the expense of part 2.

I would have liked to have read a little more analysis of the current landscape and seen the author connect the dots a little better between the old and the new. It would have been a more cohesive book, but with a shorter shelf-life.

In spit of my criticisms, I do recommend it.

Best,
Michael

For contemporary landscape try Michael Rulhman's Beyond the Kitchen.

It's not my favorite of his by a longshot, but worthwhile nevertheless.

David Hammond wrote:. . . it’s warming (especially on a day like today) for an aging SDS punk to think that something good came out of all that, and that all you maybe need is lovingly prepared food. . .

or some of that mescaline from McD's.

eatchicago wrote:--The Beard Gang (Julia, Jacques, Claiborne, and the rest)
--Alice in the 60s
--Puck, the 80s and the rest

I think part 3 is glossed over at the expense of part 2.

I would have liked to have read a little more analysis of the current landscape and seen the author connect the dots a little better between the old and the new. It would have been a more cohesive book, but with a shorter shelf-life.

Part 2 (which also does include "asides" regarding Dean and Deluca, Moosewood, etc.) is the heftiest portion of the book, no doubt about it (though I loved it!). In the author's defense (and I understand you're not attacking him, just kind of disappointed), it's much harder to write the history you're in than the history that's behind you. Also, the subtitle is "How We Became a Gourmet Nation," so roots are more the focus than present reality, though I would have been happy if the book were twice as long.

i had the good fortune to be living in berkeley/san fran throughout most of the 70's. i went to berkeley, but i didn't go to berkeley. i lived just down the st from patty hearst and heard the whole thing go down w/o knowing what was happening @ the time. just a lot of police action.

my friends and i were quite aware of what alice was up to. it was just a local scene then but we thought we had died and gone to heaven. the food was just better and more interesting than any of the food to be had elsewhere was. remember, there was no farmer/chef relationships then. there were no kiwi fruit in every mkt, no balsamic vinegar and barely any salsa which is the # one condiment today almost 40 years after the fact. besides which, the # of items in a supermarket were less than 1/2 of what we are accustomed to seeing today. even supposedly fine dining "continental" restaurants routinely served frozen vegetables.

if not the beginning of the food revolution in america, it @ least was a very prominent player. no one knew or or truthfully even had an inkling of suspicion of how it would transform the american palette by in fact, going back to the tried and true european model of cooking w/the seasons, using local purveyors etc...

i was lucky to have been @ the right place @ the right time as it profoundly affected my politics, world view and tastebuds simultaneously. my time spent in free thinking beserkeley shaped/warped me to this day. proud of it and wouldn't have it any other way.

we all on this board in particular, owe a thank you to alice.

jazzfood wrote:we all on this board in particular, owe a thank you to alice.

That's funny ... I read California Dish: What I Saw (and Cooked) at the American Culinary Revolution by Jeremiah Tower, in which he says Alice didn't know what she was doing, and he was solely responsible for the change in America's dining.

jazzfood wrote:we all on this board in particular, owe a thank you to alice.

jazzfood,

Amen...

And boy, does she still run a great restaurant...
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=88616#88616
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=88668#88668

Antonius

he can say whatever he wants. she very likely had much needed help from the talent she employeed. all chefs/owners do, it's not a one person job. but she, not they ran the place to her specs, not theirs.

i was there and can tell you, there was no doubt that she was the boss, that the vision was hers and that it was her dream that others embraced. i'm not saying it wasn't modified or evolved as a result of others input. luckily for us it was infectious and we're better off as a subculture of foodies for her early efforts.

jazzfood wrote:he can say whatever he wants. she very likely had much needed help from the talent she employeed. all chefs/owners do, it's not a one person job. but she, not they ran the place to her specs, not theirs.

i was there and can tell you, there was no doubt that she was the boss, that the vision was hers and that it was her dream that others embraced. i'm not saying it wasn't modified or evolved as a result of others input. luckily for us it was infectious and we're better off as a subculture of foodies for her early efforts.

My sense from the book was also that it was her vision, her spirit that drove this enterprise. Though Tower was critical, he seems to been more the implementer of the vision than the visionary.