Chez Panisse

although fr/the outside it isn’t quite impressive and easy to miss when driving down shattuck, chez panisse serves excellent dishes w/professional yet warm & friendly service. a prix fixe menu is offered that changes daily, and can include an appetizer, salad, entree, and dessert. the interior is small, quaint, and cozy…feels like you’re dining inside an upscale wood home.

i only had a chance to eat here once – but they have a cafe located upstairs that is supposedly nearly as good (maybe not as high quality), but of course, “cheaper” than their fine dining menu.

oh yeah its so good when i go there with my girlfriend, we end up ordering… 3 or 4 apetizers, 2 entrees, and 2 deserts

I wasn’t as wowed by the food as I expected. The ingredients are very fresh and the food well cooked, but I think the flavors are too simple. I like a lot of dimensions of flavors in my food and the food is basically salty and not much else. I understand that that it’s the Alice Waters philosphy to have simple food with simple flavors, but it’s not quite my thing. Their duck is amazing though and melts in your mouth.

There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said. The food downstairs is wonderful. Some of the dishes at the cafe upstairs are hit-or-miss. Also, the Navarro Vineyards grape juice is awesome.

Whenever I mentioned to someone that I was going to Chez Panisse, they would always be shocked and somewhat impressed. The restaurant has such a good reputation for good and priciness (esp for college students), that people are practically awed that you are going to eat there. I decided to eat here one day while at Cal, and I went with my girlfriend for her birthday.

I could only get reservations for the Cafe since I reserved it a couple days before the desired day. I actually think the Cafe works out better because you get some choice in what you want to eat, the ambience seems nearly identical, and it is a little bit cheaper.

Suffice to say, the food was pretty darn tasty. Each bite was packed with flavor, and all the ingredients seemed to fit perfectly. For example, in my pepper salad, the dressing couldn’t have been a perfect complement to the ripe, crunchy red peppers. You can see my review of all the dishes at the bottom. All you need to know is that I loved it all, especially the dessert.

I’d recommend that people try this place at least once. They serve different food everyday, so if you got the money, then you can try all their dishes. For the less wealthy, it’s a great place to eat for a special occasion. You don’t have to dress up too much if you don’t want to. They have a very slack dress code compared to most fancy restaurants, yet the atmosphere is still very pleasant.

The experience was great. I remember the food being really fresh and tasty. Fixed price menu that you can’t choose from but it didn’t matter. Everything tasted great.

It’s almost laughable that this restaurant doesn’t have a five star rating on Menuism.

Executive Chef Alice Waters rose to prominence in the 1970s, pioneering the “sustainable, fresh, seasonal, local” food movement.
That sounds quite appealing, but few people understand the impact of that philosophy on their dinner plate: While some chefs fly in strawberries from far-off places to please their guests when the berries are out of season, and import rare fishes that don’t normally swim in nearby waters, Alice believes that chefs should build menus around the season and local availability, not try to create “stunt” menus based upon how rare or hard-to-find an ingredient is. That all adds up to food that looks and tastes like that very time and place.

I recently visited CP for the first time. It was late fall, and the menu – a simple plate of pickled local vegetables, and a mixed grill – just smacked of autumnal freshness. The dessert of a single poached pear sitting in a vanilla-tinged pool of creme caramel, with a chocolate-dipped crunchy cookie stick, was like being bathed in warmth and comfort.

The wait staff was incredibly friendly and really seemed to want you to have a good time at their restaurant (a factor of the twice-nightly seatings instead of staggered reservations, and the small dining room). Your servers felt like your friends. They were passionate about the food, really wanted to know how we liked it, and even brought us a few amuse-bouche along the way.

And the kitchen – how to describe it? It looked like granny’s kitchen from a Norman Rockwell painting. A brick oven surrounded by gleaming copper pots and warm wood, I’ve never wanted to tour an industrial restaurant kitchen so badly. It felt like home.

So, get thyself to Chez Panisse. It was worth calling one month (to the day) ahead to get reservations for my party of six. And tell the staff hello for me!