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.

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.

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!