Alice Waters - Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook

When I was little, I always wanted to go to the Museum of Natural History and eat at the Automat for my birthday. So my family took the train from Chatham, New Jersey, to the Hoboken ferry into New York City. It was only for special events that wed do this; we didnt usually eat out at restaurants, and we didnt go to Manhattan much. But I loved New York City. The dioramas in the natural history museum were magical to me. I liked seeing the animals in their homes, liked that I could get up close to them: the hummingbirds nestled in their tiny nests, the lions with their cubs on the Serengeti Plain, the little zebra foals. These were all exotic worlds that I knew nothing about.

Wed get all dressed up for our outings. My sister Ellen and I usually wore something my fathers sister Doris had made. Aunt Doris was an artist and often sewed clothes for us. My favorite was a cotton turquoise dress with a little pink flower print, pearly buttons at the neck, and a satin sash that tied in a bow at the back.

After the museum, we would take the subway to the Automat in Times Square. It was the first restaurant I remember going to; I must have been six or seven. Why was it my favorite? Because I could choose my own food. I can picture myself standing there in the middle of the restaurant, my pockets filled with quarters. Every surface of the Automat was shiny: there was a huge wall of little stainless steel doors, sort of like post office boxes, with windows displaying the food in each one. You put your money in one of the post office box slots, opened the door, and got your dish. Through the little door, you could catch a glimpse of someone cutting lemon meringue pie or assembling tuna salad sandwiches in the kitchen behind. It felt like an entirely new way to have food. Id range around in front of the stainless steel wall and choose my dishes. Nothing was wrapped in paper, and I liked seeing the food before I picked what I wantedI couldnt or didnt read the menu, so being able to see it resonated with me. Wed each go for what we wanted, and then the whole family met back at the table to eat our various dishes together. I loved being given my own money and the fact that I could choose exactly what I wanted. At home we always had to eat what was put in front of us, but I loved putting my money into that little doorit was my own choice. (The great irony is that Chez Panisse became known for offering just one fixed-price menu each nightno choice at all. But more on that later.)

My parents had moved to our home on Passaic Avenue in Chatham just before I was born. The house was quite old, a little wooden clapboard structure from the late 1800s with a pitched roof and slanted ceilings in the two bedrooms upstairs. The family didnt have a car until I was four, and the story I was told every year on my birthday was that when my mother went into labor with me, my father was so worried she wouldnt get to the hospital in time that he put her on the milk traina local freight train that carried the milk from the dairy farms to the milkmen in town. My mother boarded the train all by herself; my father needed to borrow a car, pack up an overnight bag from home, and arrange for someone to watch my older sister Ellen, so my mother rode the milk train alone, in heavy labor. It was all men around her, and she was seriously worried that I was going to be born on the train that delivered the milk. Thank God she made it to the hospitaljust barely.