Fanny Singer shares memories from her unconventional childhood, growing up in the revered Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California alongside her mother, legendary chef Alice Waters. She describes how the restaurant’s staff became an extended family (often referred to as “La Famille Panisse”), talks about the sophisticated palate she developed from a young age (think: salmon roe), and discusses how her work today marries her past and present (collaborations between her company, Permanent Collection, and Chez Panisse). In the show’s second half, Alice Waters joins the conversation to reminisce about time spent cooking for and with her daughter, reading Fanny’s memoir, and cultivating a sense of family at her restaurant.
Fanny Singer shares memories from her unconventional childhood, growing up in the revered Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California alongside her mother, legendary chef Alice Waters. She describes how the restaurant’s staff became an extended family (often referred to as “La Famille Panisse”), talks about the sophisticated palate she developed from a young age (think: salmon roe), and discusses how her work today marries her past and present (collaborations between her company, Permanent Collection, and Chez Panisse). In the show’s second half, Alice Waters joins the conversation to reminisce about time spent cooking for and with her daughter, reading Fanny’s memoir, and cultivating a sense of family at her restaurant.
Read Fannys original My Family Recipe essay.
My Family Recipe is created by the Food52 Podcast Network and Heritage Radio Network, inspired by the eponymous Food52 column.
My Family Recipe: Memories of Pizza at Chez Panisse with Fanny Singer
FANNY SINGER: At some point in the meal, I would finally get the green light from my mom to go back behind the counter and climb up onto a bucket overturned so that I could reach the counter and Michele would teach me how to roll out and toss the dough, and stipple it with my fingers, and brush it with garlic scented olive oil, and then just arrange the toppings in whatever way, which at the time, of course, was usually a sort of theme. So sometimes I would make a fish-shaped pizza - I would use onions like scales or spell things out in olives. But I loved, I loved spending that time there with him because there was so much sensory information that you would get from standing behind the counter.
ARATI MENON, HOST: You’re listening to My Family Recipe, presented by Food52 and Heritage Radio Network. Thank you for joining us on this episode. I'm your host Arati Menon. I'm also the lead editor of the original essay series on Food52 and I'm delighted to be taking you on a journey as I explore some much loved heirloom recipes and the delicious stories behind them. Today I'm welcoming Fanny Singer, who writes about her remarkable, unconventional childhood growing up in the revered Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, alongside her mother, the legendary chef Alice Waters. We published an excerpt from Fanny's memoir, Always Home in My Family Recipe, back in May 2020, shortly after it was released. And for those of you who haven't read it, it's a warm, evocative book that’s centered around food and family and a sense of belonging, all the things that this podcast celebrates. Welcome to the show Fanny.
SINGER: Thank you so much for having me.
MENON: So I read Always Home last year and immediately felt like it was the kind of book that invites the reader into your world and your home. I could smell the burning branch of rosemary in your kitchen and I could hear your mother theatrically announce 'à table,' when dinner was ready, even though, of course, I'd never heard her say that. So congratulations on a beautiful book.
SINGER: Thank you so much. It's so nice to hear that.
MENON: So Chez Panisse was built from a single family home and transformed by a group of friends to become a restaurant. As a result, it has retained this very intimate, homey feel about it. And you write about how growing up you knew every nook and corner from where to find the pastries, to where to hide to win a game of hide and seek. And you write that you use this knowledge often to flagrant advantage. Can you describe the space for us and our listeners as it was growing up?
SINGER: So I think Chez Panisse really hasn't changed all that much, really. You know, I often say that I was born into a restaurant that was already quite well established, like the restaurant was a teenager going off to college practically, in a way, so it had like, you know, it had its own life and it was, it was not something that was in influx or that felt in any way fledgling. It already kind of had some sense of being an institution. So I've witnessed, like, relatively few cosmetic changes to the place, some of the back sheds in places that were kind of spooky, where things were stored, where I love to play hide and seek are much tidier and better illuminated now. But, you know, all in all, things remain kind of wonderfully the same. But what it feels like to me, for someone who hasn’t been, it does have that warm feel of a home. This owes in no small part to the incredible amount of attention my mom pays to the lighting in the place.
MENON: Yeah.
SINGER: And I do describe her, these obsessions around lux levels in my book but, getting the right quality of light so that when you enter the place, you immediately feel sort of embraced by the atmosphere. And that's something that I, I think I felt, too, as a kid, was just this sort of innate comfort there. That there was nothing, sort of, really institutional about it. There wasn't a sense of back and front. You know, there was, all the spaces were open and contiguous. And you could navigate them even as a visitor or a diner, you could walk into the kitchen and you could look at all the different stations and see what normally would be the back of the house or the upstairs-downstairs bifurcation just didn't exist at Chez Panisse. And so that engendered, I think, an atmosphere of just familiarity and community, which is very, very much what I felt as a kid. And so all the kids who were the offspring of various cooks, I think had a similar feeling of being at home in that place.
MENON: I love that you called a bunch of you restaurant urchins in your book.
SINGER: Mmmhmm.
MENON: And I had this vision of like a whole line of motley, this motley crew.
SINGER: We were! I mean, we were. There was, there was a real generation of us, you know, like a good half dozen of us were all about the same age. And we all felt the sort of similar level of entitlement to, like, just waltz in to walk-ins and like, grab some cookie dough, or like to grab a peach off the back, the shelves where ripe fruit was ripened, in there, in the breezeway.
MENON: And together, you probably, you probably got away with a lot altogether.
SINGER: Oh, we, we did. We definitely did.
MENON: There's a photograph of you included in the column. For those of our listeners that haven't read it, where you're just a baby and you're asleep in this giant mixing bowl, it's the loveliest little thing. And what sort of emotions does that picture stir up when you, when you look at it today?
SINGER: Well, I love that, I love that my mom used a, like, industrial sized stainless steel salad bowl as a crib. But it also just means that, you know, this really still marks the quality of our relationship now, the duality of her roles in my life, as I saw them. A very attentive and devoted mother and also someone who was very devoted to her work and that those things could kind of coexist. I mean, obviously, that's a very obvious illustration of them to have me physically in the space where she would be working. But it is also sort of symbolic of the duality of those, of those commitments. And a really, like a high wire act, I think, to be a extraordinarily ambitious and hard working and visionary, you know, chef and activist, and also to be a mother who did not, in any way I think, make sacrifices really in how she was parenting. At least I didn't perceive any. So I always felt the strength of her commitment to me. But I also knew that this place and these other goals would also have her attention.
MENON: And I bet she thought nothing of it. I mean, it probably didn't seem very strange for her to reach out for this industrial sized bowl and figure that this would make a perfectly fine -
SINGER: Of course, of course.
MENON: - receptacle for a little baby.
SINGER: There's a great little section in the children's book that she wrote when I was about eight years old, called Fanny at Chez Panisse, where she talks about, I mean, there's a story in it where a baby is put in a salad bowl to pacify it when, you know, the parents bring it in for dinner and it's crying and it is an exact mirror of reality. So, you know, people think that’s whimsical and like, no, it's actually just factual.
MENON: And very, very practical, you know, to have your baby right where you're working, you know, and be able to keep an eye on her. But your memoir is obviously as much about the people of Chez Panisse as the place itself. Beyond the bones of the restaurant, it was the staff that made Chez Panisse feel like one big, happy, extended family. Can you talk about the sense you had growing up that you were surrounded by these people who weren't technically family, but became like aunts and uncles and grandparents. Maybe the aunts and uncles and grandparents you didn't know you'd ever need, but couldn't do without?
SINGER: Yes, I mean, it definitely did have that feeling. You know, recently the restaurant celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and there was a very small gathering at my mom's house in her back garden just with the, many of the people who've been there from the very beginning. Steve Crumley, who was there from day one was the host until just a handful of years ago when he retired. It was, it was incredibly moving to be around these people, and also funny to hear some of the anecdotes about me in the restaurant. Steve Crumley told me that I, I threw myself on the floor once in front of the salad station and said that 'I want salmon roe! I need salmon roe!' He was like, 'you were about four or five years old and had been told that there was no more salmon roe on the menu that night.' But then it's like I'm hearing these stories and I'm sort of like, oh, I was a nightmare child. [laughs]. Like what could be worse than, like, a child so precocious that they're having a tantrum about salmon roe in the middle of the restaurant? But at the same time, you know, there were, I think overwhelmingly, these, these, I was not too much of a pain in the ass. And there was a very, just sort of a warm sense of, like you said, of family. I my mom always called the extended family of Chez Panisse, La Famille Panisse, as a kind of homage to the communities that the restaurants sort of, in a way modeled themselves after. These southern Provençal, French communities, these little fishing villages where everyone would know each other. And, and so there was also Mary Jo, who when I was at the restaurant, always had, like, little tray of raspberries in the freezer that she'd readied so that she could place them on my fingers and then she'd use a Sharpie and put little smiley faces on each of my finger pads. And we would tell little stories about all of these raspberry figures. And I really, I, you know, I'm so lucky to have had this extended family. I think it can be, it gave me a lot as a kid, but also as a cook.
MENON: Did it ever strike you that your childhood was, was different from from others, was unconventional? Did you ever want anything different at any point in your weakest moments?
SINGER: You know, it's funny. I mean, like, yes and no. On the one, of course I recognize that I had, that there was, I was experiencing something pretty rarefied. I mean, it didn't, not in a way that I felt, like, alienated from my peers. I was telling some friends yesterday who have a little boy, I was like, ‘you know, it’s funny, I just, I never, I don't think I was ever really around that many kids when I was growing up. I was always surrounded by adults.' I was like, ‘but I think I'm pretty decently socially adjusted.' But I do remember saying that, like, when I was 10, I said my best friend is this woman named Susie, who was one of my mom's friends and at the time was 50 and I meant it in earnest. You know, I had these, I had an incredible group of people around me who really took interest in me and were engaged in my life and took care of me in various ways. And I do think it was a very special way of growing up in the world. There were no playdates. I did not have, you know it's not that I didn't see peers or play sports or any of those things that, you know, a regular kid would do. But I, I just, it wasn't in a kind of, more conventional way.
MENON: Let's talk about Michele, the pizzaiolo, or pizza chef, that this except spotlights. You just paint this wonderful picture of this joyful, indulgent soul who sort of made time for you at his station even on the busiest night. And I have this sort of POV of someone being inside the oven - God forbid - but being inside the oven and then seeing your faces and seeing your little face aglow, you know. And him obviously lifting you up so you could, you could watch pizza get made. Tell us a little bit about what made the pizza station your favorite place to be.
SINGER: I mean, there are really so much that was alluring about the pizza station. It was not, it was not just that pizza is delicious, and I think everyone can agree on that. But it was also that there was a certain, it was a certain kind of cooking that we didn't really do at home very much, where I could have that experience of playing with dough. We didn’t bake generally very much or bake bread or anything like that. We'd open these tubs of dough and we would exhaust incredible, yeasty fumes. And it just smelled like nothing else. It was so intoxicating and it smelled like something was happening. You know, there was like a sense of action just in the smell. And then I would help Michele, sometimes at, towards the beginning of dinner when I was allowed to go behind the counter to spend some time with him, towards the beginning, we’d shape, I'd help him shape the balls of dough, and then we'd lay those out on a sheet pan and then cover them. And I would come back later and they would have expanded in size and grown really supple and, and then I would get to, you know, shape a pizza. And he taught me all of the particulars. The most important one, I still think, really, is everyone everywhere - unless they have a garlic allergy - should be applying a garlic oil to their pizza. Like, it is the most transformative ingredient. And it can be the base of any pizza. It's like very finely minced garlic in a big bowl of olive oil. And then you just spoon some of it onto your pizza there and spread it around. And that alone, I mean, you would make a delicious flatbread if you just put that in the oven.
MENON: I mean, I could, I could do with a slice or two now. So, in addition to, sort of, publishing books and essays and recipes, you've also co-founded Permanent Collection, which is a line of timeless objects, for the home and kitchen and garments. I mean, I look at, I look at Permanent Collection and I definitely see a shared sort of emphasis on craftsmanship and tactility and beauty and, and sort of the permanence of objects and sort of the memories they spark. But, how do you think that your childhood at Chez Panisse influenced your career path?
SINGER: You know, it's funny, it's like I, for a long time, I sort of thought of my career as an art historian. You know, I went to England, I did a PhD in art history and I write about art and culture still and, and still write art criticism and catalog essays and whatnot. And I always kind of thought of that as a separate strand from my work in food, which until recently I always kind of held a little bit at an arm's distance, I think, because of just the kind of anxiety of how that fit into my life, into my career. I really emphatically didn't want to be seen just as the inheritor of Chez Panisse. I mean, I don't even actually think it's mine to inherit. And I also wanted to find some space outside of this, immediate space of my mom's that she, that she very rightly colonized. And coming back, I think I realized how completely intertwined all these things were. You know, that all the things I did in my life, whether, like how I, what I considered when I entered the room, the kinds of objects I wanted to surround myself with, how I wanted to shop, how I wanted to cook, how I wanted to gather people together, were things that were direct lessons gleaned from growing up in Chez Panisse and with my mom. One of the things I most took away from my childhood was this, was just the generosity of the table. You know, to always feel open to more, you know, to having more people, to more people cooking together, to more farmers meeting artists, meeting, forming connections at the table, which is something that happened a lot. Chez Panisse was this, was this unbelievably alluring and magnetic nexus.
MENON: We're going to take a short break. But you're not going to want to go too far because we will return to speak with Fanny some more, alongside her mother, Alice Waters.
BREAK
MENON: Welcome back to My Family Recipe. Joining our guest, Fanny Singer, is now her mother, the iconic American chef, restauratress, author, and thought leader, Alice Waters. Alice, many, many congratulations on 50 years of Chez Panisse. I mean, just that kind of longevity is, is truly wild, but also that you have consistently stood for the values and principles that you have, whether it's championing sustainable agriculture or edible education, environmental stewardship. And in one way or another, you've transformed the way we all eat, and we are delighted to have you here.
ALICE WATERS: Thank you. Thank you so much.
MENON: Of course, standing side by side along the journey have been these wonderful employees of Chez Panisse, whom you lovingly refer to as La Famille Panisse. What does it take to make a restaurant into a family of sorts?
WATERS: You know, people always said to me, be sure you don't hire your friends, because if it doesn't work out, it's going to be a problem. And I always wanted to work with people I really liked. I wanted to work with people that I had more in common with than just a desire to cook. And that's how it began, really. And it never stopped. And I don't feel like, maybe there were a few times when I kind of worried, but not really. It's always been, you know, a pleasure for me to, to collaborate with, with people that I really admired.
MENON: Why do you think it's important for restaurants to have this familial focus? I mean, a family meal is obviously a storied tradition of many restaurants all over the world. I'm curious, what are, what a family meals like at Chez Panisse?
WATERS: Well, it's really important that we do sit down and eat together. And so we've always done that, either after the service at night, and between the first seating and the second seating, all the downstairs cooks go into the back office where there's a big table and they actually eat the food that we're serving to the customers. And I think that's terribly important, too. That it's not different food for the staff, but the staff has an opportunity to really taste and, and, and have an opinion about what we're cooking at the restaurant.
SINGER: We would just eat things that customers have been eating. And it's just, it's a way, I think, you know, because I've worked at other restaurants, where that was not the case. But at Chez Panisse, I do think it gave everyone who worked there a real sense of being valued, also. That they were, they were worthy of the same food. And it just immediately made people, you know, keener to work at the restaurant because it came with Chez Panisse food every day.
MENON: Fanny, what were some of your favorite treats coming out of the, coming out of the kitchen at Chez Panisse?
SINGER: Well, salmon roe, obviously, [laughs] as established by previous tantrums. Yeah, I mean, I always loved, I have to say it was, I mean it sounds like a line my mom fed me, but I always loved all the salads that they made in the salad station. And actually it's been such a pleasure when, my mom and I lived together for about 10 months of the pandemic, and we were getting the takeout food from Chez Panisse and opening, especially opening the salad boxes, was always like opening a little, a little jewel box. You know, like pomegranate studded rocket salad with hazelnuts or the most beautiful chicories with anchovy dressing. That to me has always had so much appeal. I mean, I just love salad. Needless to say.
MENON: Going back to Fanny and her palate as a young child, it seems like, it seems to me like she was always open to trying new foods as a kid. Alice, are there any memories that stand out about this? I mean, I know she wasn't thrilled about anchovies in her pasta, as long as she didn't see them go in, if they went in without her knowing, that was fine. What are some of your memories that, that stand out about her palate?
WATERS: She always had a great sense of smell. And I tried to cultivate that in planting things in the garden that were very aromatic, like Rose Geranium, and mint, and, lemon verbena, and so that she could explore out there and be excited by, by the herbs. And that was an intentional sort of Montessori philosophical idea, that our senses are our pathways into our minds, and that you need to be touching, and tasting, and smelling, and looking carefully and listening and food can stimulate the senses. And I just felt like the garden was a place where she could play, and explore, and be awakened by that experience.
MENON: Alice, what was it like, I'm curious, for you, reading Fanny's telling of her childhood?
WATERS: It was so great for me to read about something that happened in France and feel like there was this other person in the room who experienced something that I did not experience when I was there. And so it was like, a treasure hunt in a way. Like you just found out about the world that you thought you knew in a whole other dimension. It was great.
MENON: I'm also curious, do you two ever cook together for pleasure?
WATERS: Indeed. We do.
MENON: What have been some of your go-to dishes, for instance, when you spent those 10 long pandemic months together?
SINGER: Well, we had an essential three p.m. bread course -
WATERS: [laughs]
SINGER: - where we would meet, we would meet in the kitchen, having been on respective zooms or what, phone calls or endless work and we'd meet. It was like we would have this internal clock almost seemed exactly calibrated, where we both have this craving for some little carbohydrate and we would make garlic bread with the beautiful whole wheat Edible Schoolyard loaf that Acme makes. And we would just slice a couple slices of it, then toast it, and rub it with garlic and douse an olive oil. That was the thing, that we all, that always, sort of, sustained us. But we had a few other things. We had, we had what I call our weird green pasta.
WATERS: [laughs]
SINGER: Which we'd make at least once a week. Which was like every green that was in the fridge that we needed. Do a sauté, and toss with of tons of garlic and a little chili, and then usually a whole wheat or whole grain pasta of some sort. Those are some of our standards. But we love to cook together. It was actually really great because we, I have been cooking now on my own since I was about 18, and, and it's like coming back into the fold in this very, in a much more prolonged period of time over those 10 months. You know, we really got to see the ways in which we cook differently and also the ways in which our cooking is so much from the same source. And, and my mom now always says, like I add, lemon zest always to things because of you.
WATERS: [laughs] It's true, it’s true.
MENON: I guess in some sense, you've been cooking together for a really long time. And thinking back on the chapter around the coming home pasta and, you know, you coming back from an extended period away, etc, and your mum sort of hurriedly putting together this pasta that would reorient you, and you would be tasked with running out into the garden and picking some herbs and sort of making a selection. So in some sense, you've been, you've been cooking together for a very long time.
WATERS: It's true. And Fanny always, you know, put the eggs in the pan, whatever it was, when she was a little girl. I mean, I'd always give her a little job and I think she felt very comfortable in the kitchen. I've never understood why we don't really invite young children to help cook. Maybe it's just shelling the peas. When I read the book, and Fanny talked about the peas that I would cook for her when she came home from school. And, I've always made an effort to, to do that for her because it was a moment that she was hungry and I could just steam the peas in the springtime, put a little olive oil on them. And when she wrote the book she said, I know now that my mom really loved me. That she would shell that many peas for me in the afternoon when I came home from school. And it was so gratifying to read that it really brought tears to my eyes.
SINGER: I love, in, in that chapter, I make a note of the fact that my mom would send my grandfather to pick me up because she was busy shelling peas, not because she was busy doing something else, but because she was busy engaged in preparing something that would be ready when I was home. So, you know, I just, I, especially now that I know how much effort it takes - I mean, pleasant effort I will add - that how much effort it does take to shell peas, that that is a real act of love.
MENON: Thank you so much for listening to My Family Recipe. If you've enjoyed this episode, give us a follow wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to leave us a rating and review so we know just what you think of our delicious stories. Special thanks for this episode to Fanny Singer and Alice Waters. You can find Fanny’s essay in our show notes. My Family Recipe is produced by Dylan Heuer and Hannah Fordin. Our Julia Child Foundation fellow is Kelly Spivey and our audio engineer is Matt Patterson. Coral Lee is Food52 Podcast Network’s producer. Our theme song is Bittoral by Aeronaut. This show is a collaboration between Food52 and Heritage Radio Network. There's much more to read and listen to. Find even more stories at Food52.com and HeritageRadioNetwork.org.
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