Alice Waters Quotes

He understands that creating a meal means creating your own reality ...

— Alice Waters

The problem with living in a fast-food nation is that we expect food to be cheap.

— Alice Waters

“We've been so disconnected agriculturally and culturally from food. We spend more time on dieting than on cooking.”

— Alice Waters

My mother made a lot of things because she thought they'd be healthy for us. There were some very unfortunate experiences with whole wheat bread and bananas. I always tried to get rid of that sandwich and eat one of my friends' lunches.

— Alice Waters

“If I've gone to the market on Saturday, and I go another time on Tuesday, then I'm really prepared. I can cook a little piece of fish; I can wilt some greens with garlic; I can slice tomatoes and put a little olive oil on. It's effortless.”

— Alice Waters

“The biggest thing you can do is understand that every time you're going to the grocery store, you're voting with your dollars. Support your farmers' market. Support local food. Really learn to cook.”

— Alice Waters

“I think America's food culture is embedded in fast-food culture. And the real question that we have is: How are we going to teach slow-food values in a fast-food world? Of course, it's very, very difficult to do, especially when children have grown up eating fast food and the values that go with that.”

— Alice Waters

“My kitchen has a wood-burning oven, a large worktable, and windows all around, including one above the sink. I think whoever is washing the dishes needs to have a lot of beauty around.”

— Alice Waters

“It's around the table and in the preparation of food that we learn about ourselves and about the world.”

— Alice Waters

“The act of eating is very political. You buy from the right people, you support the right network of farmers and suppliers who care about the land and what they put in the food.”

— Alice Waters

I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.

— Alice Waters

“I'm an optimist. I'm hopeful.”

— Alice Waters

Whenever I want to know how to cook something, I can't ask one chef - I have to ask six.

— Alice Waters

“I can remember the three restaurant experiences of my childhood. All I wanted to do on my birthday was to go to the Automat in New York ... but I don't know if you consider that a real restaurant.”

— Alice Waters

“If we don't preserve the natural resources, you aren't going to have a sustainable society. This is not something for Chez Panisse and the elite of San Francisco. It's for everyone.”

— Alice Waters

“I believe there should be breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack, all for free and for every child that goes to school. And all food that is good, clean and fair.”

— Alice Waters

“I think if you buy from people who are taking care of the land, you're supporting the future of this country.”

— Alice Waters

“Buy foods from nearby farms and have that food served in the cafeteria.”

— Alice Waters

“My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment.”

— Alice Waters

Americans don't have deep gastronomic roots. They wanted to get away from the cultures of Europe or wherever they came from. We stirred up that melting pot pretty quickly.

— Alice Waters

“I just hope Americans come to understand that food isn't something to be manipulated by our teeth and shoved down our gullet, that it's our spiritual and physical nourishment and important to our well-being as a nation.”

— Alice Waters

“When I first went to Paris in 1965, I fell in love with the small, family-owned restaurants that existed everywhere then, as well as the markets and the French obsession with buying fresh food, often twice a day.”

— Alice Waters

“I feel it is an obligation to help people understand the relation of food to agriculture and the relationship of food to culture.”

— Alice Waters

I am an optimist of the first order.

— Alice Waters

“I love those tiny little onions in the spring that are so small they're almost like a little chive.”

— Alice Waters

I think health is the outcome of finding a balance and some satisfaction at the table.

— Alice Waters

“I used to think that I wanted to be a hat maker, but I don't think that would have worked out.”

— Alice Waters

In countries around the world, people spend more money on food because they know how precious it is.

— Alice Waters

“Usually, cheap food is not nutritious. You're feeding people, but you're not really feeding people something that is good for them.”

— Alice Waters

When you don't have much money, cooking can be incredibly reassuring. You feel like you're doing meaningful work.

— Alice Waters

When you have good ingredients, cooking doesn't require a lot of instruction because you can never go very wrong.

— Alice Waters

I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism of an edible landscape at the White House. I think it says everything about stewardship of the land and about the nourishment of a nation.

— Alice Waters

“I think you have to plan ahead. When I go to the market on a Saturday, and I'm buying for family and friends, I'm thinking about what I'm going to eat on the weekend but also about what I'm going to make for the following week.”

— Alice Waters

“We need to have a course in school that teaches about ecology and gastronomy. I could imagine that all children could eat at school for free and that the cafeteria would become part of the school's curriculum.”

— Alice Waters

“English food writer Elizabeth David, cook and author Richard Olney and the owner of Domaine Tempier Lulu Peyraud have all really inspired the way I think about food.”

— Alice Waters

Everything tastes better with butter. Meat that has fat in it is tender in a certain way, flavorful in a certain way. It's hard to deny the flavor quotient there.

— Alice Waters

“Hard-boiled eggs are wonderful when they're really done right. I bring the water to a boil, and then I put in the eggs. And then I boil them for - well, it depends on the size of the egg - maybe eight minutes.”

— Alice Waters

“Good food is a right, not a privilege. It brings children into a positive relationship with their health, community and environment.”

— Alice Waters

I am confident that we will see a growing consensus about the most effective way to transform food in America: building a real, sustainable and free school-lunch program.

— Alice Waters

“Go to the farmers market and buy food there. You'll get something that's delicious. It's discouraging that this seems like such an elitist thing. It's not. It's just that we have to pay the real cost of food. People have to understand that cheap food has been subsidized. We have to realize that it's important to pay farmers up front, because they are taking care of the land.”

— Alice Waters

“How we eat can change the world”

— Alice Waters

Always explore your garden and go to the market before you decide what cook.

— Alice Waters

“Our full humanity is contingent on our hospitality; we can be complete only when we are giving something away; when we sit at the table and pass the peas to the person next to us we see that person in a whole new way.”

— Alice Waters

“Good food depends almost entirely on good ingredients.”

— Alice Waters

People cooked with a certain integrity before fast food, 50 or 60 years ago. When the cheap food arrived, and we didn't have the education and deep cultural roots to hold on, we got swept away by fast, cheap and easy.

— Alice Waters

“It is a fundamental fact that no cook, however creative and capable, can produce a dish of a quality any higher than that of its raw ingredients.”

— Alice Waters

“We can't think narrowly. We have to think in the biggest possible way.”

— Alice Waters

“Change the food in the schools and we can influence how children think. Change the curriculum and teach them how to garden and how to cook and we can show that growing food and cooking and eating together give lasting richness, meaning, and beauty to our lives.”

— Alice Waters

“The things most worth wanting are not available everywhere all the time.”

— Alice Waters

I think the biggest impediment to fixing the food system in the United States is that we expect food to be cheap. We want to by other things with our money. We're so disconnected from agriculture - from the culture in agriculture.

— Alice Waters