Amelia Telč faced one of the hardest tests of her career while interviewing to be the executive chef of Bar Panisse in Berkeley, the new sibling restaurant to Alice Waters’ legendary Chez Panisse. For the third interview, Telč, who came up through Mission Chinese Food in New York City and Tartine in San Francisco, was to prepare a menu for the hiring committee. Chez being Chez, a green salad was mandatory — a little like participating in a piano contest judged by Beethoven. She lined her vinaigrette experiments in a row, weighing the sharpness of one against the brightness of another, before finding her special touch: a bit of verjus. When it came time to present, she skipped dessert, and, as a show of confidence, served the salad as the finisher.
After eating the garden salad ($14) at Bar Panisse a couple of weeks ago, I understood why she got the job.
I was blown away by its elemental simplicity — lettuces with a vinaigrette of shallots, olive oil and potent Banyuls wine vinegar — and quiet complexity. The technique and practice that it took to strike that balance, to dress it so immaculately, to make the familiar fresh, was encoded onto every leaf. “The difference between a great salad from a good one — a great one is alive,” Waters said in “Alice Waters and Chez Panisse” by Thomas McNamee, and this salad pulsed with life.
I don’t know if eating locally grown food is the fix-all for the world’s ills, but a salad like that makes the most convincing case for the Chez Panisse promise: Fidelity to ingredients can and does yield irrefutably tasty results…