30 Best Restaurants in America

Photo by: Credit: Aya Brackett

15) Chez Panisse, Berkeley, Calif.
Celebrating more than 40 years in business and still going strong, Chez Panisse was instrumental in changing the American food scene; before this restaurant, practically nobody in America served only fresh, local foods and wrote menus daily, according to the season. Alice Waters, an organic-living pioneer, is also the founder of The Edible Schoolyard Project. It has become ... more 

Photo by: Credit: Aya Brackett

15) Chez Panisse, Berkeley, Calif.
Celebrating more than 40 years in business and still going strong, Chez Panisse was instrumental in changing the American food scene; before this restaurant, practically nobody in America served only fresh, local foods and wrote menus daily, according to the season. Alice Waters, an organic-living pioneer, is also the founder of The Edible Schoolyard Project. It has become fashionable to criticize this culinary icon as irrelevant or pretentious, but the truth is that her restaurant's food is still superb, both in the one-menu-a-night downstairs restaurant and the lively, diversified upstairs Café.

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