The Other Critics

Patricia Unterman Gives Her Stamp of Approval to the New Chez Panisse Regime

Patty U. gives us a review today of two dinners she’s had in the last six months at the downstairs restaurant at Chez Panisse, providing some insight into the work being done under the recently appointed co-chef team of Jerome Waag and Cal Paternell. And Patty has a long perspective on this, having eaten there many times in the last 30+ years, and knowing well the styles of former chefs Jean-Pierre Moullé (who’d been there 37 years) and David Tanis. She says that a meal she had from Waag back in August “could have been cooked by JP [Moullé] himself,” and she was relieved. But she has higher praise for Paternell, saying that a January Friday dinner she had by him “surprised me with its creativity,” and gushing, “Peternell’s food possessed that transcendent Chez succulence and brightness but tasted new and rather poetic with its overlay of exotic if totally integrated scent. Charming!” [Unterman on Food]

Patricia Unterman Gives Her Stamp of Approval to the New Chez Panisse Regime