This time we picked Chez Panisse to go for my birthday dinner. I’ve always wanted to go there ever since I heard about it at Samin Nosrat‘s show on Netflix – Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Nevertheless, I’ve heard about Chez Panisse from colleagues, friends, and restaurants I’ve visited previously. However, up until now I’ve never been able to get a table for a special occasion, and I was pretty excited that we were getting to go there finally, even though we only got reservations at the cafe upstairs.

Chez Panisse – a farm-to-table restaurant, opened up in 1971 to propel the slow-food movement where a lot of emphasis is given to simplicity and elevating the ingredients in the food. The chef brought ingredients and flavors from different parts of the world to marry them together in a French cooking style while really accentuating the produce, and bring out flavors that came out from stitching different ingredients together.

The restaurant is on Shattuck Ave, Berkeley in a Victorian style home. The cafe on top has a cute and intimate setting serving a daily rotating menu. We arrived a few minutes late and they were setting another table that they arranged for us, so we got a glass of wine each while we waited. I felt that the cafe itself felt a bit more laidback where people came to eat on after a long regular weekday, and the ambience was very comforting and genuine.

Our table was on a closed patio overlooking Shattuck Avenue and the air from the windows kept the area somewhat cool. We started off with a citrus salad accompanied with some crusted goat-cheese. The salad was well seasoned, light on the palette and mildly acidic. The goat-cheese added body to the bite. It is interesting to note that the chef decided to plate the goat-cheese and salad separately as if one was a condiment for the other. I liked this plating arrangement a lot better as it allowed me to measure each bite per my taste.

I ordered the seasonal vegetables and beans in a curry sauce served with rice and raita made of mint and heirloom tomatoes. While this was the vegetarian selection of the day, it certainly piqued my attention because these flavors are very south-east asian with raita being very symbolic of Indian cuisine. All this while, I’d thought of Chez Panisse to be serving French cuisine, instead they embodied global flavors prepared in a French inspired cooking style that gives a lot of importance to the ingredients themselves.

Overall, I felt very satisfied with the dish. It tasted very familiar and decadent. The bites were big and had a lot of texture coming from the vegetables and the beans. The raita and tomatoes added to the acidity of the dish and helped balance out the bite well. Clearly, I licked it all up!

We got two desserts – a plum galette with amaretto ice cream, and a sorbet (courtesy restaurant). The crust on the galette was fantastic – it had the right sugar and gluten that made the bite very rich. However, the fruit part of the galette was a bit too acidic. The plum had a good bit of tartness, and the ice cream didn’t balance it out enough. I would have liked another ingredient to complement the plum – green apple perhaps.

I want to say Chez Panisse did not live up to the expectations – in a good way. I was expecting an exquisite French restaurant that focused on making everything look proper. Chez Panisse ended up being this convivial, family style, weekday staple that embraced bringing out the basic components of food. The restaurant portion might still have the flamboyance I expected, but I do believe that the chef focused on ingredients and flavors more than elaborate plating techniques, or complex treatment of ingredients. I hope to go back here to try one of their weekday menus on a casual evening trip to Berkeley.