Alice Waters: A Revolutionary Reinterpretation of the Classic School Lunch
Food with Mark Bittman
Sweetness and Light
4.9 • 947 Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The chef and activist talks to Kate and Mark about how school lunches have changed over the years—and how they haven't, why (and how) there shouldn't be a "middle man" when schools purchase food for lunches; the "most important people in this country"—teachers and farmers; and how we can realistically make her longstanding vision for kids' relationship with food a reality.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to food. I'm Kate Bitman, and we are so glad that you're here with us. |
| 0:07.1 | If you want more, remember to check us out online at bitmanproject.com. |
| 0:11.9 | We've got more than 1,500 recipes with new ones added daily, plus some really wonderful food writing from some really wonderful food writers and recommendations for products |
| 0:22.4 | and more. Bitmanproject.com. And as always, email us with any questions or feedback at |
| 0:28.9 | food at markbitman.com. Kate and I are happy to welcome back to the podcast, the incomparable Alice Waters, |
| 0:52.9 | to talk mostly about her latest book, A School Lunch Revolution, which came out this month. |
| 0:58.3 | But more on that in a sec. |
| 1:00.5 | I'm not going to read you the standard wiki entry on Alice or get into her profoundly important career, |
| 1:06.5 | which has literally affected the way Americans think about food. |
| 1:10.2 | I'll just tell you the two most |
| 1:11.4 | important things she said to me in the 30 years or so in which I've known her. When Alice |
| 1:16.7 | started Sheepinise, she and her crew asked farmers for what the restaurant needed to execute the menu. |
| 1:23.6 | Within years, and especially with the encouragement and partnership of the farm that became |
| 1:28.9 | and remains the most important to Chez Panisse, that of Bob Carnard, the restaurant began to buy |
| 1:35.4 | what the farm was growing. Think about that. Not what the restaurant thought it needed, |
| 1:41.7 | but what was the best available. And not to make this about me, but it harkens to |
| 1:48.1 | some of my thinking around how to cook everything when I was putting it together 30 years ago. |
| 1:53.4 | I wanted to do a cookbook that didn't say to people, go to the market and buy these things |
| 1:59.0 | so you can make this recipe. I wanted to encourage people to go to the market and buy these things so you can make this recipe. |
| 2:10.5 | I wanted to encourage people to go to the market, buy what looked good, and then give them a resource to find a great way to cook what they found. |
| 2:15.5 | This is, forgive my boldness, the right way to think about cooking. |
| 2:19.3 | And it brings me to the second and most important thing Alice ever said to me, buy great ingredients and don't fuck them up. With that, we'll get into our |
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