Chez Panisse Legend Alice Waters Opens First Restaurant in Los Angeles This Fall

Legendary chef Alice Waters is opening a restaurant in Los Angeles soon. The project will be Waters’ first new restaurant in decades, after opening the seminal Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse.

While Waters’ new restaurant does not yet have a name, Eater has confirmed that it will land at the Hammer Museum, part of UCLA’s sprawling campus in the Westwood neighborhood. Waters won’t be alone in the opening either. Chef and longtime food writer David Tanis is set to join the team, along with Jesse McBride (an operations lead who previously worked at hospitality spaces like Chateau Marmont and the Standard group of hotels), plus Oliver Monday who will serve as the restaurant’s primary forager. In true Waters fashion, reps for the Hammer say, the restaurant will “highlight wholesome foods sourced from local farms dedicated to responsible and regenerative farming practices.”

That all sounds like something right up Waters’ alley. Her restaurant Chez Panisse has been held up for half a century as a bastion of sourcing, quality, and California bounty, relying on hyper-seasonal produce and a “less is more approach” to its menu. Chez Panisse, and Waters, are often held as pinnacles of the so-called Slow Food movement that prizes local food cultures and seasonal ingredients above all.

There is no formal opening date, let alone a menu or finished perspective beyond “California” yet, but reps for the Hammer have confirmed that the project will open in the fall of this year. One final note: A previous version of this story said that the restaurant would be Waters’ first since opening Chez Panisse; Waters was a co-owner in Cafe Fanny, which opened in 1984 but has since closed.

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