The Literary Cellar: Menus for Chez Panisse

The special occasion book you’ll come back to time and again.

You know that quote “Not all who wander are lost”? Why does that apply double for exploring cute bookshops?

My husband

Enrico Banson

and I love to explore the bookstores up and down Piedmont Avenue in Oakland (he is constantly reading more than one book at a time, so a birthday book is always included in the gift haul). On his birthday this year, we wandered into one such bookstore, where he found himself knee deep in a Fellini biography while I was caught up in an entirely different book that appealed to my professional interests.

Menus for Chez Panisse is less of a cookbook or wine pairing guide than it is a celebration of the menu design and special events held within the copper-reflected walls of Berkeley’s premier food institution. Lithograph expert Patricia Curtan started working in the back of house at Chez Panisse, but became an invaluable branding asset for the restaurant with her handcrafted and bespoke menus. As Curtan transitioned from life in the kitchen to life as a stay-at-home mother, the menus took on more of a role in her professional life. 

And, of course, the menus are beautiful. Menus for Chez Panisse is a compilation of some favorite special events menus from over the years, from a design perspective or for another reason. Bastille Day celebrations are used to cram as much garlic onto a menu as possible, New Year’s Eve celebrations almost always feature caviar the first course, and there are many celebrities from the food and wine world (and beyond) whose milestone dinners are fondly remembered through their menus, all painstakingly designed and handmade by Curtan herself.

My idea of coziness. A cup of coffee, a great view, and all the Chez Panisse reading material.

This is the perfect easy read on a slow Sunday morning with a cup of coffee in hand and a great record playing in the background. With an institution like Chez Panisse, there’s so much history to uncover that it feels almost mythological, especially considering its reputation for starting the slow food movement and the prominence of farm-to-table fine dining. Just like everything Chez, the end result is a lot more human and very unique - menus are specially crafted to celebrate former employees and “friends of the family” as much as they honor luminaries like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Richard Olney, and Julia Child. Both the menus themselves and the design elements reference something personal about the occasion or the guest of honor - John Cage loved to write mesostic poems, and so the format of the menu reads as one, too. 

For the fun dishes and wine pairings listed on over 100 menus, each individual menu truly represents a moment that reflects the role of food in people’s lives. A menu marked October 17, 1989 comes with a note explaining that the regional Mexican chef whose food was to be cooked at Chez Panisse that night never made it to the dinner because she got stuck in San Francisco as a result of the Loma Prieta earthquake. M.F.K. Fisher, the world-renowned food journalist, is written about with fondness as Curtan recalled celebrating one of Fisher’s last meals at Chez Panisse. The ideal pairing of apricots and Sauternes is touched on, yes, but it’s the stories that the menus represent - in addition to their intentional and beautiful design - that mark the lifetime of a restaurant as much as the craft of an artist’s lifetime.