In Coming to My Senses Alice Waters retraces the circuitous route and tumultuous times that led her to found America's most influential restaurant, Chez Panisse at 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA.  With supreme honesty, she recounts the experiences that emboldened her to find her own voice as a cook in the face of a prevailing food culture that was embracing convenience and uniformity.  

Moving from a repressive suburban upbringing in New Jersey to Berekely, California, in 1964, at the height of the Free Speech Movement and campus unrest, Alice was drawn into a bohemian circle of charismatic figures whose views on design, politics, film and food would ultimately inform the principles on which Chez Panisse was founded.

Skilfully combining stories, recipes, photographs, and letters, Coming to My Sensesis at once a deeply personal and a modestly understated book. It is a quietly revealing look at one woman’s evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist who has achieved social and political change on a global level through the common bond of food.