Chef, Restaurateur, Activist & Author, Alice Waters Visits Tanya's Table This Week. Alice Waters is an American chef, restaurateur, activist and author. She is the owner of Chez Panisse, a Berkeley, California restaurant famous for its organic, locally grown ingredients and for pioneering California cuisine.Waters has written Chez Panisse Cooking (with Paul Bertolli), The Art of Simple Food I and II, and 40 Years of Chez Panisse. Her memoir, Coming to my Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook was published in September 2017.Waters created the Chez Panisse Foundation in 1996, and the Edible Schoolyard program at the Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, California. She is a national public policy advocate for school lunch reform and universal access to healthy, organic foods. Her influence in the fields of organic foods and nutrition is typified by Michelle Obama's White House organic vegetable garden.