Chez Coincidence

When something random and interesting catches my eye, I usually pay attention (like when I Googled "New York thin" this week and found garancedore.fr, my new favorite blog and girlfriend-blog to a long-time favorite of mine, thesartorialist.com. I didn't know better.).

Whilst searching for the 2012 Nikki McClure calendar to order, I found the sweetest little web presence for a brick-and-mortar book shop - Wessel and Lieberman Booksellers - a serious bookseller for serious collectors. They carried the calendar (I bought the last one), yes, but featured on their homepage was a book called Menus for Chez Panisse.

source: WLBooks.com

The booksellers' blog had pictures of these handmade, letterpressed menus from Berkeley's premier, original-locavore restaurant, each one a work of art. I thought, "My, that's a gorgeous book... What would I do with it?... It's not really a cookbook... No, I don't need it... But it's so lovely..." I didn't end up buying it.

source: WLBooks.com

But, when something random and interesting catches my eye A SECOND TIME within a week, well then I think that's a clear signal from the universe - this book is looking for me. Or perhaps I'm meant to eat at Chez Panisse sometime in the very near future? (I went there, by myself, for a birthday lunch in October of 2001; it's just around the corner from campus. I ordered a half-bottle of champagne that I didn't finish and a salad. I didn't know better.)

A recent New Yorker article dissertationally entitled, Sex, Figs, Italics: A Visual History of Menus mentions, again, the menus of Chez Panisse, this time as featured in Taschen's new tome, Menu Design in America: 1850-1985.

source: NewYorker.com

From this article: "...an Arts-and-Crafts-inspired menu from Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse, sensual as anything: a broad green fig leaf with two fat pendant fruits. Feminism!"