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Waters: Unwilling to make nice about lettuce she despises.
Her book
Spoon Fed isn't due to drop till April 15, but the memoir by
New York Times staffer Kim Severson (a former
Chron food writer) is already generating insider buzz. The book's vignettes are full of canny insights ― like this telling one about Alice Waters and lettuce. Severson recalls conducting a double interview with Waters and mentor-of-sorts
Marion Cunningham, when the subject of iceberg came up.
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Cunningham had a fondness for it. Alice? Not so much, even to the point of offending someone she considered a dear old friend. After some sticky verbal sparring about the value (or lack) of iceberg, Severson suggests making nice. "I wonder aloud if [Alice] could just maybe make an exception for her friend. That maybe she could see that someone's taste for something could be valid, even if it didn't match hers."
Nice try. In the end, after the interview wrapped, Waters sent Cunningham a present of 15 little French lettuces. "They had the same watery iceberg crunch but with a seasonal and organic aesthetic," Severson writes. Cunningham reportedly thanked Waters for them, then ― behind her back ― dissed them. Oh, snap!
