Under the Campanile, Chez Panisse celebrates 30 years

Peg Skorpinski photo

29 August 2001 |

Seated at tables of 50 set beneath the Campanile, more than 500 guests and 200 volunteers celebrated Chez Panisse’s 30th anniversary at a seven and a half-hour extravaganza Sunday, Aug. 26.

The event was a fundraiser for the Chez Panisse Foundation — founded by restaurateur and Berkeley alumna Alice Waters, at right with fresh greens, and headed by Molly Fraker, wife of Harrison Fraker, dean of the College of Environmental Design.

Martha Stewart, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Michael Tilson Thomas were among the celebrity guests.

Waters and her famous North Berkeley restaurant were fêted with official proclamations, from Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean and California Senator Barbara Boxer, and original compositions. Dario Cecchini, a butcher from Panzano, Italy, got a standing ovation for his quarter-hour recitation, in Italian, of a portion of Dante’s “Inferno.”