Bar Panisse, a new sibling restaurant to Berkeley institution Chez Panisse, has drawn large crowds, with wait times up to two hours during its first month.The kitchen is led by chef Amelia Telč, formerly of Mission Chinese Food and Tartine.Standout dishes include roast chicken and a simple green salad.
Amelia Telč faced one of the hardest tests of her career while interviewing to the be the executive chef of Bar Panisse in Berkeley, the new sibling restaurant to Alice Waters’ legendary Chez Panisse. For the third interview, Telč, who came up through Mission Chinese Food in New York City and Tartine in San Francisco, was to prepare a menu for the hiring committee. Chez being Chez, a green salad was mandatory — a little like participating in a piano contest judged by Beethoven. She lined her vinaigrette experiments in a row, weighing the sharpness of one against the brightness of another, before finding her special touch: a bit of verjus. When it came time to present, she skipped dessert, and, as a show of confidence, served the salad as the finisher.
After eating the garden salad ($14) at Bar Panisse a couple of weeks ago, I understood why she got the job.
I was blown away by its elemental simplicity — lettuces with a vinaigrette of shallots, olive oil and potent Banyuls wine vinegar — and quiet complexity. The technique and practice that it took to strike that balance, to dress it so immaculately, to make the familiar fresh, was encoded onto every leaf. “The difference between a great salad from a good one — a great one is alive,” Waters said in “Alice Waters and Chez Panisse” by Thomas McNamee, and this salad pulsed with life.
Article continues below this ad
Chef Amelia Telč prepares dishes at Bar Panisse, which opened to much anticipation in December.
Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
The simple green salad at Bar Panisse wowed critic Cesar Hernandez.
Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
I don’t know if eating locally grown food is the fix-all for the world’s ills, but a salad like that makes the most convincing case for the Chez Panisse promise: Fidelity to ingredients can and does yield irrefutably tasty results.
Chez Panisse is one of the most consequential American restaurants, and Waters among the world’s most influential restaurateurs. She was central in establishing Californian and New American cuisine, and fueled the organic produce, farm-to-table and Slow Food movements. Without Waters, “how chefs cook, the look of restaurants, and the way in which food businesses talk about their social and environmental responsibilities are all inconceivable,” argues historian Paul Freedman in “10 Restaurants that Changed America.” Chez Panisse’s outsize influence on sourcing and cooking has become like oxygen at most restaurants. I confess: My visits to Chez Panisse have never felt exhilarating. The food downstairs was adequately prepared if a bit unexpressive, while the cooking at the café was bare to the point of mundane.
San Francisco Chronicle Logo
Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.
Add Preferred Source
Bar Panisse isn’t flawless, but it shows the kind of promise and heart that I had always hoped to experience at Chez.
Article continues below this ad
Located next door to Chez Panisse, Bar Panisse is Alice Waters’ third-ever restaurant in the Bay Area, the second being the now-closed Café Fanny. Bar Panisse replaced Bar César, whose 23-year run ended in 2022, when Chez Panisse, which owns the building, did not renew the tapas bar’s lease; the closure sparked intense outcry from its loyal patrons.
Waters and her partners — a nine-member board of directors established in 1975 called Pagnol et Cie — held out any sort of “Panisse” brand expansion for nearly 55 years. The motivation for Bar Panisse, according to a statement from the board, appears to be, at least in part, financial. “During the pandemic years it became apparent how vulnerable small restaurants such as Chez Panisse are and how difficult it was to get through that turn of events,” the board said in a statement. “That time coincided with the lease renewal and we decided that it would be prudent to take over the space ourselves in order to bolster the economic viability of the cafe and restaurant.”
The managing board said it doesn’t view the bar as a “brand extension,” as “Alice has never had those desires or ambitions.”
But that undersells the power of the “Panisse” name. During its opening month, Bar Panisse was besieged by patrons, some of whom waited up to two hours; the restaurant does not accept reservations.
While wait times now are long, it’s possible to walk in after 8 p.m., when most of Berkeley gets ready for bed, and score a table with ease. Inside, the minimalist dining room is styled with glossy wood paneling that looks like secret cabinets. The place has the raucous energy of a Paris wine bar, in that it’s nearly always throbbing with diners over 30 (save for sporadic college students): elder Berkeleyites welcoming the restaurant to the neighborhood, middle-aged couples tearing into gougères and daiquiri-sipping male suitors at the bar.
Article continues below this ad
A busy weekend service commences at Bar Panisse.
Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
Leading the kitchen is Telč, who most recently was running Half Hitch, her popup at Casino in Bodega Bay that offered an eclectic mix of French baked goods, Roman street food and occasionally noodles. Telč called Bar Panisse a “dream project,” and said that Chez Panisse held “a lot of space in my mind.” She regularly encountered cooks with a Chez background who would regale her with tales of “the most beautiful produce,” and, most fantastical of all, a “40-hour work week.”
According to Telč, her cooking was “super informed” by Chez throughout her career, despite her exposure to flavor-blasted cooking under Danny Bowien at Mission Chinese and Ignacio Mattos at the now-closed Isa in New York. Her menus at Bar Panisse are more subdued and in line with the Chez house style — a polymer of French, Italian, Mediterranean, Californian and New American cuisine, but she maintains that she has creative freedom. “I don’t submit a menu for review before we run them,” she said.
The menu has a handful of standbys, such as anchovies and butter beans, but heavier plates like roast chicken change weekly. As the seasons unfurl, Telč hopes to introduce dishes like filled squash blossom riffing on spring rolls and maybe a tostada, which has become a fixture at peer bar-restaurants like Snail Bar in Oakland and Goodtime Bar in San Jose. These ideas sound enticing, particularly because, at Bar Panisse’s most underwhelming, the food showed too much restraint and, occasionally, was poorly executed: A pork belly ($28) special had elastic chew, while the pavlova ($15) bonded to my molars immediately. A ruddy lamb porterhouse ($30) was small and bland. Other dishes marked a slight improvement such as crunchy, skin-on potatoes ($13) accompanied by thick hazelnut romesco that tasted like a savory Nutella and a supple scallop crudo ($30) garnished in wasabi that was fried, turning down its nose-stinging sharpness and heightening its vegetal sweetness.
Creamy butter beans, here topped with broccolini, are a staple at Bar Panisse.
Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
Halibut with aioli toast was one of the recent seasonal larger plates.
Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
Smashed potatoes come with thick hazelnut romesco.
Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
Shrimp and salad at Bar Panisse.
Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
Gougères are always on the menu, served with mustard and pickles.
Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
But when the kitchen enters a flowstate, the hits — like that fateful salad — are plentiful. A winter visit produced lovely dumplings filled with house-made sheep’s milk ricotta ($24) in a mushroom brodo so rich in umami that I was certain it contained MSG. It had none, Telč confirmed; its savor was earned from dried porcinis and Parmesan rinds. Tinned anchovies ($9) showed artful poise thanks to a vinaigrette and pippara peppers, which scaled down saltiness. Steelhead trout ($35) had a crackling skin and melty, ruffled flesh, complemented by a salad of shaved fennel and in-season citrus: some sweet, some sour, some bitter.
Article continues below this ad
The biggest slam dunk was the roasted chicken lashed with salsa verde and served with chicken stock-infused croutons and beet greens ($32). It was immensely tender and dripping with schmaltz. To make it, the cooks debone whole birds, salt them, then turn them into roulades; the extra prep work is necessitated by the tiny kitchen space.
The chicken, the salad, the anchovies show the unique potential of Bar Panisse: a 55-year-old ethos with the current fascinations of the dining public. I left Bar Panisse wondering if that’s how Chez felt in its earliest days, when it was young, not yet proven but unmistakenly passionate.
Eva Edgren and Laura Tsunoda dine at Bar Panisse on a bustling Saturday evening.
Adahlia Cole/For the S.F. Chronicle
Bar Panisse
1515 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. barpanisse.com
Article continues below this ad
Hours: 5-10 p.m. Thursday-Monday.
Accessibility: Slight incline by entrance. All on one floor. Wheelchair accessible tables.
Meal for two, without drinks: $65-$100
What to order: roast chicken ($32), anchovies ($9).
Meat-free options: gougères ($6), green salad ($13), potatoes ($13), ricotta dumplings ($24).
Best practices: Try visiting on a Monday.