Alice Waters: The food was really a very big surprise because I just was afraid of things that I didn’t know about. And yet, in the context of a country that really cared so much about how people ate and what people ate, I was drawn into it. You know, like the aroma of the bakery. You go in and you taste that warm baguette. And then you go in the next day, and you want that same baguette. It was a seduction, in a way. It was like, just seeing a beautiful place setting, seeing all of the fruits, the vegetables, that were going to be on the menu displayed in the front of the restaurants to bring you into that experience. And I was just drawn in.
I was going to school, and every day, I walked from my little apartment up the market street to get to the university. And I couldn’t believe the beauty of the vegetables — the lettuces, the colors. And it was always changing because it changed with the seasons. It even changed from a morning market to an afternoon market because the farmers would bring in different things in the evening. And I guess the aliveness of the food was irresistible.