Alice Waters: I was looking at a lot of different places in Berkeley with my friend — my good friend Tom Letty — who was so excited about the idea of my opening a restaurant. He thought it was the greatest idea because he had eaten my food, and we had been such good friends, and he knew that this was my passion. So we went to places that were sort of a little too dark or too big. And then we saw this house on Shattuck Avenue that was a plumbing shop. It was just a two-story stucco house, but it was commercially sound. And I said, “Ah! It could be in a house.” So it could be just like I was serving my friends at home.