Where Cooking is Culture

05.17.07

Alice Waters has been dreaming about a cooking school for more than 30 years. I know this because I was one of a group (as I remember Marion Cunningham, Cecilia Chiang and Chuck Williams also took part) she gathered in the late 70's to brainstorm about it. We met regularly to discuss Alice's vision. One thing we were all agreed on: We would begin by teaching our students to raise the food that they served. Not surprisingly, that idea went nowhere. But Alice's School is an idea whose time has finally come. At a lunch today, Wade A. Dokken, the man behind the 11,000-acre Ameya Preserve in Montana ("Where nature meets culture" is their motto) announced that Alice has agreed to create her cooking school in the new community he is developing west of the Yellowstone River. She'll be in good company. Among the visionaries Dokken claims as participants in his project are Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, who will be making sure that the community is completely sustainable and carbon neutral. There will be a music center (he mentioned Renee Fleming), an artist in residence program (he mentioned the Montalvo Arts Center), and a paleontology center (he mentioned Jack Horner, who oversaw the Jurassic Park films). There will be a nature center (apparently all the major mammals from the time before Columbus still roam his land). There will be resident MacArthur Fellows to think big thoughts. And resident farmers to grow great food. Dokken spoke of Ameya as an alternative to the classic second home golf community. But from where I sit it looks like something else. It is the ultimate sign that food has truly become a part of America's cultural life. These days when wealthy people go looking for the good life, they want it to be filled with art and nature. They want it to do no harm to the environment. And they want it to taste good.

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