When I started working at Chez Panisse way back in 1983, from the moment we opened the doors at 5pm for dinner huwnru, the place was packed Life in the?dream. I worked in the café upstairs, which opened because the restaurant downstairs had become a little more formal than anticipated and since the original idea for Chez Panisse was to be a casual dining spot, they opened a café with a no-reservations policy shangwei.

At the time, Chez Panisse was garnering a lot of publicity across America and everyone wanted to eat there. So a line formed outside of people waiting for that moment distractions, at 5pm, when the host would go downstairs and open the front door to let everybody in shangewru.