Until they split in 2005, they were viewed by the world as the first couple of the nation’s emergent California-Mediterranean restaurant ethos.
Peel had cooked at Chez Panisse, and he drove the farm connection at Campanile literally, at first hauling produce himself from Chino Farms in Rancho Santa Fe, two hours south of the restaurant.
Kazzie had been to the restaurant’s famous adjunct La Brea Bakery but never to Campanile — an experience we’d both been saving up for.
Memories of that night will sound like cliches now: The startling, direct earthiness of fava puree enriched with good olive oil and lightened with lemon, the smoke that clung to swordfish seared with inky grill marks.
As baseline and even old-fashioned as the meal sounds, few chefs, then or now, really pull off the simple-yet-profound style of cooking with consistency and abject deliciousness.
After Silverton and Peel divorced, Silverton left to start the third act of her blockbuster career with Osteria Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza.
It details the history of American restaurant criticism and contains dozens of interviews with writers, chefs and other figures the authors call the “food intelligencia.” As someone working in restaurants who wanted to write about them, I read the book over and over.
Peel urged the servers to gently steer customers to other choices if they didn’t want those elements in their lunch, which led to one diner yelling obscenities at the staff, indignant over the idea that a chef’s aesthetic might take precedence over the wishes of a customer.
This can still be a touchy subject, the sometimes uneasy symbiosis among chef, wait staff and diner.