David Tanis-Alice Waters' Chez Panisse, one of the famous chefs in the history of Chez Panisse, helped define the cooking style of this restaurant more than anyone else- Has a good reputation. In fact, he is short in stature and incredibly reserved, and his humility is always surprising when you compare him to a chef of the same age but with much less honor.

In 1981, he started baking bread at Chez Panisse, and a year later, he became the chef of the cafe upstairs in the restaurant. In 1991, he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he was the chef of Cafe Escalera. He worked at the cafe for seven years before returning to California in 1998 to work with Jean-Pierre Moulay (Jean-Pierre Moulay). Moullé) shared the responsibilities of the chef in the main restaurant downstairs. In 2001, Tanis moved to Paris. In 2005, he started the most enviable job as a chef: working and living in Paris for six months, then working in Chez Panisse for six months (Müller had the same arrangement, although he was in France Chose Bordeaux during the six-month period.)

In 2011, Tanis retired from Chez Panisse and moved to New York, where he began writing a weekly cooking column called "Urban Kitchen" for the New York Times, which lasted until 2019. Now he writes a monthly seasonal menu column for the New York Times. He has four cookbooks, the most recent one being "David Tanis Market Cooking" in 2017.

But as an experienced chef, Tanis is still eager to learn. When he talks with vendors at the farmers' market, or when he asks other people how to cook dishes that are similar to dishes he has cooked many times, he will show student-like excitement. It is his nature to create a continuous teacher-student interaction in his own and other cooking methods. He hopes that when he and Waters begin another chapter in his life at the new restaurant Lulu at the Westwood Hammer Museum, he hopes to establish a rapport with the diners since the opening of Chez Panisse in 1971 Waters' first new restaurant.

"Chez Panisse proves that there are other ways to run a restaurant-a more humane way, a collaborative way," Tanis said. "There should always be a certain level of learning in the restaurant. So when entering Lulu, I didn't think of a system. I have some ideas about what I want and the experience of working in other places, but I see it as An experiment on how to run a restaurant."

Lulu is named after Waters and his mentor Lucie "Lulu" Peyraud. Lucie "Lulu" Peyraud is an influential figure among many chefs and writers, such as Richard Olney, who wrote a series with her in 1994 This recipe "Lulu's Provence Table". Peyraud entertained and cooked her family wine estate Domaine Tempier on the outskirts of Toulon, Provence, until her death in 2020 at the age of 102.

Making recipes with David Tanis in Los Angeles

Visit the farmer’s market, then the Times’ test kitchen to see what David Tanis created in Los Angeles

In order to open Lulu, Tanis moved to Los Angeles. After living in Berkeley, Santa Fe, New York City, upstate New York and Paris for decades, he has been here since June. When we met, I was curious how Los Angeles will leave a mark on his legendary cooking style.

So we get together and do the only thing we can find: go shopping and cook.

Tannis and I plan to meet at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market at 8am on Halloween. When I drove past the western entrance of the market at 7:58am, I saw Tannis defeating me there and was already reading the stalls carefully. When I When he finally caught up with him, he greeted me with a cup of coffee and said, "I have been checking here for a while," followed by a mischievous smile.

It is this quality of Tanis that makes him so approachable and full of fun in conversation. Other chefs may be loud, ready to receive media-trained jokes about their favorite dishes or skills on how to cut onions, while Tanis is quiet, learning, and reserved. He is serious, but always jokes quickly at the end of each sentence to remind you to appreciate the beauty of food, but don't take it too seriously, right?

5 things about Lulu, Alice Waters and David Tanis’s New Hammer Museum Restaurant

Lulu of Hammer Museum is a collaborative project of chef Alice Waters and David Tanis.

When we walked to a market, Tanis' eyes flickered in excitement. I pointed out that one stall was for esoteric tropical fruits, and the other was for red walnuts, but a basket of black mushrooms first caught his attention. When we walked to the tent, Tanis asked the supplier what they were.

"Fresh fungus mushrooms-we grow our own," the supplier said. "Really?" Tanis said. "I thought they would only become wild!" He happily bought several pounds, and grabbed them with his bulging fists like a kid trying to grab candy from a Halloween bucket.

After that, we arrived at the Weiser Family Farms booth. One of the owners, Alex Weiser, greeted Tanis in a familiar way: "Hey, I know this person!" He handed each of us a large piece of fresh radish, and he cut it off with a knife . Tanis took a bite, his expression unchanged, and said, "Well, sweet."

He raised his eyebrows to express his excitement. We bought half a dozen radishes.

In other stalls, we will buy small radishes ("These are really sweet, so I might steam them at the last minute and cover them with leaves"), sprouted cauliflower ("Happy to find this ; It’s much sweeter than ordinary cauliflower”) and a bag of mixed fresh peppers. He intends to use the money to add fresh heat to the sprouted cauliflower.

Tanis is shopping in the market just like he is cooking in the kitchen: whether it is in his shopping bag or on his plate, he always focuses on the colors and captures the beauty of the raw materials. I pointed out what I found interesting and made some suggestions. He said yes to some people and not others.

"I worry about the appearance of the food," he said. "Half of what attracts me to the farmers market is to see everyone's products are arranged beautifully. Go to the market, see what is great, and let it influence the food I make in the restaurant-this has always been my MO"

To put it lightly, Tanis is a cooking teacher, perhaps the best. No matter when he runs a restaurant, first of all, Tanis is a practitioner of home cooking. This is how he thrives. "I'm not a chef," Tanis said. "My cooking methods are not stylized or rigid. In many cuisines, home cooking is the most prominent for me. I like to cook at home and hope that the food in the restaurant tastes just as good."

When you watch him make a salad, his style will be fully demonstrated. Back in the "Los Angeles Times" test kitchen, Tanis skillfully wielded a paring knife to peel Fuyu persimmons, peeling them continuously from the fruit. He cut the persimmon into thick wedges, then broke a pomegranate and sprinkled the arils on the fruit. The drizzle dripped olive oil, and some salt and pepper.

Then Tanis's fingers took over. He opened his palm, his fingers stiff, slightly bent, like a wizard about to cast a spell, his fingers are like the wire of a whisk, mixing seasonings with fruits to squeeze juice. He took a sip of the persimmon, grumbled "um" contentedly, and then reached for more salt.

"This can be the salad itself, with some mint leaves or chopped herbs, but it can also be eaten with fennel," Tanis said. "I like the combination of sweet and bitter, so I want to eat these bitter Treviso leaves-almost so beautiful that you don't want to break them apart-then Castelfranco [lettuce]. I want the tender inner leaves. , Which happens to be the leaf with the most spots," he said with a grin. "This is one of the salads that all good things want to fall to the bottom of the bowl."

After finishing it, I feel that I have never seen such a beautiful and detail-oriented salad. This is the magic of Tanis’s cooking: somehow he turns beautiful ingredients into more extraordinary dishes, but without complicated seasonings or techniques, proving that you don’t need to take shortcuts in quality to make some “quickly” thing.

Next, he continued to eat another radish salad with arugula, lime and parmesan cheese. "You don't have to peel [the radish]," he said. "But I like peeling, because the skin is hard." These little pieces of culinary wisdom are good and great, and Tanis is full of them.

The Fat King Oyster Mushrooms were trimmed, then coated with olive oil, and then put into a hot frying pan screaming, turning brown and sizzling. "If I had a grill, I would grill them, but the pan works well," he said. "The key is to make them really brown to give them as much flavor as possible." Just before cooking the big oysters, he bathed them with fungus mushrooms and some minced garlic and coriander to heat up the spices and remove their raw edges.

After he fries the sprouts of broccoli in the same way and finishes with minced garlic and coriander, I asked him why he added garlic at the end. "You don't want it to burn," he said blankly. I laughed because, well, he was right, but a lot of the rhetoric in the recipe is about cooking the garlic first and then adding the vegetables to give it a flavor. But Tanis knows that adding a few cloves of garlic in the last 30 seconds of cooking will produce the same fragrant and delicious result without worrying about it burning or becoming bitter.

Our attention is focused on garlic, because he is making a slow-cooked broccoli with tender stems, the stems are cut into large pieces, and the leaves are intact. He sprinkled a few garlic cloves still peeling between the greens, sprinkled a little water, and then began to cook under the lid. After a few minutes, he tested the broccoli to see if it was finished. "When I poke it with the tip of a spoon, it should be easy to mash," he said. This was not a completely problem-free situation; he wanted the broccoli to be soft and sweet to balance the flakes of Chile that garnished the dishes at the end. Once he puts the cauliflower on the plate, the garlic cloves will be placed on the plate together. "I don't mind leaving them in," Tanis said. "It's great that someone can get a mushy garlic clove to play with."

When he continued to eat the last radish steamed with vegetables, his talent really became the focus. He judged the size of each irregular radish and skillfully cut them into even wedges. All the radishes are put in the pot, but he is no longer shy to add all the stems, keeping a little bit after generously covering the first time, paying attention to the proportions to make sure they keep the way he wants them.

He poured some water in, then simmered the radishes and stems until they were just tender. He would not use the tip of a knife to judge their maturity; instead, he inserted his finger directly into the boiling vegetables and took out a wedge from it. "It's so hot!" He said calmly, and gave another smile. The confidence in Tanis' hands makes them look even more exciting.

The radishes are ready, so he now adds their greens, strategically scattered on the top, and will wither in the last few minutes. A little bit of Maras Chile flakes rained, and then the radishes were on the plate. His fingers slide here and there, poking the leaves until they are arranged in the desired pattern. Salt, olive oil; purity, magnification.

I asked Tanis how he found inspiration for such a beautiful and simple home cooking. "Even if I have restaurant experience, I have written hundreds of recipes," he said. "So if I need to take something out of my hat, it is what I will take out of the library. When I was in college, I studied liberal arts-visual arts, poetry and dance, all of this- —So the cooking part is an artistic expression for me; 3D printed artwork. It smells good, so it’s multimedia.”

When we ate the food he made, a language immediately jumped out. Chile, whether fresh or dried, is used with floral fragrance, not heat. Lime juice increases the bitter acidity, and most people will achieve the sharpness of lemon. Sprinkle with minced garlic at the end, and its taste becomes mellow due to the sweetness, rather than roasting to get the umami taste like when it is added at the beginning of cooking. All his vegetables are cooked into soft teeth, which is rare in our current tender and crisp culture. The restaurant is precisely applied to the simplicity of home cooking.

Watching Tanis cooking, it feels like he is completely practicing on another plane. His way of thinking about flavors, combination ingredients and creating dishes is unparalleled in its understated assurance. He has an innate understanding of the beauty of restraint—perhaps dating back to his art school background—which may seem ordinary to him, but it seems very enlightened and intelligent to the rest of us.

"When I cook, I don't want to reinvent the wheel," he said, "but use a different type of wheel to work."

Eat all over Los Angeles

Get our weekly tasting notes newsletter for reviews, news and more.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Ben Mims is a culinary columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has written three cookbooks and has worked as a food editor and recipe developer in several food media publications, such as Lucky Peach, Food & Wine, Saveur, Food Network, and Buzzfeed/Tasty.

More from the Los Angeles Times

The perfect beer to pair with 30 Southern California trails

Is Xishi Candy the best in the world? This is of course the most memorable

Xishi Candy celebrates its 100th anniversary. This is everything you need to know

Everything you want to know about See's Candies