Recently, I had the pleasure of enjoying a rapturous meal at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, a restaurant so special that it has its own substantial, photo-enhanced Wikipedia article (which is generally the way I determine legitimacy in all facets of life). The collective brain of the Internet tells me, with an indisputably neutral point of view, that this place is a universally loved temple to culinary ecstasy, and after my visit my tummy was inclined to agree.

Alice Waters, the chef behind the magic and another object of considerable Wiki-affection, is famous for her emphasis on fresh, local ingredients and her imaginative, inclusive incorporation of diverse cooking styles and traditions. She is a champion of the “Slow Food” movement, a school of thought whose name contrasts with fast food culture and that embodies the ideas she integrates in her menus. Her techniques have proven so yummy that they’ve revolutionized the American food landscape — or at least the elite, rich-people food landscape — and her influence is felt across the country in fancy restaurants and overpriced organic grocery stores.

But okay, I’ll keep my classism objections to myself for today, because (a) it’s the consumers and not the cuisine itself with whom I take issue and (b) I have so many other things to opine about! Anyway, despite scandalous prices at Whole Foods, stocking one’s pantry with all things fresh and local can still be an affordable venture. It just takes a willingness to go the farmer’s market route and be creative with what one finds there.

The bigger question for me, of course, is whether this quest for fresh-and-local-ness would be a modern venture. The obvious answer seems to be negative: Alice Waters and the related “Slow Food” movement are in direct opposition to the industrialized, homogenized, globalized food culture that in some ways epitomizes modernity. The suggestion to conduct our eating in a local and unprocessed manner seems akin to advocating a premodern lifestyle of keeping chickens and churning butter.

But as I often try to make clear, modernity is a highly complicated (and ferocious!) beast that is better characterized by its intrinsic contradictions than by any particular buzzword like “industrialized.” This is because in the big ol’ pot of modernity stew — opposition to industrialization is as important an ingredient as industrialization itself, and it’s really the combination of the two that produces that distinctly modern flavor. (Get it? It’s a metaphor about cooking because, like, this article is about cooking!)

Chez Panisse and Slow Food could only exist as they do within the context of modernity — while they represent an objection to the modern status quo, they also rely on it as a foil to which they can be the “other.” Their position of rejecting manufactured food exhibits a fundamental awareness of exactly what they are rejecting. In other words, Alice Waters’ critique of the modern culinary condition works because it’s modern itself. Rather than denying today’s world outright and turning back to the past, her critique presents an alternative, legitimate approach forward.

And even if you don’t care about the theoretical implications of the way you eat, Slow Food makes some compelling practical arguments that relate to serious modern problems. Recent research suggests that our current reliance on highly processed foods is bad for a lot of reasons, not unlike our reliance on fossil fuels. In addition to its many negative health impacts, our present industrialized food system is unsustainable in its voracious consumption of land and resources. One especially crass and dramatic example is the shitload (two trillion pounds!) of animal poop produced each year, much of it in high concentrations at meat factories, that increasingly damages our ecosystems and water quality.

In our enthusiasm for technology, we often seem to miss a basic point: while our society is modern, our bodies and our natural surroundings have not evolved at such a blistering pace. A recent modern revelation is that we must be sensitive to this fact! This doesn’t mean we should throw out everything new. Alice Waters’ approach, for example, does not. While rejecting processing and industrialization, she embraces other modern developments, such as multiculturalism, in her mixing and reworking of traditional cooking methods from around the world.

For me, this Slow Food movement is an uncommon delight — it exemplifies a genuinely modern, constructively critical response to the way we live now. Like the best works of modernism, it digs deep into its contemporary setting in order to make a profoundly effective critique while still maintaining practical relevance and an optimistic viewpoint. And of course, there’s the food itself. I doubt Le Corbusier ever dreamed that the modern movement could be so sublimely delicious!

Caitlin recommends the warm chevre and mesclun salad with every taste bud on her tongue. Have other suggestions? Send them to niltiac@stanford.edu.