The food in California has but one theme, due to the diverse races and the number of people passing by and staying in California. That theme is, fusion.

Fusion cooking integrates different styles and different forms of cooking which span around the world, using California-native ingredients. This defeats the barrier of substitution. Presentation and over all ‘oomph’ is important to California cuisine. Same goes for innovation and for over all taste.

The restaurant credited for starting California cuisine would be the Chez Panisse, by co-founder Alice Waters. The restaurant is found in Berkeley, California. Story tells that Water visited south of France and had discovered the joy of cooking using fresh herbs, vegetables and oils. Her taste for what good food was cemented in this belief that the road restaurants served a better sense than those of the predictable menus of high-class Parisian restaurants.

She was a chef, and with her aspirations and dreams of steeling a cooking style that would cater to the taste buds of a demanding customer demographic whose demands are good food, fast service, and fresh, garden-fresh, ingredients. The garden-fresh criteria might be too much, but market-fresh and farm fresh certainly do fit the bill.

The restaurant was given credit in making some of the more staple foods in most restaurants today. One example is the California-style pizza, or the ‘gourmet pizza’ as they call it. California pizza uses non-traditional toppings taken from other cuisine styles, like artichokes, infused olive oils and peanut butter. The usual California pizza might have barbecue bits, curry sauce, oven-baked sunny-side up eggs, goat cheese, spinach, herbs and carne asada. It’s actually more like a buffet pizza than a typical-put-everything-here pizza.

They also made the original Goat Cheese Salad and carbonated tap-water, a good alternative to soft drinks and soda.

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