When Food & Wine magazine asked Alice Waters, “What would you eat for a summer picnic?” she suggested a take-out picnic because she did not want to cook, especially on a day off. Her picnic prepared by her favorite Japanese restaurant would be grilled chicken wings, a spinach salad, and sushi (to be eaten with chopsticks) topped off with cold champagne and a mason jar of (presumably fresh) strawberries.
Waters changed course for her food hero Elizabeth David and David Olney when she served a deluxe picnic at Big Sur. The picnic was served on a cloth of old linen, vintage china, silverware, and crystal goblets (presumably at a table). Prepared at her restaurant Chez Panisse were quails, herb salad, plus three different Zinfandel wines. According to Artemis Cooper in Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David (2001), Waters might as well have been entertaining royalty. 
The first menu in Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook is a picnic dedicated to David. Again the choices are not simple. Waters warns readers that her palate and food choices will have an unexpected flair. Waters explains that “Picnics provide diverse opportunities for experimentation with color and texture because all of the foods are laid upon the table or cloth at the same time. For example, in this menu, the smooth purple skin of the grapes contrasts nicely with the crinkly brown skin of the squab, while the sleek black of the olives is a foil for the roasted skin of the bright red peppers.”
Waters divides her menus and recipes according to how complicated they are, like this one with roasted red peppers with anchovies; potato and truffle salad; hard-cooked quail eggs; marinated cheese with olives and whole garlic; roasted pigeon and purple grapes; sourdough bread and parsley butter; Lindsey’s almond tart; nectarines; red and white wines (from Provençal and Muscat Beaunes-de-Venise).
Even so-called “Uncomplicated Menus” will require careful planning and home preparation. Such a menu might include charcoal-grilled chicken wings with lemon and pepper, goat cheese and lentil salad, fennel and red onion salad vinaigrette, pears with Niçoise olives, radishes, and sweet butter, baguettes, and Pat’s biscotti.
Featured Image: First edition cover of Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook
See Alice Waters Interview in Food & Wine (March 2013); Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook: In Collaboration with Linda P. Guenzel, Recipes Edited by Carolyn Dille, Designed and Illustrated by David Lance Gaines. New York: Random House, 1982; Alice Waters. The Art of Simple Food New York: Random House, 2007; Alice The Art of Simple Food Ii. New York Random House, 2013; Artemis Cooper Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David, (2001),