Williams-Sonoma's "Essentials of Italian"

While not in the “world of cuisine” when Chuck Williams opened his first culinary in Sonoma in1956, he was already well known a decade latter as my career began to take flight. A few years later I got to go to his store in San Franscisco and as the saying goes, “I thought I’d died and gone to (culinary) heaven.”

It was as good as any culinary store anywhere in the world. For many years it was the only place a serious cook could be assured of getting equipment and specialty products for what was then the emerging (think Julia Child) and mushrooming interest in fine food prepared at home.

Fast f...