As a boy in Jacksonville, Florida, Williams spent hours in the kitchen of his Dutch-German grandmother, Leona Wagganer Shaw. At her side, he learned to make stews, pots of beans, angel food cakes, and the other simple but delicious foods that were his grandmother's forte. She had owned a restaurant in Lima, Ohio, before relocating to Florida, and perhaps out of habit or to satisfy a big family (Williams, his parents, and his sister would often join the Shaws at the table), she cooked three big meals a day.
On Fridays, Grandmother Shaw baked desserts. Williams recalls whipping up egg whites for meringue for his grandmother's pies. In the days before he knew of whisks, he'd take a fork and go at the whites spread out on a platter. "She'd also give me scraps of piecrust, and I'd make my own pie," Williams says. "I was a natural. I was drawn to the kitchen."
Launching an Empire
Unlike many others, his inclination to cook didn't lead him to a restaurant kitchen. It led instead, almost by accident, to Williams-Sonoma, Inc. What started with one small-town store born of his appreciation for quality cookware is now the company that includes 250 Williams-Sonoma stores and also incorporates Pottery Barn, Hold Everything, Pottery Barn Kids, West Elm, and others.
After World War II, during which Williams worked overseas for McDonald-Douglas as an airplane mechanic, he settled into the small town of Sonoma, California. There he started a business building homes. But a 1952 trip to Europe would change his direction. In Paris, his interest in cooking led him to small shops that specialized in cooking supplies and to Le Bazar de l'Hotel de Ville, a department store with a whole floor devoted to cookware. (The store, popularly known as bhv, remains a mecca for cookware aficionados.) "I was astonished to see so much available to everyone," Williams says. "Back home, all that was sold to the home cook were thin aluminum pans. You couldn't buy a good knife. Even quality wooden spoons were hard to find."
Williams was about to change that.
In 1956, as Americans were growing enamored of prepared frozen foods, he opened the first Williams-Sonoma store, devoted to French cookware, in downtown Sonoma. "I found enough interesting things to sell because it was so tiny," he recalls. The store quickly became a hit with upper-crust San Francisco housewives, many of whom had summer homes in Sonoma. In 1958, he moved the store to San Francisco and stocked it with all manner of French supplies: copper bowls, sauté pans, tart pans, charlotte molds, and rolling pins with tapered ends that "give you much more control" than those with handles.
He didn't stop at French goods. On a recent afternoon, Williams walked through the four-story flagship store on San Francisco's Union Square, just blocks from the first San Francisco location, and pointed out those products that he helped make available to home cooks. "I persuaded the maker of the KitchenAid mixer to sell retail for the first time," he says, adding that the formerly only-white appliance took on new hues beginning in 1994 after he cajoled KitchenAid to turn out a blue version.
The Next Generation
A silver-haired, soft-spoken man who favors tweed jackets, Williams is hardly a typical celebrity—unless you happen to share his passion for cooking. During that same visit to the store, a mother approached, her 10-year-old son thrust out before her: "Excuse me, Mr. Williams. My son hoped to meet you."
Williams learned that the boy burned his arm the previous day after losing control of a cookie sheet. Mother and son were buying a silicone mitt to guard against future burns. "He hopes to be a chef one day," said the mother, and Williams graciously encouraged the boy. "Children should be encouraged," Williams later says. "They want to be praised for what they've made—and they should be."
Williams certainly benefited from his grandmother's encouragement—and picked up her style of cooking. "There were never any recipes in her kitchen," Williams recalls. "She just knew how things were made. She didn't have recipes for pies and cakes or stews. She knew the basics and built from them." He credits his grandmother with teaching him fundamentals that still serve him well. "As a kid, I was dicing onions. I don't do it as professionally as a chef would, but it works," Williams says. "I do it my way. You don't have to get fancy to cook well."
He also picked up healthful eating habits in his grandma's kitchen. Items like soft drinks and popcorn were only occasional treats, and his grandmother's satisfying three meals a day left little room for snacks. "To this day, I am not one who eats snack foods, and that's due to my grandmother," Williams says. "I've eaten better than many people do. I don't overeat; I learned a natural way of eating. I've always loved vegetables. I'll eat a stalk of celery while I'm cooking dinner, and it satisfies my hunger so I can wait until dinner is ready without resorting to other snacks. I'm like a rabbit: I like iceberg lettuce and carrots."
Grandmother Shaw would no doubt praise her grandson for the business he's made, a thorough resource for the home cook. As for the style of cooking he promotes, she might like that, too. "French cooking is really quite simple, and the fundamentals have been absorbed here (in the United States)." Like the French have always done, Americans now cook string beans just until done, he notes, and they have embraced baby greens. "I have always cooked simply," Williams says, "and I have tried to give my customers the tools for doing the same."
In this article, you'll find a collection of recipes from Williams that reflect the influence of his grandmother. They use simple ingredients, chosen wisely and economically, to make standout recipes that are doable for the everyday cook. And most of the recipes serve almost as a template—once you've made the Country Lima Beans or Roasted Chicken with Onions, Potatoes, and Gravy several times, you've mastered the technique and don't necessarily need to follow the recipe exactly when you want to make the dish again. That's the kind of cooking Williams learned in his grandma's kitchen.
