Years later she personally thanked Child for launching her career. Bergen moved on to the Greenhouse restaurant, a glorified diner in Sonoma in 1980. The guys had a menu with eight daily specials, but they never gave me any guidelines. I did a lot of learning and experimenting on the poor customers, a wild cast of regulars. Compared to academia, I loved the tangible aspect of food.
People are so passionate.
No one is blas when you ask them what they like to eat. When she found out that you could actually go to school to learn to cook, she enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., graduating in 1983. An internship at Greens Restaurant at Fort Mason in San Francisco opened her eyes to the delicate balance between aesthetics and business and the truism that how one works is as important as the ingredients that one uses and what one creates. Describing herself as someone with a fast learning curve but short attention span, Bergen opened several restaurants in the Bay Area. Bergen also consulted on restaurant projects in Santa Fe and Philadelphia.