The waiter sees me dithering over the menu and leans over to whisper, "Alice would want you to have the tomato salad."

Alice being Alice Waters, chef-owner of the famous Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. Well, then of course I'll have the tomato salad. After all, Waters is the woman who for the past 30 years has led the North American culinary revolution from this funky arts-and-crafts-style eatery, encouraging us all to eat organic, local, fresh and delicious. Whatever she suggests is fine by me.

The salad arrives, thick, sweet, multi-hued slices of organic heirloom tomatoes drizzled in olive oil and scattered with just-plucked basil leaves. It tastes of sunshine. It is, in short, California on a plate.

For those of us who plan our travel itineraries around food and wine, there are few places as tantalizing as California. It seems that everything grows here -- lemons, figs, olives, grapes -- and it also seems that for every ingredient there's someone doing something deliciously creative with it.

This massive state has many regions and many cuisines and this month is the best time to explore them all: January 2011 marks the first California Restaurant Month, when restaurants across the state will offer gourmet prix fixe meals, wine pairings and chef talks. (See sidebar or visit www.visitcalifornia.com/restaurantmonthfor more information.)

But the heart and soul of California cuisine was born here around the San Francisco Bay area. So let us explore it by visiting three restaurants and the culinary community around them.

There's plenty of history in this building perched over the waters of San Francisco Bay. Before steel girders bridged the bay, this is how people arrived in San Francisco, via train or ferry boat, buoyed as much by optimism as by the waves.

Yes, there's plenty of history here, but I'm not here for the history. I'm here for Charles Phan's legendary cellophane noodles.

If you think gourmet Vietnamese food is an unusual thing to find in an old transit station, you haven't experienced the appetite San Franciscans seem to have for finding any occasion for eating well. The transformation of this historic building into a bustling marketplace is as good an excuse as any.

The Ferry Building dates back to 1898, when the graceful steel frame structure with its distinctive clock tower was built at the foot of Market Street. It survived two earthquakes, the Great Fire and (just barely) the advent of the automobile, which saw ferry traffic disappear, a freeway built in front of the terminal and the building converted to offices.

Then in 1998, the city decided to do something about the sad ruin of a once-beautiful building.

Five years later, renovations were done, ferries were docking here again and the main floor of the building had been transformed into a marketplace.

Today, shoppers can pick up artisan cheeses at Cowgirl Creamery, crusty breads at Acme, salty-sweet charcuterie at Boccalone Salumeria and cookware at Sur la Table, as well as fresh lettuces, tomatoes, beans and peppers sold outside by local farmers.

Best of all, visitors can stop by the Slanted Door for one of the best meals they'll find in all of the United States.

The original Slanted Door opened in 1995 in Valencia Street; this incarnation looks out onto the lights twinkling across the bay. A sleek, modern room, it's jam-packed on a Monday night with happy guests eager to dig into Phan's modern interpretation of Vietnamese cuisine. What makes it so remarkable is not just the startlingly fresh, zingy flavours, but the attention Phan pays to his ingredients, which are, wherever possible, organic and locally produced.

We dine family style, starting with fresh oysters, a crisp papaya salad and smoky, mesquite grilled lamb sausage. Then it's on to the cellophane noodles with Dungeness crab, which fully live up to their reputation, as well as sweetly tender fish in a clay pot, savoury "shaking" beef with watercress and the ridiculously good grilled Berkshire pork chops with shallots, ginger and soy.

Now this is what fresh market dining is all about.

The Girl & The Fig and Wine Country

Blink, and for a moment we could be in Provence, fooled by the Mediterranean warmth of the dying day, the scent of flowers on the gentle breeze, the duck confit on the plate and the Rhone blend in the wineglasses before us.

Though, we're out on the patio at The Girl & The Fig in charming Sonoma, where owner Sondra Bernstein has created a loving homage to the south of France. And we can think of no better place to raise a glass to that most intoxicating of California cuisines: wine country dining.

California's first vines were planted at missions around the state as far back as 1683. But the state's wine industry truly began in the 1850s, when a Hungarian soldier and merchant named Agoston Haraszthy imported cuttings from 165 of Europe's greatest vineyards and planted them here in Sonoma County.

Today, Sonoma has more than 250 wine producers and 13 appellations. More than 70 different varieties of grapes are grown here, although Sonoma is best known for its full-bodied Zinfandels.

Visitors can drop into wineries and tasting rooms to enjoy Chardonnay at Chateau St. Jean, bubbles at Gloria Ferrer and Rhone varietals at Cline. And they can discover something completely new and unexpected around almost every corner.

They can explore charming small towns like Healdsburg, as famous for its artists and shopping as its wineries and restaurants. They can go horseback riding or hiking or visit a spa like the one at the Fairmont Mission Inn & Spa, built on the site of California's first hot springs resort.

Or they can do what we're doing, relaxing on a warm evening and savouring the bounty of the land. Another glass of Syrah? Don't mind if I do.

We're standing outside the Cheeseboard Collective when a black SUV pulls to a sudden stop in front of us. A woman jumps out, a bright splash of ghetto-fabulous colour and bling that's more than a little startling amid Shattuck Avenue's hippie homespun, and dashes into the collective's famous pizza shop next door.

A moment later she walks out, empty handed, shaking her head in puzzlement.

"They only have one flavour," she yells to her friends in the SUV. "What's up with that?"

Ah, Berkeley. Is there any other community in North America so determined to do things its own unique way?

This city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay has never quite cast off the quirkiness of its 1960s heyday, thanks in large part to the famously liberal University of California, Berkeley.

Berkeley is one place where the hunger for great ideas and good food have collided to delicious effect, thanks to the back-to-the-land rebels at Chez Panisse, food activists like Berkeley professor Michael Pollan and the idealists baking scones at the Cheese Board Collective.

"We're a co-operative, only we're not always so co-operative. We're more like a big family business," explains Cheese Boarder Cathy Goldsmith.

The shop -- which sells as many as 400 cheeses as well as bread, cookies and the daily pizza next door -- opened in 1967 and is still run by a collective of employees, each with equal status and equal pay.

"I really feel that there is a time and place for things to start and it was a different time back then," Goldsmith reminisces. "There is something pretty wonderful about working here."

The Collective is part of what's become known as the Gourmet Ghetto, the array of food shops and restaurants tucked amid Berkeley's Victorian houses and unruly gardens.

They include Peet's, the specialty coffee house that opened in 1966, long before there was a single Starbucks, as well as bakeries, organic grocers and Vintage Berkeley, which sells nothing but small-production wines that retail for less than $25.

And, of course, there are the restaurants. Chez Panisse is the most famous, a temple to all that is local and organic. But perhaps the most ambitious is Saul's Restaurant + Delicatessen, which is trying to recreate the Jewish deli with great organic ingredients and ethical practices.

"This is not Disneyland, this is not Vegas and this is not a New York deli," says co-owner Karen Adelman. "Yes, this is a nostalgic cuisine, but we want it to be a living cuisine."

We dig into a plate of Niman Ranch pastrami sandwiches.

This is food that tastes good as it does good. It's so . . . Berkeley.

The one drawback to exploring California's great restaurant scene is that you can ring up quite a bill doing it. But this month, you don't have to.

For the first time ever, hundreds of restaurants in 23 destinations across the state are participating in California Restaurant Month, a promotion created by the California Travel and Tourism Commission. (They don't, unfortunately, include the restaurants in this story, however.)

They're offering gourmet prix fixe menus where guests can save up to 25 per cent off meals in city hot spots, wine country inns, mountain getaways and beachside bistros in regions that range from the big cities of Los Angeles and San Diego to charming rural settings like Shasta Cascade.

In addition, guests can experience rare and exciting wine-pairing specials, as well as presentations by celebrated local chefs.

It's a great -- and delicious -- opportunity to explore all that's new in California cuisine.

For more information, go to www.visitcalifornia.com/restaurantmonth.

If You Go

Staying There:

- San Francisco offers many options when it comes to accommodation, but for classic luxury and sterling service, you can't go wrong with the Ritz-Carlton on Nob Hill, 600 Stockton St., San Francisco, 415-296-7465, www.ritzcarlton.com.

Some other San Francisco hotels to check out include:

- The recently renovated Clift Hotel, 485 Geary St., 415-775-4700, www.clifthotel.com.

- The funky Hotel Triton, 342 Grant Ave., 415-394-0500, www.hoteltriton.com.

- The Sir Francis Drake Hotel, 450 Powell St., 800-795-7129, www.sirfrancisdrake.com.

In Sonoma, check into the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa, an architecturally exact replica of a California mission that just happens to be built atop powerfully healing hot springs, 100 Boyes Blvd., Sonoma, 707-938-9000 or toll-free 800-257-7544, www.fairmont.com/Sonoma.

Dining There:

- The Bay area and Sonoma have more than their fair share of great places to eat, but here are a few you can't miss.

- The Slanted Door, modern Vietnamese with flair, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, 415-861-8032, www.slanteddoor.com.

- Chez Panisse, the organic-and-local-food-obsessed birthplace of California cuisine, 1517 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, 510-548-5525, www.chezpanisse.com.

- Saul's Restaurant & Delicatessen, upscale organic Jewish deli, 1475 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, 510-848-3354, www.saulsdeli.com

- The Girl and the Fig, French country fare set in California wine country, 10 West Spain St., Sonoma, 707-938-3624, www.thegirlandthefig.com.

- For local gourmet tours, check out the company In the Kitchen with Lisa, run by former Gourmet magazine staffer Lisa Rogovin, www.inthekitchenwithlisa.com.

- For more information on visiting California and the Bay area, go to these websites:

www.visitcalifornia.com

www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com

www.sonomacounty.com

www.visitberkeley.com