Weezie Mott, Alameda’s beloved cooking instructor, passed away on April 9 in the home where she taught classes for over 40 years. She was 102 years old and is remembered fondly by the many home cooks who came to her residence on Dayton Avenue to learn how to cook savory and sweet dishes.
[1]With her boundless enthusiasm for food and life, Mott taught classes well into her late 90s. Her spunky nature charmed generations of students, both young and old. Mott taught a series of thoughtfully curated spring and fall classes for adults, along with classes for kids, which included a field trip to renowned Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse.
Dawn McKenzie, a longtime Alameda resident, took classes continuously with Mott since the 1970s. “I just got hooked taking her classes,” she said. “It was such a warm, friendly environment.” She noted that students would always learn something in Mott’s classes, even if the theme of a particular class might not have seemed compelling at first.
[2]“It makes me sad that she’s gone,” McKenzie said wistfully. “I loved taking her classes. It was always fun to talk to other people that were there.”
McKenzie showed off a binder of all the recipes she had collected from Mott’s classes over the last four decades. There were recipes for dishes such as tarte au citron, fruit and cheese tea bread, honey curry chicken, and squash soup. There was also a recipe for brownies, which McKenzie had just baked before she spoke to the Alameda Post. They were delicious.
[4]Asked which recipe from Mott’s classes was her favorite, McKenzie said, “Peanut noodle salad… I’ve taken it to many potlucks and it’s always been a hit.” McKenzie’s husband, Robert Barde, jokingly chimed in, “Yeah, no leftovers to bring home to your husband.”
McKenzie has also saved years of flyers that advertised Mott’s classes. One such flyer from 2019 featured chef John Thiel of Pizzeria Pappo [5] as a teacher. Mott was known for inviting guest chefs to come to her home school and teach classes. Thiel recalled that Mott came to eat at Pappo, his now closed restaurant, almost every Thursday night for the market dinner. “She knew everyone and we always looked forward to seeing her,” he said.
Thiel told the Post that when he was preparing to open the original Pappo restaurant back in 2005, “Weezie invited me to her house for a cappuccino and asked me about the restaurant. She loved the ideas I had for the menu and supported me ever since.” He added, “She lived an amazing life. Non-stop.”
[6]Another Alameda chef whom Mott befriended was Giuseppe Naccarelli of Trabocco [7]. “I met her when she was already in her 90s, and she was rocking and rolling!” he said. “She was going all over the world… New York all the time. Paris. Russia.” Mott ate lunch at Trabocco a few times a week but would sometimes come by herself in the evenings, sitting at the kitchen counter with Naccarelli. She would have an espresso and leave in time to watch Jeopardy at home.
When asked how he would describe Mott, Naccarelli said with a smile, “Oh my gosh, there are so many adjectives you can use to describe her. She was always full of life. She was a party in herself! She brought the party, whatever, she didn’t care. She was so open and nice. I was very lucky to know her and to become a friend.”
When Naccarelli later met artist and filmmaker Elizabeth Sher [8], he told her, “Okay, I have a person for you,” and suggested that she do a documentary about Mott. He arranged for the two of them to meet and the result was an 18-minute documentary that premiered at the Alameda Theatre in 2019 with catering from Trabocco at the after party. Naccarelli said that at the showing, Mott “looked like a movie star… a lot of people showed up. She was very well known and well loved in the community.”
[9]Sher made the film, Weezie Mott: Still Cookin’ with Maggie Simpson Adams, the owner of Magpie and Thorne, [10] who passed away last year. The movie recounts Mott’s early life and her stint as a nurse who joined the navy during World War ll, where she met her husband, Howard. After the war, the couple lived in Italy and Turkey, where her husband was stationed. It was also where Mott started learning how to cook. When Howard was stationed in Alameda, Weezie worked at Oakland Kaiser’s school of nursing before going to famed culinary school Le Cordon Bleu, where she studied with Jacques Pepin and Julia Child. After that, she opened the Weezie Mott Cooking School in 1977.
Sher told the Post that when she and Simpson went to Mott’s house to interview her for the first time, “She was charming and terrific with flaming orange hair and a bright blue dress.” In addition to the Alameda Theatre, the film was shown at Rhythmix Cultural Works, where, Sher recalled, Mott attended the Q&A “in a leopard outfit. She was warm, bright, genuine, and fabulous.”
Weezie Mott: Still Cookin’ [11] is available to watch online.
Jean Chen is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post [12]. Contact her via [email protected] [13]. Her writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Jean-Chen [14].