"60 Minutes" called her "the mother of Slow Food." Foodies know her as much for her work with public policy as her groundbreaking cookbooks. Yep, we're talking about Alice Waters,

With a recent surge in big names including Sandor Katz filling the instructor lists for sustainable food programs at Sterling College, it's not a big surprise that a talk by Waters, the woman behind Berkeley, Calif.'s world-famous Chez Panisse, is the college's latest coup.

Waters will appear at Sterling early next month as part of the school's Vermont’s Table Speaker Series. Past speakers have included ecologist and ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan and The Art of Fermentation author Sandor Katz. He'll teach a course in fermentation at Sterling in July.

Will Waters be Sterling's next visiting professor? It's unlikely, given the restaurateur's busy schedule of running her legendary restaurant and writing cookbooks such as The Art of Simple Food and In the Green Kitchen. Waters is also known for pioneering the Edible Schoolyard at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr., Middle School. That program led to the School Lunch Initiative, a national program that has influenced Vermont's own push for local food in schools.

Vermonters can see Waters on April 3 at 6:30 p.m. at Sterling's Dunbar Hall. The event will be free, but tickets must be presented at the door. Slow Food lovers can reserve seats and learn more about the event at sterlingcollege.edu.

It's been a long road for brewer Joseph Lemnah. Two years ago he began sniffing out a location for the microbrewery he envisioned, Burlington Beer Company. In spring 2012, when Lemnah held his first tasting at Chef's Corner in the South End, he hoped to soon set up shop somewhere in that neighborhood — perhaps on Pine Street.

Lemnah looked and looked, but didn't see anything that fit his needs. In the meantime, he and his wife, Beth, moved from Delaware — where Lemnah had worked at the venerable Dogfish Head Brewery, among others — back to his native Vermont. In a Jericho barn, Lemnah honed the locavore beers he hoped to eventually sell; beers that drew inspiration from what he found at the farmers market, or hanging from trees or growing in a field. He also built a model for a community-supported brewery — a sort of "beer CSA" that would offer members either 12 growler fills a year (for $100) or a series of special bottlings (for $150).

CSB memberships were challenging sells without a brewery to back them up, says Lemnah, but he kept holding informal tastings. He also continued to scout locations. Turns out, the perfect space for Burlington Beer Company wasn't in Burlington at all, but in a 4,700-square-foot warehouse in Williston. He signed the lease last July and planned to open by November. In the meantime, Lemnah also launched a Kickstarter campaign for barrels and kegs, ordered and began assembling his brewing system ... and, with his wife, welcomed a baby boy to the family. (Life happens.)

After 25 years of Sweet Tomato Pie, Chittenden County will soon be without the thin, crisp delicacy that introduced many Vermonters to high-end pizza. Three Tomatoes Trattoria will close its Williston location on Saturday, March 8, says co-owner Jim Reiman.

Reiman opened the first Three Tomatoes (originally known as Sweet Tomatoes) with Robert Meyers on Church Street in 1992. They debuted in Williston's Maple Tree Place in 2004 as Nicco's Cucina, then changed the name to Three Tomatoes Trattoria two years later.

The lease on the space would have been up at the end of April, says Reiman. However, "We've been jockeying for a sale," he says. The restaurateur adds he and Meyer didn't think business in Williston was strong enough to commit to another five- or 10-year lease. When an "interested party" recently revealed itself, the pair decided to close.

This comes two months after the final bow for nika, the team's most recent iteration of their Church Street restaurant. "After nika didn't work out, we were going to skinny down and go back to the mothership that we started with," says Reiman. Now, with the closure of Three Tomatoes in Williston, Reiman says he and Meyers have no plans to open another restaurant in Chittenden County. They will continue to operate Three Tomatoes restaurants in both Rutland and Lebanon, N.H.

The Church Street space will reopen in late spring as Farmhouse Group's latest addition, Pascolo Ristorante. Watch this space and Seven Days for updates on the Maple Tree Place location.

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Last weekend, the Kitchen Table Bistro celebrated its 11th birthday. To mark the occasion in my own way, I partook of the restaurant's greatest deal. After years of being closed on Sundays, the fine-dining establishment is now not only open but serving prix-fixe dinners of three courses for $30.

How great a deal is this? Two of the entrées on offer last Sunday cost $26 à la carte. That meant that my appetizer and dessert cost $2 each.

That included the plate of gnocchi at right, normally priced at $12. Twice James Beard Foundation Award-nominated chef Steve Atkins excels at crafting cloudlike ricotta dumplings, but that evening's version was the most delicious I'd had in 11 years of dining there.

Though not the most attractive plate of food, the ground pork, kale and shaved Parmesan amounted to far more than the sum of its parts. The sauce was a garlicky umami bomb that left me sopping up every trace with the warm sourdough provided just before our appetizers arrived.

Many fine dining chefs seem to have left arancini back in the '90s where they found them. Atkins knows better. His crisp croquettes were small enough to be nearly equal parts fried coating and tender, cheesy rice. Tangy corn relish and intense, nutty blobs of deep-brown beet-green-hazelnut pesto made the plate far more exciting than just an attractive trio of fried rice balls.