In 1970s California, there is no starter-main-dessert structure or ceremony: one eats light and fast at the lab's cafeteria at noon, improvises around a large shared dish in the evening, and freely picks from all the world's cuisines — Italian-American, Japanese, Mexican — gathered in Palo Alto. The rule is fresh, local ingredients, no hierarchy between dishes, and conviviality over protocol.

Cultivated in abundance in the southern part of the state, the avocado became the emblem of post-war Californian cuisine: creamy, fresh, healthy. It appears both in the lunch salad and sliced on San Francisco sourdough bread — an immediate marker of this West Coast table.