When it comes to celebrating her birthday, Cheryl is as modest as a church mouse.

For this year’s gift, she suggested I renew her subscription to a monthly newsletter related to her work. That’s all, she said.

Granted, it’s a pricey newsletter — $60 — but it didn’t feel right. I persisted. What else?

She gave me a look that I knew well. “Chocolate,” it said.

A one-pound box of See’s almonds enveloped in dark chocolate was soon hers.

Cheryl smiled. This is perfect, she said.

Does this sound perfect, dear reader? Not that reading a newsletter while eating chocolate isn’t one of life’s underrated pleasures, but shouldn’t there be more?

Skinflinty me thought so, too.

As fate would have it, our employers were encouraging us to take time off. Without much strategizing, we found ourselves work-free on Cheryl’s mid-week natal day. A grander celebration was now possible.

Spa treatments? A meal at one of the Napa Valley’s finest? Possibly.  But this is Cheryl we’re talking about. This woman definitely has her druthers.

Then I had my moment of inspiration: Alice Waters. Cheryl has endless admiration and fascination for this Berkeley foodie icon.

Dropping Jonathan off at school, we plunged into rush-hour traffic. An hour later we were on San Pablo Avenue, standing in line at Cafe Fanny.

Cafe Fanny, a Waters creation, is as small as a shoe box, but very Parisian, with French movie posters on the walls and music to match. The menu suggests a Left Bank bistro.

And it gets better. Customers must compete for a half-dozen outdoor tables or come inside where the choices are a long bench or a stand-up bar.

That’s right. A bar. Like an old West saloon.

We once did stand-up. It was way cool, but also exhausting. We now prefer the bench. Yes, it’s awkward finessing cups of coffee and pastries in the bolt upright position, but the bench offers a good vantage point for observing the local fauna.

Berkeley residents wear different clothes than we do. Sandals cut from tapestries, hats woven from yak hair, free-range jackets from tiny villages in Guatemala. The Gap? Forget it.

We took in the Berkeleyites while munching on the world’s flakiest morning bun (Cheryl) and a raisin scone slathered with plum marmalade (me).

Many refills of coffee later, we sloshed out the door and lined up next-door at the Acme Bakery, another Alice Waters-inspired business, for cinnamon bread and a crusty dinner loaf for home.

If you have Alice Waters embedded in your brain, you will believe this is the best bread you have ever tasted.

We killed an hour or two on Shattuck Avenue as anticipation built for the centerpiece of Cheryl’s celebratory day: lunch at Chez Panisse Cafe.

Yes, Alice Waters again. The cafe is the less formal, less costly upstairs sister to her legendary restaurant, Chez Panisse.

As fate would have it, Cheryl was given a premium seat beneath a large mirror where she could take in the flowers, the other diners, the sheer wonderfulness of it all.

The menu touted seasonal ingredients, nearly all locally sourced. Figs, goat cheese, wild nettles. Chez Panisse even carbonates its own table water.

Our waiter helped us choose glasses of French and Napa Valley wines. They went with Cattail Creek Ranch lamb with sweet corn polenta and tomatillos and a pan-fried Soul Food Farm chicken breast with eggplant salad and salsa verde.

Cheryl was soon glowing. I didn’t know if it was the wine or the uncharacteristically hot Berkeley weather. She began stripping off layers of clothing until she was down to the bare minimum, a camisole.

This was one happy woman. The meal’s magic quotient shot higher when the waiter, hearing of the birthday, surprised us with complimentary fruit: a bowl of miniature Thompson seedless grapes from Ram Das Orchards and a perfect pluot.

Do not try this at your local supermarket, dear reader. It won’t be the same.

The fruit set up the meal’s apotheosis, a warm blackberry/peach cobbler — fruit from Frog Hollow Farm — with house-made mulberry ice cream. The coffee: Blue Bottle.

It was during dessert that it happened. Cheryl’s radiance intensified. She got brighter and brighter. I could actually feel the heat.

Then, at her moment of peak bliss, she floated, actually floated, out from her seat and hovered  —beatifically, I would say — above us all.

It was an astonishing sight. A transcendent foodie moment. Thanks to Alice Waters, Cheryl, the birthday girl, was in full glory.

Kevin can be reached at 256-2217 or kcourtney@napanews.com