Napa Archives - Food, Booze, & Baggage

Alternative titles…. “That Time We Drove 9 hours For Dinner”, “Other Things To Do In The Napa Valley Other Than Eat At The French Laundry”, “Last Minute Napa”

This was such a very last minute trip, I didn’t stress too much over getting the most out of Napa. We did not do our regular “how much can we fit in one day” itinerary like we do on many trips. We drove up on Thursday, and drove home on Saturday. Thursday night was our dinner at The French Laundry. We did not have much spare time between arriving and our 9:00 reservation. Friday was really the only day to worry about, and we just decided to see how the day went without too much of a plan.

We stayed our first night in Yountville, so that we could be within walking distance of the primary objective of the whole trip, TFL 🙂 I’m really glad we did, it was a beautiful walk up and back to the restaurant, and the town is very cute. We did have a bit of a issue with lodging. We were going to stay at the Napa Valley Railroad Inn, since it was the cheapest option, however upon checking-in (I mean letting ourselves into our room) we just couldn’t stay there. The room was dirty and gross (hair in the bathroom, holes in the wall, and a wrapper on the floor). The key to our room was hard to work as well and we did not want to come back at midnight to find we could not get in and no one there to help. However, to their credit they did refund our room. With a phone call to the help number we got confirmation they would refund our night and we checked into Villagio Inn & Spa, that is right beside the Railroad Inn. The cost difference was under $100 so it was 110% worth the hassle. I would not have been comfortable in the first hotel. The Villagio room was very clean, huge, but just a little dated looking. Plenty of space to relax in the room, including a little private courtyard (or balcony).

Yountville certainly is a sleepy kind of town, with very little in way of “nightlife” outside of dining. It seemed like most tasting rooms in the area were only open until 5. I think you would be hard pressed to figure out entertainment in the evening hours after dinner. I was glad we had already decided to stay the second night in Napa.

The next morning, we made a stop at our hotel’s buffet brunch, which looked quite nice, though we only sampled a few items as I wanted to go by Bouchon. We walked around Yountville enjoying the Fall colors and of course stopping by Bouchon…While we did sample the Bouchon bakery when we stayed at the Venetian in Vegas, I was not about to pass up a trip to the original. It was tasty and a lovely way to start the morning. It was super relaxing to sit out in the sun eating and feeding the birds pastry crumbs 🙂 Someone might have been scolding me about feeding the birds, and that someone might have knocked the below onto the ground and we got mobbed. That just MIGHT have happened.

After our snacks we walked back down to get pictures of the French Laundry farm. We checked-out of our hotel and headed to downtown Napa.

There we walked a little more around downtown before heading into the Oxbow Public Market.

The Oxbow Market is sort of like an upscale food court idea. Lots to browse, eat, and drink. Our first stop was at Hog Island Oyster Co, where we enjoyed some oysters on the half shell, baked oysters (SO SO GOOD), and a nice dry wine. We then walked around some of the shops, did a liquor tasting, bought some bitters, and settled outside with a cheese platter and wine. We used that time to find a nearby winery and booked a tasting.

We opted for the winery closest to our hotel. No research on the wine, based solely on location. The William Hill Estate Winery was beautiful, and very relaxing. The service was great and not rushed or stuffy. We should have stuck with their white wines, but we did a mix, two reds and one white. The reds were not that good in my opinion, but the white we tried was great. Still totally worth it for the view and experience. Plus as an unexpected bonus our tasting was buy one, get one, since we were staying at the Silverado Resort.

We then checked into our room, had a little nap, and opened a bottle of wine we had bought at the Oxbow Market. The room was small, but very nice and more updated in decor than the Villagio. Later we headed via Lyft to the Cadet Beer & Wine Bar. This place was so neat, and offered a nice selection of wine and beer. Great service here too…but no pictures. It was so dark and they just did not turn out. P and I both got a flight of wine, and I liked all of the wines served for the flight. It was a great stop.

We then headed to our dinner at Torc. This place got great reviews and we were super happy with our choice. All the dishes were well prepared and had great flavor. We had: Deviled Eggs, Foie Gras (Cooked), Risotto, Short Ribs, and Mac & Cheese. My least favorite was the risotto, it tasted great, and was well cooked, but they added cauliflower to it and it made for a super weird texture. I kept thinking I was getting clumps of uncooked rice. That was my only complaint with the meal. I was stuffed by the time our last course came, so much food! Given that I was stuffed, I was ready to be off to bed.

The next morning we went back to downtown Napa to have breakfast at the Napa General Store & Cafe, before heading back home. The breakfast was good, very solid meal, but not overly fancy. It was a good pick for a sit down but casual breakfast.

The Napa area is just beautiful, and I was so happy we got a little taste of Fall colors. I would certainly love to go back…but maybe not drive 🙂 It was a long, boring drive. We were also fairly traumatized by the amount of pollution you drive through in the Central Valley, and realizing most of what we eat is grown in that chemical bath. This was the worst smog I’ve ever seen, so thick and gross looking. This was also the most farms I’ve ever seen too, it was crazy just miles and miles of farm land.

For more to do in the Napa area, make sure to check out Lauren’s (Eat Drink & Be Lauren) posts on their visit!! They did a bit more planning than we did 🙂

Have you ever been to Napa? If so what is a can’t miss stop? Would you drive 9 hours for dinner?

So a few weeks ago this happened….

For those of you who are not a total chef stalker, this is Chef Thomas Keller and it was taken at The French Laundry. The French Laundry has been a HUGE (HUGE) bucket list item for me since college. This episode of a Cook’s Tour with Anthony Bourdain sealed the deal for me.

Of course The French Laundry shows up on a ton of best of lists, and is considered one of the top restaurants in the United States. It is a true foodie destination and something I’ve talked about wanting to do for over 10 years. When we got the reservation I couldn’t even believe it. I was so anxious, because I’ve been wanting to do this for so long. I know some of you reading this won’t get it, and that is ok. To you it is just food, it’s just a dinner. To me it’s an experience, a dream, and something every single time I’ve read/watched a show about it I’ve said “OMG I want to go there”. It’s the experience not just the meal. It’s getting to finally know for yourself if this is the best meal you will ever have.

The French Laundry is notorious for being very hard to get in to. You need to know someone or you get lucky. We got lucky. P just happened to check OpenTable while we were talking about it on Friday night, and they had three reservations open for that coming Thursday. We jumped at the opportunity and made it happen. Yes, we drove 9+ hours to go to dinner.

I’ll share next Thursday where we stayed and what else we did on the trip. This post is dedicated solely to TFL (THE FRENCH LAUNDRY) 🙂 My pictures are not great – the lighting was poor, and while I wanted to document it, my main focus was to enjoy the experience. I debated sharing each dish, but thought why not. I 100% knew I wanted to blog about this, as it is huge to me, even if I only shared a picture of the sign 🙂 For much more flattering pictures of a TFL meal, check out Esther’s post on their trip to The French Laundry.

Our reservation was at 9:00 on Thursday night. We drove in that day, and basically went straight to dinner. I had not eaten since around 11:00 that day so I was fairly hungry, though my nerves made me a little less so than normal I think. The building itself is very unassuming especially at night. We walked into the reception area, and did wait a minute or so for someone to show up to the front. We did catch a glimpse of the chef as he was coming out of the kitchen, so we knew we were there on a particularly good night.

We got a great seat, on the first floor, right next to the fireplace. The interior was cozy, to me it had almost a ski lodge feel, lots of wood, golden lighting, plus the fireplace. You have more of a concierge than waitress. I don’t think she served us food at all, but she explained things to us, took our orders, poured wine, and brought the bill. I kind of thought of her as our guide through our meal. The menu does change daily, however Keller has a few staples that I think must always be served. I mean at least they showed up on A Cook’s Tour in 2002 and on our table in November 2015. You have two choices the Chef’s Tasting Menu or The Tasting of Vegetable Menu (ie all vegetarian), P and I both got the Chef’s Tasting Menu. For some of the courses for an additional fee, you can substitute the standard dish with a different dish that is listed. There were three courses with substitutions offered and we tried two. So let’s get started…

The salmon cone (salmon cornets), started our meal and was also the starter in A Cook’s Tour.

Along with the salmon cone were gruyère gougères. Both a great start to our meal.

Oysters and Pearls, which is another “signature” French Laundry dish. Another dish that showed up on A Cook’s Tour. This was sabayon of pearl tapioca with Island Creek oysters and white sturgeon caviar. It was basically like a butter pudding with caviar and oysters. I loved this dish, though I liked the caviar on the dish more than the oysters. The oysters were a bit more fishy than salty for my taste, but it wasn’t bad, it just could have been better if the oysters were more on the briny side. The caviar was super nice and salty though. This was one supplement course that we did not try.

Hawaiian Hearts of Peach Palm with Hadley Orchards medjool dates, marcona almonds, thompson grapes, and garden sorrel. This was the worst course, it made no sense to me. It was very bland and just weird. I still don’t know what the white disks were. This dish 100% failed for me. Luckily we only had one to share and this course offered a supplement.

The supplement Elevages Perigord Moulard Duck Foie Gras Rillette with sour apple marmalade, apple cider gelee, cauliflower florets and pea tendrils. Which was fantastic! Loved it. The foie gras came with the variety of salts, which was so fun and good. We of course, did not pass up trying every one of them and put salt on our bread and butter for tasting:) I’m pretty sure the waiter was a bit shocked at the amount of salt we used. I’m sure he thought, “do you want some foie gras with your salt?”

Slow Cooked Pacific Sea Bream with yellow lipstick peppers, cerignola olives, cutting celery and saffron vierge. This dish was not a winner for me either. I liked the fish, but the olives in the dish were completely overwhelming. If you could get a bite without an olive then it was much more well balanced, since there was also olive in the fish. Nicely cooked but unbalanced.

Caesar Salad with sweet butter poached Maine lobster, caramelized romaine lettuce, sweet garlic melba and greek bottarga emulsion. This dish was really interesting and would have been better if my lobster had been cooked a bit more, it was definitely a bit undercooked. P’s piece was cooked better.

Pork and Beans with all day braised Salmon Creek Farms pork belly, cassoulet of Rancho Gordo pole beans, garden collard greens and whole grain mustard. This dish was great, I loved the beans.

Of course it was a bit overshadowed with the supplement dish of this course. The supplement dish offered was Carnaroli Risotto Biologico with parmigiano reggiano, browned butter and shaved white truffles from Alba. OMG this dish was amazing, that is the only word for it. Buttery, earthy, salty, warm, goodness!! Look at all those truffles!! Which were shaved table side.

Charcoal Grilled Snake River Farms Calotte De Boeuf of dry aged brisket, yukon gold potato confit, caramelized garden onions, scallion salad, and sauce bordelaise. This dish was melt in your mouth, but extremely rich. I think I was getting food fatigue at this point. I was even pacing myself, with eating only about half my prior courses, and was feeling stuffed. P was basically eating one and a half plates 🙂

Andante Dairy Acapella with french prune pudding, pickled ruby beets, english walnuts, and wild arugula. This was the cheese course, and the cheese was very good. I didn’t get a whole lot of flavor from the pudding.

Finally we finished with a full table of desserts. They just kept on coming. My favorite was the passionfruit one with a basil oil and some other stuff. It was yummy!! All of it was good. I did ask for our macaroons, house-made chocolates, and cocoa macadamia nuts to be wrapped up. I figured we would save what we could as we were not going to finish our dessert assortment. In addition to our goodies they also gave us two boxes of shortbread cookies in souvenir tins. All of it was pretty amazing.

After three hours of gorging ourselves we were ready for bed! It was a very memorable night. I was ecstatic that I got to meet the chef on top of it all. Our waitress did ask if I would like to meet the chef and she did ask if I wanted a picture. P took the picture 🙂 Chef Keller was very friendly and it was a highlight of the evening. He recommended the Addison here in San Diego, so we know where I’m requesting my birthday dinner this next year 🙂 I did not find the experience overly stuffy or formal, as one might think. It was a great night.

Most people ask when hearing about such an extravagant dinner, “was it worth it?”. Which is an impossible question – for me, “yes”, for you, “I don’t know”. P and I always say when asked that questions about prior dinners, “for us, yes, it was an experience”. We still talk about our dinners from our honeymoon that was over two-years ago. I will say, this was not overall the best dinner I’ve ever had. I was more wowed on the food alone from our dinner at De Vitrine in Ghent…I know right?!!? De Vitrine was just a hands down amazing, amazing meal. Many of the ingredients were super simple, no truffles, caviar, etc but it was all executed at such a level that I will never forget it. However, that does not mean I regret going to the French Laundry or I didn’t enjoy our experience there. I’m am unbelievably happy I got the opportunity to sit down and enjoy that meal on a random Thursday night. I will never forget the first time I got to eat half a truffle!! It is something that we will talk about for years to come and other meals will be measured against.

As a side note, we were given the menus from our dinner, otherwise there would been a whole lot less of a description for each dish 🙂

Would you jump at the chance to eat at the French Laundry (or have you)? What is the most memorable meal you have ever had?