Wine Country - Buchon Bakery

They picked up a light lunch at Buchon Bakery before leaving Yountville to head for Healdsburg. The beef brisket with rye bread was full flavored and the macaroons were great value at US$2 a piece. The lemon tart was delicious but still couldn't beat the ones they tried in Paris or from Joel Robuchon when they first opened in Hong Kong.

Buchon Bakery is worth a separate entry because it also sells Foie Gras Dog Biscuits!! Maybe mum and dad will find the recipe and bake some for our next birthday. Yahoo!!

Wine Country - Bistro Jeanty

If you look at their travel itinerary, sometimes wonder where mum tugs all her excess fat away. Nothing seems to happen in between eating and drinking for them. Unless you count spending several hours in a factory outlet mall near Napa.

Even though Bistro Jeanty is also a Michelin starred restaurant, the atmosphere is completely different to the other Michelin starred restaurants during this trip. It is very casual and gives you a feeling that you have been transported to a bistro in the heart of Paris.

The menu is full of classic, simple French dishes. Definitely no over-engineered dishes, what you see is what you taste and what you get. But what you get is dish after dish of warm comfort food expertly cooked that you would love to get near your doorsteps.

They had soups as starters. The cream of tomato soup in puff pastry was definitely the most memorable dish of the day. The silky smooth soup was overflowing with flavors and would be the perfect start to any dinner especially in a cold night. If you can get the same fresh ingredients that they have you can even try making it at home. Here is the recipe. The onion soup was very good but the tomato soup was better.

Next they had a fried bone marrow, which was beautifully cooked and finger licking yummy. They were going to share a steak tartare but mum decided against eating more after one bite of what resembled raw beef burger to her. While dad kept stuffing himself with raw egg and raw beef, mum ordered an egg-white leek tart which was the special of the day.

This Michelin star meal came at a much lower price tag, really helpful staff and immensely enjoyable dinner. Highly recommended if you go to Napa Valley.

Wine Country - First meal, the French Laundry

Unlike the first meal in downtown San Francisco, their first meal in the wine country was much anticipated and the table was reserved 6 weeks in advance. And above all, strict dress code is enforced in the restaurant. If not for the suit jackets they have on loan, dad would have to bring one specially from Hong Kong.

The French Laundry sits at a quiet corner of a residential area along a quiet stretch of Washington Street. I will spare you with all the accolades but you can find it all in the attached link. Due to planning restrictions in the surrounding residential area, the restaurant's sign is inconspicuous and one would probably miss driving by. Despite the manic rush, mum and dad managed to get there on time. The restaurant's decor tried to impart a cozy ambience
but the formal greetings at the door took some of the warmth and ease away from the coziness. The jacket imposed by the dress code didn't help matters for dad.

The French Laundry serves 2 different fixed price menus of US$240 per person (service inclusive), one of them being the vegetarian. The two carnivores never considered turning vegetarian, especially not at this night. One wouldn't expect anything less than perfection in terms of presentation and flavors from each dish and it managed to live up to expectation with some sparkling display of cooking. Even so, the meal was missing the "wow" factor for them. Something that really challenges your taste buds and makes you remember for much longer than just the course of the meal.

Maybe having been to Per Se before took some of the novelty out, as both restaurants share some of the same signature dishes. The canapes, "Cornets" - Salmon tartare with sweet red onion creme fraiche, and the appetizer, "Oysters and Pearls" - Sabayon of Pearl Tapioca with Island Creek Oysers and White Sturgeon Caviar were both delicious and delivered intense flavors in two small packages. But they had the same signature dishes in Per Se just under 2 years ago.

Still it was a superb meal with some of the best beef (Snake River Farms whose cattle are crosses between Japanese Wagyu and US Black Angus) cooked to perfection and fish seared with a delicious crispy skin.

Another highlight of the night was mum continued her streak of encountering foreign bodies in Michelin top rated restaurants. The culprit was a small piece of black fiber. The prize for finding that in her dessert was she got a new one made at once and dad got a different one, since he finished his already and Guillaume, the waiter, didn't want mum to eat alone and dad to eat the same dessert twice!!

The final, final dessert was a doughnut and espresso semi-freddo, which had great presentation, but it was a bit too sweet for their liking. It's an all American dessert after all.

Wine Country - mad rush before dinner

The drive from Big Sur back to the Wine country was a long one and it didn't help that traffic out of San Francisco downtown towards the north was exceptionally bad. For someone who have been blessed with smooth traffic in the previous few days, it was painful. All the more so, when you were stuck waiting anxiously for the next exit with public bathroom facilities. To top it all off, a table was reserved in a restaurant which was supposedly impossible.

Without arranging any accommodation, they knocked on the door of Lavender in Yountville. Having read some brief commentary in the 2008 Michelin guide, this looked like a winner. And it was indeed the choice of countless other travelers. No vacancy for the night and in fact nothing for the previous and coming 2 weeks. The lady behind the counter was particularly helpful. Not only did she insist that mum and dad have a few of the wine and cheeses on display for the hotel's guest, she even called around to find them a room. It was almost 6 o'clock and the dinner booking was at 7:30.

Apparently, September is the harvest and grape crushing season for Napa, so even though business has slowed down, there were no shortage of travelers. After calling a few places, the lady (perhaps they will remember her name one day and you see the importance of keeping a travel notebook) managed to find them a last-minute room in Napa Valley Lodge at a good discount.