review: napa + the french laundry

the french laundry / 6640 washington street / yountville ca / 707-944-2380 / dinner 5:30-9pm daily, lunch f-sun 11-1pm / reservations accepted up to 2 months in advance (recommended, and be prepared to call continuously exactly at the moment when you can call for a reservation) / tasting menu extremely expensive ($240)

i wonder if yountville became what it is after the french laundry opened (i think it was 1993 or 1994 according to what i overheard from the waiter as he told the table next to us), or if the french laundry opened when yountville was already what it is. i think it was the former. at any rate, the french laundry is located safely away from the so-touristy-it's-surreal area of the town. across from the restaurant there's a vegetable and herb patch for the restaurant, where there are beets, zucchini, watermelon, various herbs, etc. it's a strange place for an herb garden - right next to all of the cars! - but it's cool to see it there. there was even a little patch of corn growing there.

the restaurant - like alinea (grant achatz used to work at the french laundry) - is located in a house, rather than a space on the first floor of a larger building. it's more home-like than alinea, partly because it's in california, i think. we were seated on the second floor, up a staircase that the waitstaff ascended and descended with such smoothness that i wondered how long it took them to master the movement. basically, sitting in the restaurant is like sitting in someone's nice sitting room or parlor - the decor was vaguely french, with the bathrooms contained behind a mirror and wood paneled wall. the chairs were really comfortable, which is good for those who spend four hours eating lunch (i've never understood plastic chairs in restaurants). upon sitting down, i immediately recognized the way the napkin was folded and pinned with a clothespin from the french laundry cookbook (this clothespin wasn't blank, but was basically a business card in the form of a clothespin). incidentally, i still haven't mastered the art of having my chair pushed in for me - i always sit down too soon! if you have pointers on the etiquette of gracefully doing this, please tell me.

i'll say this now (and post the vegetarian menu later) - the vegetable tasting at french laundry is the only vegetarian menu i've ever seen in my life that was actually competitive with other menu offerings. i very much almost got that instead of the chef's tasting. i had tastes every now and then from jessica, and let me tell you, it was really fantastic. when i first started hearing about french laundry, i pretty much just brushed it off as overpriced good ingredients. admittedly, i never really bothered to find out exactly what was going on here, but i'll happily recant my former opinion. i think i've also become much more attuned to the quality of produce, so i probably couldn't have eaten at french laundry before now and appreciated it.

there was a table next to us with a largish group that included a woman with 80s-era style and melodrama who had just graduated from business school. she was very...american, we might say. ok, she was kind of loud and a food novice. i wouldn't normally harp on food novices because you have to start somewhere, but honestly, people who go to a restaurant just because they hear it's famous really annoy me. wouldn't you look up reviews and web stuff about a famous restaurant you're going to, instead of sweeping in, ordering champagne, and grandly telling the waiter that you just want whatever the chef's best dishes are? (fyi: thomas keller was not in the restaurant when we were there, but he was slated to arrive in the afternoon.) sigh. the rest of us prefer to concentrate on the food. i mean, i know she was celebrating...but must one celebrate so vocally?

ok, so this is a breakdown of what we had, plus my comments (a la alinea). to drink: water and various grape juices (a gewurtztraminer and a pinot noir) - basically the liquid before they ferment it into wine. french laundry only gets a few cases of these a year, from the navarro vineyard. the pinot noir was a bit too sweet and one-dimensional (fittingly, it needed to be fermented) but the gewurtztraminer was wonderfully fruity and floral at the same time. mmm.... one can always hope that the future will hold navarro gewurtztraminer juice.

i : gougeres - best gougeres i've ever had in my life, hands down

ii : salmon "puree" in a sesame cone with chives and creme fraiche: there's something strange about eating salmon in a cone as if it were ice cream, but it was extremely good anyway. it reminded me of the microplaned salmon at alinea, but there was, of course, more salmon and it had this wonderful texture to it.

1 : cauliflower "panna cotta" with beau soleil oyster glaze and russian sevruga caviar - the caviar was very, very, very good

2 : "peach melba" - poached moulard duck "foie gras au torchon", masomoto family farm peach jelly, pickled peaches, marinated red onion, "melba toast" and crisped carolina rice - this was an the choice i took over a pluot and heart-of-peach-palm salad. it was pretty good. i think this was a bit too delicate for my tastes, though it was excellent - i prefer the pork rillettes at craigie street bistrot. it was a very satisfyingly whimsical presentation, though.

3 : extra virgin olive oil poached fillet of gulf coast red snapper, oven roasted roma tomatoes, jacobsen's farm summer squash, nicoise olives and garden basil "pistou" - we all got annoyed with the skin of the snapper, which was kind of tough to cut through with the fish utensils one uses in good company, but the snapper itself was really, really wonderful. it was really flavorful, perfectly cooked, perfect firmness...mmm... this tops the black bass i had at no 9 park in terms of ingredients, easily. the combination of all of the flavors in this - especially the pesto ("pistou" is the provencal word for pesto) - was really great, but it was really the fish that stood out.

4 : "fricassee" of maine lobster mitts "cuit sous vide", golden corn pudding, summer truffle "coulis" and summer truffle "filaments" - i was slightly disappointed with the lobster, which seemed a tad overdone, or stringy or something, to me. however, the combination of flavors in this dish was transcendent. the truffles at french laundry are many times better than the truffles i had at alinea - full-flavored and earthy. jessica had truffles grated onto something she had, and they came over with a laquered black box on a silver tray, extracted the truffle from the box, microplaned truffle onto her dish, and replaced the truffle in the box (which then brings into question - how many people end up touching that thing???). ok, back to the lobster. "cuit sous vide" means that they cooked the stuff slowly while it was vacuum-packed (see this past sunday's nyt for an article on it, featuring thomas keller and a bit of the dude at el bulli). but man, the combination of the lobster, corn, and truffle...i can't get over it. by the way, there was a point to having both the truffle coulis and filaments - the difference in textures was actually significant. the lobster i had at alinea, however, was more perfectly cooked, i think.

5 : "aiguillette" of liberty valley duck breast, wilted mizuna, slow baked black mission figs, port wine and young ginger "vinaigrette" - well, "aiguille" means needle in french if i'm not mistaken, but i don't know how that applies to the duck breast. i was surprised that they didn't give us sharper knives for the duck breast, which had some stringy element one one side between the skin and the meat that was difficult to cut in general. this was good, but necessarily fantastic.

6 : snake river farm "calotte de boeuf grillee" (cap of the rib eye), grey morel mushrooms, roasted jacobsen's farm young leeks, yukon gold potato "parisienne" and "sauce bordelaise" - jessica's dad thought that this was the best of all of the dishes. i think i was more impressed with the lobster, but it's true that this beef is the best i've ever had in my life (i have to admit that i wasn't really impressed with the flavor of the bison at alinea). the morels - well, i love morels. these were great - a little salty, but they went so well with the beef, i couldn't really complain. i do think that the morels that i had at craigie street bistrot and no 9 park were better, though. the man at the farmers market in hyde park told me that the season for morels was over about a month ago, so i don't know where they're getting them from at french laundry. then again, it is california, land of ever-growing produce... ok, the beef. the leeks were great, though as jessica's dad commented, i wouldn't have minded a few more... the potatoes were similarly excellent. but the centerpiece of the thing was the beef - everything was really there to glorify the beef.

7 : "meadow creek grayson" with caramel apples, toasted walnuts, baby arugula and pomegranate reduction - all i can say about the caramel apple is "wow." i don't think i've ever had an apple that tasted like that! it was unbelievably sweet, crisp, flavorful...maybe i'll have to go and try apples again when i'm back home - i don't really believe that good apples are hard to find in boston. i was, however, more allergic to this apple (it was raw) than i usually am. hm. anyway, the whole thing was good, though i prefer sharper cheeses.

8 : lychee sorbet, "yuzu scented genoise", goma "nougatine" and black sesame "coulis" - this was amazing. the lychee sorbet was like a good chinese watercolor, if you can imagine the juxtaposition of those two images. it was wonderfully cool and...well, i can't really describe it. it was just amazing. and especially with the black sesame stuff everywhere - it was just the right thing to go with it. it reminded me a lot of the black sesame candy my sister and i used to eat when we were kids.

9 : "tentation au chocolat noisette et lait", milk chocolate "cremeux", hazelnut "streusel" with madagascar vanilla ice cream and sweetened salty hazelnuts - perhaps not as transcendent as the lychee sorbet, but that's probably because i'm more used to chocolate desserts. this one, though it wasn't as transcendent as the sorbet, was not lacking by any means. what i liked best was the layer of stuff underneath the milk chocolate "cremeux" - basically a cross between mousse and panna cotta. it was amazing, the chocolate with the stuff underneath. the sweetened salty hazelnuts were also really good - the salt was perfect with them.

and post-menu: "mignardises" - these have to be the best post-menu, tiered-silver-tray tidbits i've ever had. first, they brought us tiny creme brulees and pots de creme (each of us had one or the other). i had the creme brulee and it was great. and, they certainly recognized that people always love eating tiny things. whenever i have creme brulee, i always think of amelie, and unwittingly start to tap at the sugar the way she does. after the tiny cream-based stuff, they brought us the tiered silver tray, which has a number of tempting things on it: a shortbread cookie, a financier with raspberry jam on it, two little cakes with sultanas in them, a tiny chocolate tart with a flake of gold leaf on it, two chocolate-pistachio candies wrapped in plastic, and a plate of coconut french macaroons. the macaroons were fantastic. i ate the financier. i don't think i've ever had a better financier. i do love almonds... ooh, so much. ok, and finally, they came around with a silver tray with rows of truffles on it. i had an earl grey truffle. very good, but still nothing on burdick's, which is still tops in my book for chocolates. (p.s. the bill came on a laundry ticket.)

the service was great - our server was very attentive and as they do with tasting menus, they tell you what's in each dish. they were attentive without being pretentious. i wonder if they're happy working there. it seems like it. they also gave us a copy of the menu upon request. a word about the menu: what's up with all of the quotation marks? let's take, for example, the "cauliflower 'panna cotta'" - obviously the chef thinks of it as a panna cotta, so the menu should just call the thing a panna cotta. maybe it's not how other people might think of panna cotta, but the menu is the announcement of the chef's intentions, not a list of things that the diner is used to hearing.

so i think this whole rambling account probably deserves some sort of summary. well, i have to admit that i'm still kind of in a daze, having gone to so many good - ok, not just good, legendary - restaurants in such a short period of time. as it is, i wanted to go to a few other places in chicago (everest, avenues, spring, and green zebra come to mind) but my funds ran out, sadly. or rather, they didn't run out, but i decided that i'd rather have food for days than one evening. ok, back to french laundry. i can't really judge whether it's the best i've ever had. i think that it ties with alinea on my list - alinea because it's so wonderfully experimental, and french laundry because it finds such wonderful ways to showcase fabulous ingredients. i wouldn't have thought that there was such an art in creating culinary vehicles for really good ingredients, but there is, and when it's done well, you get french laundry. i liked the service a little better here than at alinea - perhaps slightly less unctuously smooth, but still great and much more personable. somehow at alinea they're a little...well, i felt like i was being patronized a little bit when i asked questions. it was really lovely to have a nice, leisurely lunch - i can't remember when i last had lunch like i did at french laundry. ok, not in the four-hours-of-leisure way, but a leisurely lunch in general. usually i go grab a teriyaki bowl from tokyo lunch box and eat at my desk. who wants to eat outside when it's gross and humid?

anyway, that's enough rambling. hopefully i'll post more coherent summary thoughts when they finally cohese.