W00t! I'm in Napa Valley for the first time ever!
I've
been looking forward to this weekend for exactly 61 days, ever since
our foodtastic friend JenC booked a dinner reservation at much praised
(and much expen$$$ive) Thomas Keller restaurant,
The French Laundry.
The secret to getting a coveted dinner date? According to Jen: booking
2 months in advance, and mutton bashing on OpenTable.com minutes after
reservation times begin!
After semi-hastily packing up our weekend bags early this afternoon and
driving up to Emeryville/Berkeley area to meet up with Jen, her sister
Vivien, and their friend James in the parking lot of the
Scharffenberger chocolate factory, we headed for
Vino Bello, a timeshare at the tip of of Napa Valley. Our first dinner of the trip was at BarBersQ (
Official Website |
Yelp Review),
which was a very classy BBQ joint. Our server was a great lady, and in
no time delicious appetizers and entrees were set out in front of us.
JenC and I took out our gorillapods and Canon cameras and took our
first food pr0n of the weekend. I have apprenticed myself officially to
JenC as her "food fluffer" (they explained what that actually was
afterwards......). She has been teaching me all the manual functions of
my Canon SD1000 that I've never known before, and now I'm practicing on
this trip so prepared to be inundated with food pr0n. (Thank you Jen!!!)
My favorite part of the meal had to have been the
Grilled West Coast oysters. There were 6 for the 5 of us, and I
pilfered the last one. :] Alan also ordered an amazing pulled pork
sandwich, and it was gone in about 30 seconds - but I snuck one bite
out of it, and it was fanTAStic, on the same level of the best pulled
pork I've ever had (which is from Daisy May's in New York City). The
full rack of ribs we got to share were pretty good - I always find ribs
that have been dry-cooked lacking in juiciness, which I like, but the
BarBersQ special sauce rack made them absolutely delicious. Same thing
with the chili - good, but not special, until a drop of the specially
made, organic hot sauce (it was named Frog's Leap or something like
that, made specially for the restaurant).
Dessert was also especially good - I got the key
lime pie. The graham cracker crust was extremely good, but the pie was
a bit tart - for genuine key lime I'd probably still recommend getting
them in their native state of Florida. The pecan pie was wonderful,
especially with the chocolate and caramel mixed in.
Three guys at the table next to us started to take interest in our
constant yammer about setting up macro shots and taking pictures of
every dish that came out way. Eventually they struck up conversation
with Jen, and lo and behold, the guy was the OWNER of the restaurant we
were sitting in. His name was Jean (spelling?) and he was a very nice
guy who was very interested in what we thought of the place (and very
curious of our gorillapods on our cameras). We ended up spending two
hours eating, chatting, and
taking pictures. Jean gave Jen a long list of wineries and restaurants
he recommended, with Jen fervently taking notes. We're definitely
gonna be running out of meals before meal ideas, but we'll make the
best of our time here!! Here's hoping that the rest of this trip is as
cool and promising as the start!
Full Flickr set here - will update as the days progress!
