Thursday - June 21, 2018
Our journey to Foodie Mecca (AKA The French Laundry - oh how I love thee!) actually began 4 months before. To make a long story short (and to avoid much bitching and gnashing of teeth) I was supposed to go to Napa for a work conference. That didn't happen. 😑 But during the course of planning for the work conference I started looking into The French Laundry, a place I always aspired to visit but thought was out of my reach because I don't have an Amex black card with its fancy concierge to make 8,395 phone calls a day to try to reach the ONE woman who made reservations for this esteemed establishment for one of its limited coveted tables (sob!). But once I looked into it, I realized that they changed their reservation system about a year before where it's now MUCH more accessible - because it's no longer just ONE woman answering all 10,405,405 calls, it's how fast you can refresh and grab a spot and enter your credit card information online - which is a game I'm very good at. So a group of good friends and I decided that yes, we were going to go for it and do it if I could nab us reservations - which are released on the first day of odd number months exactly at 10 am for reservations beginning 3 months out with reservations released 2 months at a time. I know, I know. So on March 1st, at 9:50 am, I was hitting refresh on my phone every second or so just in case they released like, 4 seconds early - but I was on their website EXACTLY at 10:00:00 am and almost ALL the reservations for 2 person tables were gone. I nabbed a 4 person table at 5:30 pm (because otherwise it would be 9 pm and as it's a 4 hour meal, I couldn't hang that late) and after putting $1400 on my credit card for a meal that was over 3 months way, I felt slightly ill for half a second before I danced around my office like a lunatic.
So, the 4 of us were prepared to travel to Napa via San Francisco to THE BEST RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD (cue the cheering). And we planned and talked about it and dreamed about it for three months. Okay, maybe I'm the one who fantasized about it and dreamt about it for three months. Because that's what I do, I dream about food. I think about food. I fantasize about food. While I'm eating food. Because we (or I) are [am] cheap, we opted to stay in Nob Hill at the International Mark Hopkins, right across the street from the Fairmont. It got good reviews from Tripadvisor, and also, we got a discount so it was under $300 a night (sob!). It was lovely and historic...and it was up the freaking hill from hell. It was soooo steep. We took one look and ended up ubering the whole trip 😑. We're crazy, but not that crazy. Also, the entrance/exit of the hotel was at the CORNER of the street. Literally, the CORNER of the sidewalk. And there were always tourists just standing there blocking the way because they're not paying attention to the line of cars IN FRONT OF THEM trying to get into the hotel. Tourists. (like we weren't! But we're Californians!)
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| it's our room! Just the outside |
So...I generally take photos of hotel rooms because I'm crazy. But I totally forgot! But I did totally take a photo of the bathroom. It was not large, but it was very well appointed. Proving that an old hotel can be updated very nicely (see that Hotel Del Coronado???).
I also got a photo of the view out of our window. We can almost sorta barely see water!
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| you can't really appreciate it from my weenie photo, but you can see we are at the top of the hill and see the sloping of the street start. You can also see the entrance to the hotel. It's where that person waiting on the street corner is 😑. |
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| hushpuppies...😍 |
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| beignet flight...😍😍😍 I mean, how can fried sweet dough in sugar EVER be wrong? |
The shrimp and grits were AHMAZING. I'm drooling thinking about it. I only had grits once before, and I thought they were okay, but these are NOT the same as Cracker Barrel's grits! They're not even in the same universe. These grits (all I know about grits I learned from My Cousin Vinny) were savory, and cheesy, spicy, and so, so, so delicious. OMG. And unlike the grits in My Cousin Vinny, these were indeed magical grits (sigh).
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| seriously, saliva just pooled in my mouth looking at this photo |
Charlyn ordered oysters something something because she be fancy.
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| fancy people oysters |
We got the fried chicken plate. And it was amazing. Because it's FRIED CHICKEN. I have no words to describe it other than nomnom. The biscuit was also delicious - it was GINORMOUS and fluffy and so freaking good. The collard greens were okay. They were probably delicious, but I wasn't interested because it was green and there was FRIED FOOD just inches away. Why would I be using precious stomach space for greens????
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| hello my beloved. (I'm talking to the fried chicken. NOT the green stuff. Even if there's ham in it) |
We also ordered the Spicy Garlic Shrimp Gratin. Why? Because it was a shrimp FONDUE. With goat cheese, which I don't like, but I ate the delicious spicy shrimp and the buttered toast was really good too. I was about to explode from fullness and happiness, but I still plugged along. Because I'm disciplined like that. 😆😆😆
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| Spicy garlic shrimp gratin |
After dinner we decided to walk to Union Square because we were so full. On Google maps I think it said it was only a 20 minute walk. Yeah...that was a bad idea as we walked through what seemed like a gauntlet of homeless people, pee, poop, trash and druggies shooting up heroin in the street. 😑😑😑 That was not my favorite part of the trip. We were a little freaked out, but we didn't make eye contact and just quickly walked the street avoiding puddles of pee towards Union Square where the pretty stores were. What did we end up buying in the shopping mecca of San Francisco? Snacks at CVS 😂
While Charlyn lived the grown up life and put on her pretty dress and mingled with fancy people like an adult, Johanna ended up going to bed, and Elisa and I stayed up SNACKING and watching a cheesy Netflix movie and episodes of The Office (we are super exciting people who totally live it up). And thus ended our day - to dream about the food for the next day.
Friday - June 22, 2018
The Strawberry Toast
We woke up, ate snacks in our room, and then ubered over to Tartine Manufactory (literally located inside a tile factory!) for brunch. The space is really nice - it has high ceilings with a lot of light, clean lines and it's actually very pretty inside. Also, their pastries are really good. I know because I bought some to go and ate them the next morning and they were still super tasty and very well done. But...if this were a yelp review, I'd be docking 2 stars for their strawberry toast. Excuse me, strawberry tartine. Now, it's probably my fault that I no speaky the Francais, but I assumed something you paid $15 for called strawberry tartine would be more than just ONE slice of toast with some strawberries, grass and pollen and cream cheese drizzed in a balsamic reduction.
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| This was...outrageously expensive and not super delicious toast. TOAST I TELL YOU 😐 |
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| Burrata with pistachio and meyer lemon. Super tasty. But it was $11 😂. That bowl? It's smaller than a rice bowl 🍚 |
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| bread and butter...for $6. Yes, you don't get free bread, you have to buy it. It was delicious, but for $6 I thought we should've gotten the whole loaf 😑. I'm so cheap. It's genetic. |
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| chocolate milk macchiatos |
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| Oh, these are $5 each. So it's about $1/sip |
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| smoked pork flatbread sandwich with pork loin. gruyere, ham, pickles, mojo aioli, mustard, arugula |
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| spicy brisket sandwich with cabbage slaw, pickles, gochujang mayo |
The food overall was good. But it was hella expensive! The sandwiches were both under $20, and plenty to share, so those were the best bang for the buck. I'm admittedly a cheap ass. But I'm not really cheap about food. I will blow absurd amounts of money on deliciousness (but be offended if Old Navy sells a tee over $9 🤣). And while overall the food was good, it was NOT worth the money charged. 😑
After breakfast we uber'd our way to pick up our rental car (we got an Infiniti G37! Cute zippy little car) and made Elisa drive (she's the most aggressive and fearless driver out of the 4 of us. And yo, the people in SF drive like crazy crack addicts! Maybe they are, I dunno. But it was like...warzone driving in Asia. And as an Asian fob, I know of what I speak).
We pulled up in our rental Infiniti in front of our hotel and left the car in the funny corner driveway where you could TOTALLY run over pedestrians waiting for the light to change, and we ran in to grab our bags and toss them in the car and drive!
We hit some traffic out of the city, but it wasn't horrible. Once we got out of the city the drive was incredibly scenic. I didn't take any photos but it was a pretty drive.
We checked into the Napa Valley Marriot. I'd never been to Napa before and had NO IDEA how expensive it was. The rooms, any old room, was over $600 a night. 😥 Johanna and I ended up using our Marriott points to each book a room, so for the four of us we got 2 rooms. The rooms were not large, but they were very comfortable and well appointed. The facade of the hotel was not super fancy, but the lobby was nice and it was very comfortable. We pulled our car around to the side of the hotel our rooms were located so we had easy access to our car.
We chilled for a few hours, and then it was time to get dressed. I was lazy, I just picked the muumuu I wore for our family portraits a few months before. It was comfortable and had no waistline to restrict my gluttony. Charlyn was fancy and went to the happy hour in the lobby for some wine. The three of us boring losers watched tv in our rooms, got dressed, and tried not to eat too many snacks.
It was about a 15-20 minute drive to Yountville. Just a single road, and it was scenic and cute. Before we knew it we pulled up to the glorious mecca of amazing deliciousness.
It was smaller than I thought, but incredibly charming. There were also lots of looky-loos taking photos with the building. Directly across the street was the restaurant's garden that's open to the public.
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A very nice family who stopped to take photos of the restaurant were totally envious of us for managing to snag a reservation, and offered to take a group photo of us.
And of course, we had to take a photo in front of the famous blue door. The hostess was totally watching us act like country bumpkins, because immediately after we snapped the photo she pushed open the door and said, "good evening Lee party. Welcome to The French Laundry.". They knew who we were! I was so giddy 😂. Well, we had reservations, and since they only have about 60 seats, it was probably easy to figure out which nerdy party of 4 we were 😂.
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| fobby people like selfies. Poor Charlyn got roped into being a fob. |
It's not a large restaurant by any means, and I love the feel - it was upscale country cottage. You know, like rich people would have. It wasn't large or shiny or ostentatious. And because I'm a fangirl I was squealing on the inside (and maybe on the outside sometimes too) the whole night.
And of course we'd have to take photos to commemorate this night. I took all the photos because my phone is a Samsung and they have the best cameras (sorry iPhone, but you know it's true).
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| This is Elisa's Miss Korea photo |
The food: it was amazeballs. Not just because of how much it cost. I've had expensive food (not this expensive clearly) that tasted blah, or just okay. Every bite here was a marvel. And every course was small - I read that Chef Keller believes that the first two bites of food are the most delicious, so almost every course is only a few bites. This is food as art. But delicious art. It wasn't just pretty or novel or exciting, it was delicious. Lick the plate delicious. And it wasn't just the perfect balance of flavors using the best ingredients of the season, it was also the interplay of the textures and mouthfeel. Every bite of food was something to be savored, and I still think it's worth the money. That meal was worth every penny of not just what we spent on the base meal and the upgrades and the tip, but the plane tickets, hotel rooms, and other travel costs we paid to be able to have that meal. It's a once in a lifetime meal. And if I'm lucky, maybe someday I can have it again.
The menu is different every single day. It depends on what's in season and what's fresh. There are a few staples like the oysters and pearls and the cornet (usually salmon, but we got fluke), along with their amazing breads and their butter that's from a little dairy that only sells butter to The French Laundry. But everything else on the menu depends on what's the freshest that day, so you could have dinner on 2 consecutive days (if you're a billionaire) and have 2 totally different meals.
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| Amuse bouche: fluke tartare with creme fraiche and chives in a buttery cornet. This was two bites of perfection. If I could've ordered a dozen of these I would have. The fish was super light and fresh, and it paired perfectly with the richness of the cream and the buttery flakiness of the cone...I'm literally salivating as I write this. Chef Keller was inspired by Baskin Robbins' ice cream, so he made his own super fancy non ice cream version of a cone. It was...amazing. Just amazing. |
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| Amuse Bouche: "Ritz" crackers A buttery cracker stuffed with carmelized onion. The salty tangy cheese paired perfectly with the sweetness of the onion. The cracker itself was also buttery, flaky, and delicious. This was the best cracker I've ever had! Or ever will have (sigh). |
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| Oysters and Pearls - the dish that made Thomas Keller famous. A sabayon (Italian custard) of pearl tapioca with oysters and caviar. I need to confess something: I don't like caviar. And I'm eh about oysters. And because I'm Chinese, tapioca for me is something sweet that belongs in dessert. I wasn't sure if I'd like this, and I had read a lot about this before I went to the TFL, and if it was not part of a tasting menu I would never have ordered it. Well...I wanted to lick the dish clean. They served this with a special mother of pearl spoon that was probably $300 by itself. The oysters were briny and fresh without being fishy and the caviar was the perfect hit of savoriness to contrast with the rich and creamy sabayon. This dish was phenomenal and all of it worked. I scooped up everything, even the chives, and I don't even like chives! |
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| Garden beet salad with toasted hazelnuts, burgundy amaranth and aged balsamic vinegar. I don't like beets, but I liked these beets. The beets were sweet and acidic but that was balanced by the nuttiness and crunch of the hazelnuts. |
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| Foie gras terrine with strawberries, Sicilian pistachio puree and wild sorrel. I'm ambivalent about foie gras, most ones I've tried haven't been great, but this was amazing. It was so luxurious and creamy - but it was perfectly contrasted by the thin smooth layer of jelly on top that had just enough sweet and tart to really elevate the dish and make it dance in my mouth. Yummo. |
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| They're so fancy they have SIX different salts at the table. Who's ever heard of a salt buffet before?! Rich people. From the top, the reddish color going clockwise: Hawaiian Red Salt from Malawi Island, Hawaiian Black Salt from Hanapepe Island, Japanese Sea Salt from the Seto-Uchi Inland Sea, Jurassic Pink Salt from Copper Mines in Montana, Sel Gris from Brittany in France, and a Fleur de Sel from Paris. |
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| A perfect little flaky, savory buttery roll. My eyes were rolling to the back of my head y'all. |
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| Blue fin tuna crudo with summer squash, Roma tomato confit, basil and crushed caper mayonnaise. This was a light and refreshing dish - the fish was incredibly fresh and silky smooth. Combined with the tartness of the tomato confit balanced by the creamy mayonnaise and the gentle crunch of the squash? I almost keeled over in bliss for the 185th time. |
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| Sea scallop poêlée (it means pan-fried, I had to Google that 😂) with creamed spinach, hen egg presse and bacon emulsion. I loved every single bite, but this may be one of my favorite bites, The scallop was gently enfolded by the most delicate sliver of bacon - this was a perfectly prepared scallop that was tender, sweet and smoky. The egg wasn't just adorable, it was perfectly cooked with the yolk sandwiched in between the egg whites. The creamy spinach paired with the savory bacon emulsion perfectly complemented the most amazing scallop there ever shall be. Like everything else, it was two bites. And like every other dish, I wanted another 20 bites. |
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| Bread and butter TFL style? Dried tomato baguette and buffalo milk burrata butter. This bread, OMG, this bread. It was perfectly crusty with a soft and springy crumb I wanted to dive into and the buttery burrata? WHAAAAA???? It was soft, silky, and luscious - we couldn't spread it, so we tore chunks of the amazing bread to dip into the burrata butter. |
Because Charlyn and Elisa are grown ups, they got wine pairings recommended by the sommelier. They're so fancy they don't have a book of wines, everything is on an iPad. Because that's how 3 Michelin star restaurants roll I guess? I can't drink and Johanna doesn't either but we sniffed their fancy wines. To make us feel better, the sommelier actually crafted us some mocktails in flutes so we'd look like adults to 😂😂😂
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White quail rôti à la broche. It's a super fancy way of saying it's a quail roasted on a spit with plums, preserved green almonds, garden onions and stone fruit consomme. The onion, plum and consomme was a combination of sweet and tart that complemented the richness of the tender quail and it was all perfectly set off by the nutty crunch of the almonds that provided another dimension of awesomeness that blew my mind. I don't ever remember having quail before, and it's not something I would order if I saw it on a menu because it makes me think of a small bony little bird with a half bite of meat, but this was a phenomenal dish and another of my favorites of the night.
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| Herb roasted lamb with mushroom frittata, corn salad, garden purslane and creme de champignons (cream of mushroom). I don't like lamb. The end. No matter how people rave, no matter the preparation, how much it costs, no matter what my dad or friends say, I can taste the musty gaminess and I'm sad that meat that looks so good tastes so bad. It's a crime against delicious meat. Except this lamb. This was Elisa's dish, as I opted for the steak, and she gave me a bite which I decided to go for because when am I gonna come back to TFL again? WOW. It was perfectly cooked and seasoned and I could not tell at ALL that I was eating lamb. It was just an amazing bite of delicious, magical meat. 😍 |
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| Green salad with brokaw avocado mousse and garden herbs. This came with the wagyu below. I don't like stinky cheeses so I made Charlyn take the stinky ball of evil bleu cheese out of my salad before I'd eat it. The avocado mousse made the salad creamy and delicious and provided a hint of tartness to cut through how rich the steak was. |
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| Japanese wagyu in a red wine-shallot jus. This cow lived an amazing life. This cow was plied with beer, delicious organic food and massages all day. Which yielded a delicious tender cow that I could cut with my fork. The red wine-shallot jus was a little sweet for my taste (I know, it was the VERY FIRST thing I could nitpick about, that's how amazing everything was) but since it's not a soup it didn't matter. It was topped by paper thin slices of potatoes deep fried into one long chip, and it was salty, crispy and delicious - it was the best chip in the world. My mouth is watering remembering it. And I don't even like chips that much. |
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| The cheese puff: gougère. It's a choux dough loaded with cheese. In this case, the delicate pastry encased a soft and creamy goat cheese filling in a bed of black truffle fondue. The soft crust of the choux was delicate and airy, but with a good bite. Like a chocolate molten cake, once you take a bite the soft melted goat cheese oozed out from the choux shell. Once again, I hate stinky cheeses, so after I took a bite (and I could appreciate how exquisite this was, but it was still funky goat cheese) I made Charlyn eat mine. Like a good friend, she sacrificed her stomach for me. If it was a non-stinky cheese, I would've been ALL OVER THIS. Because every element of this dish was PERFECT. |
When I made the reservation they asked if we were celebrating anything, and Johanna and I had said that this was for our 40th birthdays. But since her birthday is actually in June, I noted that this dinner was to celebrate her birthday. So they brought us out birthday cake!
With the cake came the desserts. Unfortunately I do not have names or descriptions for the desserts. Because the menu just said desserts. And also, I was in severe food coma at this point, even as I kept eating.
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| This was the only thing I thought hit an off note for me all night. If I recall correctly, this had swiss meringue and apricots. I ate the whole thing, of course! But there was a spice used that was just...weird, even though the overall memory I have of it was that it was tangy and sweet. I'm guessing it was just too culinarily creative for me. I'm a basic bitch. |
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| We each got a slice of birthday cake with flaky layers and rich decadent ganache fillings - it was SO.GOOD. But SO. RICH. I wanted more, but if they gave me more than this sliver I would probably have gone into diabetic shock. And I'm not diabetic. |
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| Cornbread over the smoothest most delicious quenelle of ice cream. Do I know what kind it was? Nope. But I just about licked my bowl clean it was so good. |
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| Cappuccino semifreddo: this was creamy and sweet with an edge of bitterness to go with the homemade donuts they came with. |
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| Homemade cinnamon sugar donuts. I love donuts I love cinnamon and sugar (my favorite cereal is Cinnamon Toast Crunch). This is my fat girl fantasy. The end. |
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| Raspberry lemon macarons, chocolate covered macadamia nuts and caramel. The macarons are of course divine, as was the chocolate covered macadamia nut, which had a bitter cacao note to balance out the sweetness. But the caramel - it was a revelation. It was silky soft, the texture was unlike any caramel I've ever had before or since, and it had a fragrant hint of fruity tang that kept it from being cloying or overwhelming |
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| Hello chocolate truffles. They brought out this gorgeous box of truffles that came in 8 flavors. We were allowed to choose as many as we wanted. Being a bashful (ha!) Asian, I chose 3. Because I didn't want to look too greedy even if I wanted to rip the box out of his hands and stroke it while crooning "my precious." You know, like the creepy weirdo I am. Charlyn, who is boss, literally told our server she wanted one of each and she took one of each. The rest of us had severe regrets that we didn't do the same thing. These truffles were gorgeous, gleaming like beautiful rainbow gems and they were so rich and delicious as they melted in our mouths. |
After dinner they took us back to the kitchen and Johanna even got a menu signed by the chef! Jealous! The kitchen just went through an expansion and remodel and it was gorgeous, the ceiling was white and flowing and it was supposed to look like a rippling tablecloth. There was also a live feed to the kitchen in Per Se, Thomas Keller's 3 Michelin star New York restaurant (he's the only American chef who simultaneously holds 2 3 star restaurants 😍) so they could see each other's kitchens. One day I'm going to make my way to Per Se. And eat all the things. Then be poor and fat.
We were so full, but they gave us goodie bags with a tin of shortbread cookies, pens, a TLF laundry clip, and our candies boxed up. We toddled out after spending over 4 hours eating. Before we left we went to the restroom they built in the garden and uh, liberated a bunch of TLF hand towels. What?! You totally would've done the same. They're thick and beautiful and nicer than any napkin or towel I've ever purchased. And they say The French Laundry on them!
We headed back to our hotel where we kicked off our heels, changed into our comfy clothes, and rented Pitch Perfect 3 to relax to.
Saturday - June 23, 2018
The Target Parking Lot
We awoke and Johanna snuck us into the executive lounge (well, she didn't really sneak us in, we grandly walked in with her like we belonged there even though we didn't. She's a fancy Marriott Gold and we are peasants) to grab muffins and juices and coffees and cookies for breakfast. Then we packed up after toodling around for awhile and checked out of the hotel heading for Oxbow Public Market. As a self-proclaimed foodie and fat ass, it was a glorious place. It was still relatively early, and we'd had breakfast not long before, so we decided to share. We settled on Gott's Roadside because they had air conditioning, seating, and they also had lobster rolls. I will sit in mud for lobster rolls, so this was an easy choice. We did get the lobster roll (it was good, not the BEST lobster roll ever in the history of the world, but still delicious) and a cobb salad. Because bacon.
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| Hello there! |
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| it's hard to go wrong with bacon, chicken, cheese, eggs, and avocados 😍 |
We continued wandering around the market to see if there was anything else we wanted to eat or buy to take home, but being cognizant that we were carrying on only (because we cheap), it was hard to buy all the things to take home. And it was hard to try to bring pastries and cookies home without them being crushed beyond recognition.
So we started the drive back to San Francisco - we still had to drop off our rental car that was in the city and roll down the hill to the BART station that would take us back to the airport. I enjoyed the drive - while it wasn't as green as I pictured it would be (maybe it's better in the spring), I still thought it was scenic and managed some lopsided blurry photos out the window.
Unfortunately, because of the winding country roads, Johanna got carsick, even sitting in the front seat as she suffers from motion sickness. This required an unscheduled stop at a Target we were passing by so we could find some ginger candies or medication or ginger ale or magic beans so she could feel better.
It's not visible from the toad, but after we turned into the Target shopping center and drove towards the store, an amazing view of the bay was revealed and we squealed in excitement. But, priorities. We wandered around Target, Johanna got some ginger ale, and then we walked down to this random little bike/walking path completely off the beaten road that had an amazing view. We may have had to climb over some fence posts, but it was worth it.
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| looking back at the Target |
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| apparently it was striped dress day. I'm serious, it was COMPLETELY unplanned. |
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| As Elisa said, she did not get the striped dress memo and she was ready for a field trip 😁 |
After I took WAY too many photos, and we oohed and ahhed to our hearts' content, we continued on our journey that took us across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Soon we were back at the Alamo on Bush Street to return our little Infiniti and wheeling our luggage down the street towards the BART station.
We're in still Nob Hill, which I just always assumed was a kinda fancy place. Maybe back in the day? But this stripper joint was jarring and for some reason we couldn't stop laughing. So much so that I took a photo. Of a MALE STRIP CLUB.
Because we're anal retentive and scared of missing our flight, we got to the airport in plenty of time, and at that point we were feeling a mite peckish. So we found what else? Gott's Roadside...at SFO 😂
We literally ate at the same spot twice in one day. But how do you say no to a bacon burger?
The flight home was short and uneventful, which is the way it should be. The best part? We took out our little goodie bags from TFL and ate our chocolate truffles. And I was sooooo jealous that Charlyn had the foresight to grab one of each. Crap, I'm still jealous that she grabbed one of each. But they were so good. SO. GOOD. So much so that I tracked down their supplier so I can one day, order boxes of them and stuff my face.
Thus our foodie trip to The French Laundry ended. We had 3 glorious days of eating, we spent waaaay more money than anyone ever should on food, but we have no regrets (except for the stupid strawberry tartine. I'm still mad about that). It ended the way the best trips do - full and happy and satisfied.
