The Food Maven Diary
[Archives]

[Previous Entry] [Diary Home] [Next Entry]

11/29/2001 Archived Entry: "More On Napa Valley, CA"

This is the final installment on Sean Brady’s and my trip to Napa Valley. To remind you, we were attending the Culinary Institute of America’s Food Media Conference (actually a four-day crash course in food writing, etc.), he as a student, me as a faculty member.

Here’s an item on the Meadowood Resort, where we stayed; a review of Miramonte, a new restaurant in St. Helena, and one on Taylor’s Refresher, the local but nationally famous fast-food restaurant. All were written by Sean, who, as you can see, hardly needed a course to learn how to write.


Luxe Lodging

The faint glow of our headlights was broken as what looked like a small silver fox darted in front of our rental car. I guess this was Napa Valley’s answer to a speed bump. A mere hour and 15 minutes after starting from San Francisco, we had reached our destination, Meadowood, the plush resort we would call home for the next week. In this case, I am not embarrassed to use the cliché, “call home” because I’d be more than happy to call Meadowood home. Its 85 cottages, storybook white, seemed to grow out of the hills that enveloped us as we navigated the windy road to the reception building. We passed two pools and a hot tub, all marked by the copious amounts of steam billowing from their warm waters on such a cool night. We passed several tennis courts and a health spa where we were promised to be wrapped like sushi in fresh seaweed and ginger.

As we climbed the 50 or so steps to our cottage, I could smell the crackling fires built in the cabins’ stone fireplaces. Suddenly, I was six years old, returning home from a day of sledding and snowman building. The brisk air and the scent of burning wood made me expect hot cocoa to be waiting for us in our cottage. I’m sure that would have been an easy request for the accommodating staff at Meadowood Resort. I imagine that they would simply fly my mother out from New Hampshire to make me my favorite steamy drink. Yes, it’s that kind of place. I got the sense that anything you’d like to have or do at anytime would be no problem to arrange.

Meadowood concerns itself with the best. The tile floor in the quite large bathroom was heated so that we wouldn’t be cold after we stepped out of the shower early in the morning. The pillows and comforters were made of down so light that I felt I was sleeping in clouds. The robes and towels were the best Turkish terry. The health club provided me with free batteries (and a smile) when I asked where I could find a drugstore to buy some. One evening, we returned to our cottage to find a plate of assorted Sonoma cheeses and freshly-cured olives. None of these “touches,” however, could compare to sitting in the hot tub late one evening quietly watching the stars, only to be interrupted by a deer rustling in the bushes 50 feet away. I sensed even he was happy to see me and hoped I had a pleasant stay.

Meadowood Resort
900 Meadowood Lane
St. Helena, CA 94574
(800) 458-8080
www.meadowood.com


Fun Food

I chuckled when I heard of the invitation to have dinner with friends one night at Miramonte, a new venture by Cindy Pawlcyn, a highly successful California chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her talent, it’s just that I had heard that Miramonte serves “Food of the Americas.” I’ve become annoyed lately with the onslaught of new restaurants who make this claim. Most of these restaurants mix mojitos by the bucketful and adorn every plate with some sort of salsa. Shouldn’t “Food of the Americas” be specialties from both North and South America? I was especially apprehensive when everyone at the bar was drinking caprihanas more furiously than Eva Peróne.

Our selection of first courses made me rethink my notion that this was to be an exclusively Latin meal. Certainly, there were Latin touches, like the Rabbit Tostada ($8.95), a new twist on an old favorite. Flavorfully stewed rabbit meat sat atop perfectly fried corn tortillas bathed in black beans. The Chinatown Duck Burgers ($9.88) were a fun course of miniature open-faced sandwiches made from ground duck meat covered with a shiitake mushroom “catsup” – yes, ketchup. The point was not to serve an Asian delicacy, but to highlight the melting-pot attitude of United States food.

As for main courses, the Maple-Brined Pork Chop ($17.99), laden with the flavor Quebec’s countryside, further exposed the menu’s range. The juicy chop was served with a delicious version of garlic mashed potatoes, so good I forgot they were now a cliché. A gravy spiced with ginger and apples was a nice complement to the dish. The Macaroni and American Cheeses ($13.95), another fabulous dish, came out in a terracotta casserole with pieces of applewood smoked ham nestled in among the elbows. The cheeses were so well-chosen and blended that it was impossible to determine what varieties were included. This dish showcased Cindy’s style very well and was testament to her mantra: food should have a sense of humor.

Miramonte’s desserts were equally amusing. The Turtle Ice Cream Sundae ($6.95), reminiscent of the gooey chocolates by the same name, was a glass filled with generous scoops of vanilla ice cream, topped with rich caramel and butterscotch sauces. Hand-made candied pecans, tasting lightly of salt and cayenne pepper, finished the dessert and offered a sharp contrast to the dish’s sweetness.

Walking out of the informal, vibrantly colored restaurant, I thought of food and it’s transporting quality. In one evening, I had been to South America, Chinatown, the Northeast, the Midwest, and finally, with dessert, to my childhood.

Miramonte
1327 Railroad Avenue
St. Helena, CA 94574
(707) 963-1200


Heavenly Hamburgers

Driving back and forth to food media classes at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, specially prepared lunches, wine receptions, and extravagant restaurant dinners, Arthur and I would pass a small white fast-food style building that seemed very much out of place among the vineyards, wineries, and fancy shops in which it stood. The retro-style sign read “Taylor’s Refresher.” From the road, it seemed like any other roadside burger shack. But this was, after all, The Napa Valley, an epicurean’s fantasy land, not the usual highway byway. How could a hamburger/corn dog/milkshake joint survive? Not only was Taylor’s surviving, it was thriving. Indeed, it is famous as one of the last hold-outs of down-to-earth reality on Napa’s astronomically priced real estate. We had to go.

On the last afternoon of the Food Media Conference, our car almost automatically pulled into Taylor’s as we started on our journey back to San Francisco. We warily approached the window and carefully read the overhead menu. Wait a minute – a roadside burger joint with a wine list and Chinese Chicken Salad ($7.99)? Only in Napa Valley. We decided to stick with the basics. After all, it had been a week’s worth of plates filled with way too many green things and countless glasses of wine.

We took a seat at a spotlessly clean picnic table in the comfortable carport-ish protected eating area, as opposed to a table on the lawn. We anxiously awaited our food. It came served on a heavy aluminum, commercial baking sheet. I couldn’t help but comment on the cleverness of the tray as Arthur dove into his burger ($3.99).

The burgers were thickish disks that amply filled the large, soft buns. They were cooked when we ordered them, not ahead, and they were right off the grill. And even though they came out medium-well when we had ordered them medium-rare, they remained wonderfully moist. They are served piled with lettuce, tomato, pickle and “secret” sauce, which is why one of the snobbier Greystone faculty members, a cookbook editor, had dismissed them as similar to Burger King. Arthur and I vehemently disagreed. They were as much like Burger King as Peter Luger’s steaks are like Tad’s.

Our fries ($1.99) were simple, crisp, and delicious – a healthy serving for the price. If you like your onion rings ($2.99) fat and well battered, then try these. The real stars of the show, however, were the thick, the very thick, milkshakes ($4.59). The price tag seems a bargain since there seemed to be nearly a pint of ice cream in each one. We quickly decided two things: the chocolate shake was better than the vanilla and using the spoon was easier than a straw.

After a week of elaborate menus perfectly paired with the best wines of the valley, I wiped a glob of chocolate shake from the left corner of my mouth and decided that this food was closest to my heart.

Taylor’s Refresher
933 Main Street (Route 29)
St. Helena, CA 94574
(707) 963-3486