10 Reasons I LOVE Napa Valley
The best way to determine what's really meaningful to you where you live is to play this game: pretend you are moving out of your community to a town far away. Ask yourself, "What are the things I would miss most if I moved away?" This will help identify your favorite reasons for living where you live.
Drum roll, please.... these are the Top Ten Reasons I love living in Napa Valley (in no particular order)... the things that I would miss most, if I moved away.
1. Mustards Grill.
I've often told Cindy Pawlcyn, owner of Mustards Grill, in Yountville, that I want to write a book titled: "Is Mustards Grill the Best Restaurant in America?"
For one thing, this would ignite a firestorm of controversy among foodies, who would argue that they can name other restaurants more deserving, etc. But I have reviewed restaurants professionally for many years and believe there is justification to call Mustards Grill "The Best Damn Restaurant in America. Period."
Without question, Alice Waters runs "the most important restaurant" in the US (Chez Panisse), and Thomas Keller runs "the two most prestigious restaurants" in the nation (The French Laundry, in Yountville, and Per Se, in New York), but Cindy has, for 24 years, run a consistent, and consistently tasty, diner, turning out grilled dishes of sublime pleasure.
Mustards' pulled pork sandwich with Cindy's famous "OOOEEE!" sauce is worth a 300-mile detour. I have never had a better hanger steak served anywhere. And before they started to tear the Romaine leaves in Mustard's Caesar Salad, it was the best version of it in Napa Valley. Today, that title -- Best Casear Salad -- is shared by two local eatieries, Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen, in St. Helena and Bistro Don Giovanni.
Other DON'T MISS dishes at Mustards include: the dazzling Crispy Calamari Slaw appetizer, the pork chop, which has been on the menu since Day One, and the grilled rabbit and polenta entree. I get goosebumps thinking about this dish, which Cindy once tried to take off the menu but locals hollard so loudly that she was forced to bring it back!
I have eaten at Mustards since it opened, surpassing 400 times, maybe 500 times, and it is as good now as it has ever been. If I were to move away from Napa Valley, I would miss my regular visits. I love table 36 and my advice to you is NOT to fight me for it if we show up on the same night -- because I will win! Carol and I love the staff here -- they are like Family. Which is how they make us feel. But in truth, they make everyone feel this way; even first-timers leave feeling sated, exuberant and happy. (This is also a true-ism at Bistro Don Giovanni... see below.). Mustards Grill is located just north of the town of Yountville, off Hwy 29. The actual address is 7399 St. Helena Hwy. (Hwy. 29). Tel: 707-944-2424.
2. Bistro Don Giovanni.
There is something magical about this restaurant; does it serve the best Italian food you will ever find in a restaurant? No. Is the pasta ethereally light and homemade? No. But there is something about the room, the service, and the intensity of flavors that make me as happy as I can ever be at a table. It is the reason that we chose to spend our 30th anniversary at Bistro Don Giovanni. We could have spent it anywhere in the world, but Napa Valley is our demi-Paradise and for sheer giddy pleasure, you can't have more fun at a restaurant than at Don Gio.
The wine list is large, as are the portions, and the Caesar Salad here is still, after a decade, tied for tops in the valley.
Without exaggeration, I have eaten here well more than 300 times, and still eagerly await my next visit.
On occasion, they serve the best burger in the valley, and often, we roll our eyes in orgasmic appreciation at the perfectly grilled whole fish of the day, boned tableside by the trained, always spirited, wait staff. And one more thing -- the fig and caramelized onion pizza is a seasonal showstopper appetizer that makes me long for fig season. In fact, I am more moved to tears of joy by the anticipation of eating this pizza than I am by the anticipated achievement of Barry Bonds who may break Hank Aaron's home run record.
The restaurant is located at 4110 Howard Ln., just off Hwy. 29, in Napa. Tel: 707-224-3300.
3. No Parking Meters.
Napa Valley is about 30 miles long and three miles wide. The biggest town, Napa, has a population closing in on 100,000. The next biggest towns are St. Helena, Calistoga and Yountville -- and no where, not in one of these towns, is there a parking meter. This alone is enough of a reason to live here. Talk about cutting out urban stress; we live in wine country amidst several of the greatest restaurants in America and can drive to them and park FREE everywhere with a two-hour limit. Can you imagine an urbane world without parking meters? (Don't imagine it for too long -- we don't have space for you and your family to move to Napa Valley!)
4. Pain au Levain Bread at the Model Bakery, St. Helena.
I used to think that the best bread in the United States was the Pain au Levain made by Acme Bakery, in Berkeley. It was. Until Model Bakery, owned and operated by the mother-daughter team of Karen and Sarah Mitchell, came along and started producing a version of this lightly soured, oversized, crusty, golden bread. (PS: The secret to keep one of these fresh breads fresh is to take it out of the paper bag immediately upon getting it home; wrap the bread in a clean tea towel and store it in a cool part of your kitchen. A bread wrapped like this can last up to a week without gettng hard or stale. Cut off slices as you need them, but then rewrap the bread to keep it from staling.) The Model Bakery is at 1357 Main St., St. Helena. Tel: 707-963-8192.
5. Sunshine Market, St. Helena.
How does one small, 10,000 square-foot food store cram in so much great stuff?
We are SO very lucky to have the family-run Sunshine Market in our lives in Napa Valley. It's like having Balducci's, Dean & DeLuca, a knowledgeable wine merchant and a convenience store all rolled into one. The Smith family does a sensational job of catering to the locals' tastes; fish, meats, cheese, produce -- and really esoteric stuff. The wine section is as good, if not better, than what you will find in many metropolitan wine stores in this country. They have $5 wines and $225 wines, labels that you will recognize and brands that are unknown. Last week, I discovered a half-case of 1970 port that was, in all fairness, perfectly priced with what I have been seeing on the internet. I make a point of telling friends visiting the valley to stop at Sunshine because it is a unique treasure to Napa Valley. There are many, many wineries and a lot of restaurants but there is only one Sunshine. Sunshine Market is at 1115 Main Street, St. Helena. Tel:
707-963-7070.
6. Robert Mondavi.
If it weren't for Bob, I wouldn't live in Napa Valley. In May, 1980, while food editor and restaurant critic of Canada's largest newspaper, The Toronto Star (really one of the top five largest newspapers in North America), I was invited to attend one of Bob's heralded Great Chefs of France Cooking School classes; he had invited Jean Troisgros, one of the planet's greatest chefs (from Roanne, France), to cook and teach for three days at the Robert Mondavi Winery. I attended as a paying guest. (The Star never accepted freebies; if a story was worth covering, the Star paid the price to maintain editorial integrity. For five years, I traveled around the world in search of great food, great stories, and great chefs and ALWAYS the Star paid in full.) Even though I had been a foreign correspondent in Africa and had traveled around the globe making films, when I landed in Napa Valley, I KNEW intuitively that I would one day live here. HAD to live here. For the first time in my life, I had found a place that resonated so deeply within me that I knew I HAD to live out the rest of my life in this place. If it weren't for Bob Mondavi, and the exceptional lengths to which he went to introduce me to the culture, wine and the food of this valley, I would be living elsewhere. Thank you, Bob. You are proof that one man can fully alter the expectations, visions and life of another
person.
7. Cameo Cinema, St. Helena.
If there is a more charming, more intimate, more alluring theater in America, I can't imagine what it would look like. 10 seats?
The Cameo, owned and operated by Charlotte Wagner (of Caymus Vineyards fame), is a 104-seat cinema that shows artsy, contemporary films for a week at a time. The seats are covered in red-wine velours, and the back two rows are love seats so that you can really cozy up to your date. Going to the first-run shows with dinner to follow is one of the highlights of the week. No line-ups, no hassles.
The Cameo is in the two-block stretch of Main St., which constitutes most of downtown of St. Helena. The actual address is 1340 Main St., St. Helena. Tel: 707-963-9779.
8. Walks in the vineyard with Linus.
Carol, Linus (a Golden Doodle) and I are often joined by our good friend Wendy and her Golden Doodle, Bailey, for our five- to nine-mile walks through the vineyards surrounding our home. We traipse past the most famous, certainly the first, vineyard in America, called To Kalon (Greek for highest beauty), named and planted in 1868 by Napa wine pioneer H. W. Crabb and we talk about life while the dogs chase rabbits up and down the rows of vines, exhausting themselves and never bringing anything home other than a good case of exhaustion.
These walks, the fresh air, the Big Sky, are among my most pleasurable moments in Napa Valley. They are joyous, simple, and rejuvenate the spirit the way a two-week trip to Provence might do. But all we have to do is walk out the door to experience this calming, warm and sunny Nirvana.
9. Home-grown, organic heirloom tomatoes.
From mid-August through mid-December, we harvest five to seven pounds of Carol's organic heirloom tomatoes EVERY DAY. We fenced off a 1,000-square-foot garden where Carol works her magic, making plants produce prodigious amounts of dinner greens. The heirloom tomatoes tower over Carol at 9-feet, providing a rainbow of tasty, colored tomatoes -- purple Cherokees, green-striped tomatoes (which are screamin' green when perfectly ripe), and mottled red-orange tomatoes that are large enough to be used as doorstops, but juicy and tasty on the inside.
10. The porch.
There is something calming, centering, comforting about sitting on a covered porch and watching the world roll by. We sit on ours and watch hummingbirds suck the sweet nectar out of vintage rhododendron blossoms; in the morning, we sip espressos on the porch and watch a flotilla of hot air balloons ascend from Yountville.
A good day starts as a "five-balloon morning," or an "eight-balloon morning," giving some hint of the sweetness of the air and intensity of the blue sky that day. My best day ever was a "13-balloon morning."
To sit on the porch and watch the hot air balloons silently float over head brings the same inner focus as a meditation session at a holy ashram.
