Landing the White Whale: Napa and the California Dream

The second day after I moved to San Francisco, La Belle Chantal* called up and asked if I wanted to drive up to Sonoma. Well, who wouldn’t? So, off we went and had a fun-filled day of trains for the kids and wine for the adults. At the time, I thought that that’s what my life here in California was going to be like—fabulous restaurants in the city, weekends off in wine country, swimming pools, movie stars—you know the drill. But then I woke up and realized I still had lots of debt from graduate school and worked in publishing, so maybe I’d have to settle for fabulous burritos and cable cars. Eh, there are worse things.

Fast forward more than four years, and, while I’ve been very privileged to have seen lots of my new home state, including multiple trips down the coast, four of its eight National Parks, and fourteen of the twenty-one missions on the Mission Trail, I had never been to Napa. Which, as many people have pointed out to me, is just a little crazy, especially given that I have been wine tasting in both Paso Robles and Santa Barbara—twice. Anyway, La Belle Chantal once again stepped up to the plate and suggested celebrating my birthday in Napa. Again, who am I to refuse?

What a lovely day. I definitely need to do this more often.

We started out by taking the tram up to Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga, which is as lovely a setting for wine tasting as you can imagine. And, I actually preferred the cab, so another first for today—miracles do happen!

Looking out over Napa Valley from the terrace of Sterling Vineyards

We also checked out many overpriced goods at the Oxbow Public Market and on the streets of St. Helena. I resisted the temptation of $9 soap and managed to get out alive having only spent $2.80 on crushed vadouvan at the spice store. Score!

Despite eating too late a lunch at the Pica Pica Maize Kitchen in Napa (try the deviled ham), I still managed to put away a good part of a wood oven duck dinner at Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen. The salad was as delicious as it looks; the sumac in the dressing was subtle, but gave it a distinctive zip. If this is her “casual” place, I certainly see why Cindy Pawlcyn made the Top Chef Masters cut.

Thank you, Chantal!

*La Belle Chantal is my former roommate from Paris and one of the reasons I fell in love with San Francisco (since her moving here allowed me to visit far more than is reasonable). She is many things, including belle, but her name is not actually Chantal.

How to Drink

As many of you know, I am always on the lookout for good cocktails, or, failing that, good books about making them. I posted last fall about Dale DeGroff’s The Essential Cocktail, which has served me well and should be on the shelf of everyone who is serious about their personal bar. Right alongside should be Victoria Moore’s How to Drink.

I learned about this fabulous tome on Rowley’s Whiskey Forge—a blog for anyone who loves cooking, eating, and drinking (not necessarily in that order), or even just reading about said activities. I can’t do justice to his beautifully written review of this book, so I’ll just link to it here. Suffice it to say, How to Drink is extremely readable, while also providing plenty of recipes and essential information about brewing coffee and tea, choosing wine, and stocking your bar. Moore even has a section on making your own elderflower cordial!

After covering the basics, the book is organized by season, which takes me back to the days where you could tell what time of year it was by whether I was drinking a gin & tonic or a bourbon & ginger. Of course, now I live in San Francisco where seasonal drinking has less relevance, but that just means that practically every day is potentially a Pimm’s day. Lucky me.

*In non-drinking news, I’d like to offer an apology to anyone whose comment was lost due to the issues Blogger was having earlier in the week. Please know that I did not delete your comment on purpose and feel free to repost!

La Ciccia

I don’t normally write about food here, but I had such an amazing dinner earlier this week, I just had to. La Ciccia is a Sardinian restaurant located on the edge of Noe Valley near Glen Park. It was recently featured in a New York Times article on San Francisco Italian restaurants, but I’ve wanted to try it since it was featured on Check, Please! Bay Area. Seeing everyone on that show praising the restaurant so highly, and having recently watched the Sardinia episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, where everything he ate looked so incredibly delicious, La Ciccia quickly moved to the top of my list of restaurants to try. However, it took me some time to get there since most of my restaurant budget these past few months has been devoted to pre- or post-theater excursions.

In any case, I finally went, and it was delicious.  For antipasti, we started off with a plate of prosciutto, Sardinian flat bread, and an octopus stew in a spicy tomato sauce.  Despite being in public, I couldn’t resist “saucing” my plate, as they say in France. (Yes, the French have a verb for soaking up the sauce on your plate with your bread, and, while acceptable at home, one shouldn’t do it in a restaurant.)  For primi, we had two of Bourdain’s favorite dishes, Spaghittusu cun Allu Ollu e Bottariga (bottarga is a dried fish roe that is shaved over the fresh pasta) and Malloreddus a sa Campidanese (semolina gnochetti with a pork ragu). I think they’ve spoiled me for all other pastas; I would go back for either of those in a heartbeat. As a secondo, we shared the sea bream special. I’m not a huge fan of fish, but I really enjoyed this simple preparation. To finish, we shared the Truta de Arriscottu, a ricotta and saffron cake served with honey and almonds, a perfect dessert that wasn’t too sweet. To me, it had a taste very similar to madeleines, although no Proustian side effects. The wine suggested by our waiter (random side note: a gorgeous man from Milan), a lovely Cannonau, or Grenache, went perfectly with the food.

Heaven, absolute heaven.

Opera 101—Walk Like an Egyptian

This week, I enjoyed my second opera of the season. If Le Nozze di Figaro was light-hearted fun, Aida was opera with a capital O. Skipping from the opera buffa of Mozart, right over the bel canto of Rossini, to this grand opera of Verdi was quite a jump. All of a sudden—DRAMA! SPECTACLE!

Aida was not an opera I had any familiarity with at all, beyond the fact that it took place in Egypt, and somehow involved an elephant. It was definitely harder to relate to on a musical level than Mozart, with fewer standout “numbers” (you are not going to leave the theater humming, that’s for sure); however, the pageantry of the first half alone makes it a terrific introduction to the world of opera.

The Good:  The costumes were absolutely gorgeous, especially Pharaoh. The elephant was very well done and the triumphal march quite stirring. For the most part, the singing was very strong. Also, the woodwinds sounded great—as a former player of the clarinet, I always appreciate when woodwinds get a chance to shine.

The Bad:  I assume this is Verdi and this style of opera and not the performers, but the lyrics were unintelligible to me. Whereas I could follow much of the Italian in Figaro, here I totally had to rely on the supertitles. This may be why I felt the acting wasn’t as strong as in Figaro, which became especially problematic for the emotional tomb scene, where the production values could have been stronger.

Thankfully, there was no ugly. It was a fantastic night out all around. For that, I’d also like to give a shout-out to Indigo, for their fabulous food and even more fabulous policy of no corkage fees. We had a delicious meal and were able to enjoy a great wine (the Calcareous Vineyard Très Violet 2006—a blend of Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre) purchased on my trip to Paso Robles last year.