For reasons of produce, lifestyle and inspiration, many chefs and restaurateurs dream of working in California’s Napa Valley. For that, I tip my hat to them because the region’s competitive bar is constantly climbing.
The market’s fine-dining restaurants—Auberge du Soleil, The French Laundry, Terra and La Toque, among many others—have become nearly as well known worldwide as its wines. But admirable service and noteworthy foods are not limited to such star-scoring establishments, as I was recently reminded when Nation’s Restaurant News executive editor Richard Martin and I visited the valley.
Perhaps the most pleasant surprise was our experience at the Harvest Cafe in the Napa Valley Marriott Hotel & Spa in Napa. The wine at the hotel’s complimentary evening wine tasting was pleasant enough, but it was the small-plates menu in the cafe that drew our attention.
Lunch at The Culinary Institute of America’s Greystone campus and an afternoon snack of pork terrine, $12, and mushroom-prosciutto bruschetta, $9.95, at Pat Kuleto and Todd Humphries’ Martini House—both in St. Helena—left us content as we meandered through the Marriott. Still, Harvest Cafe’s crab and asparagus risotto with truffle oil for $11.95 and a trio of seasoned baby lamb chops for $13.95 were too hard to pass up, so we didn’t.
We were escorted to our seats by the wine tasting hostess, hotel food and beverage director Pat Smith. Upon hearing what would be ordered, Smith offered to fetch us the appropriate wine tasting pours to enjoy gratis with our food.
Still smitten by that unexpected bit of hospitality, we were equally taken by our Harvest Cafe server, Tracy. She was both a confidence-inspiring menu guide as well as a local-market maven, sharing her intelligence on some of the nearby restaurants to which we were considering a foray.
Later, we ventured across the tracks—literally—to Fume Bistro & Bar, a hip cafe nestled behind a shopping center and along a Highway 29 frontage road called Byway East. The place was hopping, but there was some room at the bar, which proved fortuitous because our bartender, Garett, poured generous wine samples and kept smiling, even if you needed a sample or two to make your selection.
We again ordered small plates or shared appetizers, but this time it was to get a better measure of the kitchen of chef-proprietor Terry Letson. We selected the duck confit spring rolls, $9.50, Brussels sprouts with bacon and vinaigrette, $4, goat cheese salad, $9.50, and potato-leek soup, $4.50.
Two glasses of wine at Fume Bistro came to $17, underscoring what appeared to be another valleywide trend that is not nearly as uplifting as the tendency to encounter good service: The number of wines by the glass for less than $8 is on the downswing, with many now priced at $14 and above.
