Category Archives: French

The French Laundry Continued…

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http://www.frenchlaundry.com/

Thanks to Susan & Ken for providing the rest of the pictures from our fabulous Valentine’s Day dinner…

The menu again, starting after the lobster tail…

Liberty Farms Pekin Duck Breast
(Note: those truffles were delicious!)

Confit de coeur de veau
(Veal heart… a bit like pastrami)

Elysian Fields Farm Lamb Rib-eye

Idiazabal (the cheese course)

Diane Saint Clair Buttermilk Sorbet

Mousse au chocolat Amedei

Braised golden pineapple

and the dinner keeps on going… more desserts…

Hand-dipped chocolates, our favorite: the passion fruit (the one with red/gold on top)

Plus a little going away snack, a chocolate heart for the ladies and shortbread sugar cookies for the gentlemen.

We were a very happy group of diners

And one more parting gift (and it’s still blooming after a week…)

It was a splurge but worth it, a once in a lifetime meal…

The French Laundry
6640 Washington Street
Yountville, CA 94599

The French Laundry (Preview)

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http://www.frenchlaundry.com/

I had a nice surprise for Valentine’s Day. Ron told me that we were going to Napa for dinner but didn’t tell me the name of the restaurant. I had thought it may have been The French Laundry and the only reason I thought this was because since Ron and I share our Google calendars with each other, there was a note on Ron’s calendar in December to remind himself to call The French Laundry in December for Valentine’s Day. I asked him later about it but he said he wasn’t able to get a reservation. It didn’t matter to me where we went for dinner, just that we spent the day together and had a good meal. We started the day at home with eggs, bacon, and pancakes (made with Macadamia Nut Hershey Kisses!) and headed out to Napa in the late afternoon for some outlet shopping.

We left the outlets around 5:45pm and it was starting to rain. We went to find a place to maybe buy a bottle of wine for dinner but ended up driving around in vain since all the wineries were already closed. Our dinner reservation wasn’t until 6:30pm anyways so weren’t in a rush. The restaurant was in Yountville so after driving to Rutherford in search of wine, we turned around and headed back.

It was raining pretty hard so it was hard to see where we were going. Eventually we ended up in a parking lot but there was no restaurant name that I could figure out, just a brass plaque with quails on it…

As we entered the restaurant, I saw our friends Virginia & Dan inside then our friends Susan & Ken followed behind us… and I saw The French Laundry cookbook on the table! The girls were all happily surprised. We were led upstairs right away to a table for six in the cozy corner. I could hardly hold in my excitement!

They offered two menus, a chef’s tasting menu and a vegetable tasting menu. Both sounded equally good but we all chose from the chef’s tasting menu. It’s a 9 course meal and 4 courses, you choose between two items. Ron and I ordered opposite so that we could try each item.

I don’t think I can begin to describe each dish as all were delicious… so I’ll leave it to your imagination and to drool over the photos… unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries (ack!!) so I don’t have all courses photographed but the other girls took photos so I’ll get the rest from them… so hence a “preview” only… the service was excellent, attentive but not overly so, and there were lots of little “extras” not listed on the menu…

These were tiny puff pastries with Gruyere cheese.

Salmon “ice cream” cones. The cones were made of sesame and filled with a delicious cream. Those cones were so good.

First course of “Oysters and Pearls”.

They offered two types of butter for all our bread services. The first an unsalted local butter and the second a lightly salted creamed butter.

The foie gras with brioche. Interestingly they changed the brioche about 3 minutes after serving it because they like to keep it “fresh” for us. I wonder what they do with the “cold” brioche… Also, the dish is unsalted so they offered us three types of salt to our taste. The pink on the left was my favorite, it was strong but delicious.

Salad of baby red beets.

Tartare of Japanese Bluefin Tuna.

Sauteed Atlantic Striped Bass.

A mini baguette.

Sweet Butter Poached Maine Lobster Tail.

This is where my camera ran out of batteries…. so to be continued…

Restaurant Cassis

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http://www.restaurantcassis.com/

I had dinner with Shirley and Patrick tonight at Restaurant Cassis, a restaurant only about 3 blocks away from where I work. We thought we’d try this place since they have a three-course prix fixe menu for $25 so sounded like a good deal. They offer the prix fixe menu Sun thru Thurs 5:30-7pm (closed Mon).

Parking is pretty easy around the area, mostly street parking unless you want to park farther away at any of the lots around the area (which are expensive!).

The staff was very attentive upon my arrival. The restaurant seemed quite spacious and there were maybe four other sets of diners. It was weird though, when they were going to seat us, they wanted to stick us between two couples at this table near the window when there was a perfectly nice round table for three in the middle of the room. We chose the round table.

They brought us an amuse-bouche (free food is always a plus) of toast with salmon cream cheese.

You can see their prix fixe menu updated online. The appetizers did not sound all that appetizing unless you wanted to pay a few extra dollars for an “upgrade”. We did not so Shirley and Pat chose the soup of the day: mushroom soup and I had the gazpacho.

I’m not sure the last time I had gazpacho but I didn’t really enjoy the texture, it was a little “grainy” for me, like it wasn’t blended enough or something. I drank every last bit though since I still liked the flavor.

For the entree, I had the mussels served with fries. This dish is very deceiving in that Patrick thought he’d still be hungry after only fries and mussels so he ordered a large side of spinach. As he was eating though, he already started to be full since he ate all the fries and kept on soaking up the soup with bread. Yummy stuff.

For dessert, I had the frozen grand marnier souffle with orange zest. Very creamy and I loved the whipped cream. The orange zest was a bit weird for me though, too strong.

Shirley had the berry crisp which didn’t have enough berries, just a lot of cream and deep fried pastry. Patrick had the floating dessert which tasted like those marshmallow Peeps!

Overall, it was a dinner worth the $25 but we all agree, if we go there again, we’d likely order from the regular menu instead. It was good to catch up with Patrick and Shirley and I hope we can do it again soon.

Restaurant Cassis
2101 Sutter Street

Joyce visits SF!

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Joyce is back in the bay area for the week and she came to hang out with us today. We picked her up at the Ferry Building in SF as she had come in from Sacramento by Amtrak to Emeryville and taken a bus. She said she’s an expert in this route because she did it all the time while going to UCSF. I had no idea this was the only way to come back to SF without a car from Sacramento!

We did our favorite things, eat and shop! We started at Beard Papa with a strawberry cheesecake stick and vanilla cream puff. Went for some shopping and ended up staying at Old Navy for almost 3 hours! Ron recommended we go to Citizen Cupcake on the 3rd floor of Virgin Records and we were glad we went. They serve hot chocolate in a BOWL! The chai latte is served with a glass of steamed milk and a pot of chai tea so you add yourself. We had a chocolate cupcake and ginger spice cookie. Yum!

Ron met up with us for dinner and so we walked over to Plouf on Belden Place. It’s one our favorite restaurants in SF so we wanted to share it with Joyce. We ordered two types of mussels, Pastis and Coconut Broth with 2 orders of fries. I really like the Coconut Broth, reminds me of Thai food. Ron also ordered the duck. I recommend just getting the mussels when you eat at plouf. Order more fries or ask for more bread to soak up the soup. YUM!

Sadly, Joyce is leaving back to Singapore on Tuesday. I’m glad she came out to hang out with us and got to meet Mochi and Misu. Meow meow.