A Quick Visit to Napa

Last week, I had to travel to Central Coast, CA for work for 2 days, and the day I was leaving I realized I was going to be 15 minutes from Napa.  And since there was nothing around where I was staying, I was determined to go to Napa for dinner both nights.  This post simply serves as a record of the yummy food I had while I was there.

Though I got in late the first night, I drove to Morimoto Napa.  I started off with two pieces of sushi.  While it was good, it was overpriced due to 1) location and 2) the name of the restaurant.  If you are visiting here for fun and on a budget, you can skip sushi.  I ordered the Duck Duck Goose.  It is duck confit fried rice and frozen foie gras.  I don't think I have had either before, and it was nice new flavors.  This also came with a duck leg and a duck meatball in a small soup.  I also ordered the salted fingerling potatoes as I was pretty hungry.  The serving of potatoes was larger than I was expecting, which was nice.  I finished the evening off with kabocha squash sticky toffee cake, which is  served with buttermilk ice cream and caramelized asian pear.  The cake was delicious.

The second night I drove to Yountville to dine at Michael Chiarello's restaurant, Bottega.  I started off with the Butternut Squash Caramelle, served with Bosc pear, Pecorino, crispy sage, brown butter emulsion & Amaretti - poppy seed gremolata.  This was delicious and I ate slowly and enjoyed it.  The crispy sage was nice and we need to try to recreate it at home.  My secondi was a Wood Grilled Loin of Grass-Fed Lamb with saffron braised potatoes, green onions, pistachio pesto & rosemary scented lamb jus.  I liked the unique pistachio pesto and the way all the flavors infused in to the pototoes.  It was very hard to pick my dessert, but I decided on Panna Cotta Vaniglia; Eggless vanilla custard parfait, Caramelized pineapple gelatini, Forno roasted strawberry.  It was ok, but I think I would try something else next time as I didn't quite like the pineapple flavor.  This is no problem, though, as there were many tempting options.