Wining and dining at Napa Valley

MILLIE: A trip to San Francisco would not be complete without a visit to Napa Valley, home of famous vineyards and many unique restaurants. It is also a popular location for destination weddings. Karla and I didn’t have to cajole my friend Nancy Tso into taking us; she offered to drive us there. It was my nth time to Napa and for Karla, her second trip.

Just like on previous trips, the choice of a restaurant to try was the main order of the day. There were so many to choose from and even when we shortlisted, we couldn’t really make up our minds. But most of our friends, including Nancy Tso and Helen Tsui, recommended Mustards and Bouchon, but it was still a tossup between the two and a rather difficult choice to make. Because I was tasked to make the final decision, I am happy I chose Mustards Grill, a 30-year-old truck-stop restaurant on St. Helena highway in Napa Valley.

Mustards was a very casual and informal place, not fine dining at all, serving American cuisine. The menu selection was quite impressive with appetizers like grilled Castroville artichokes with tarragon, aioli and lemon; local asparagus tartine with Bellwether Farms ricotta cheese doused with lemon-thyme vinaigrette; Dungeness crab cakes with chipotle aioli, arugula salad and molasses vinaigrette.

From the wood-burning grill and oven, they had North African spiced quail with sweet pepper salad, pine nut and raisin couscous; house smoked duck served with grilled polenta, garden green onions, and rhubarb compote.

The wine list was also quite impressive and I chose the Pinot Noir, Moshin Vineyards, Russian River Valley 2012.

KARLA: For appetizers, we ordered the ahi tuna with flatbread, wasabi crème fraiche, and soy vinaigrette. It was so good I could have had two orders as my main course. For our main entrées, Nancy ordered a half-pound Niman cheeseburger with blue cheese, house-made pickles, French fries and mushrooms.

Mom wanted to try the ever-popular seafood tostada and the house smoked duck with grilled polenta and rhubarb compote, but finally settled on the famous Mongolian pork chop with sweet and sour red cabbage and house-made mustard sauce, which was so delightful.

Mustards brags that they have sold almost a million pork chops. I had the slow smoked barbecue pork sandwich served with coleslaw and potato chips.

If you are familiar with this card game called “1-2-3 Pass,” where you count one to three and pass the card to the person beside you, well, mom and I play that often … with our plates. We usually take a few bites of whatever we have ordered, then halfway look at each other and say, “One, two, three, pass,” then switch plates. It’s something that we really shouldn’t do but do anyway. Haha!

With over 30 years of serving pork chops, you definitely cannot go wrong with this order. This dish immediately reminded my mom of Aling Moding, our old cook, and her awesome pork chops. In fact, as soon as we arrived back in Manila, Mom asked me to go to the grocery to order a special cut of one-inch-thick pork chops, which I marinated and cooked the way Aling Moding used to. There were lots of interesting things on Mustards menu but there was no more space in our tummies, so there’s definitely something to look out for on the next trip.

MILLIE: We stopped for dessert at Bouchon as Nancy told us they had a bakery next to the French bistro. Bouchon in French means “cork” and I could not resist taking a peek inside the bistro. The interiors were very French and the menu, classical French, which included French onion soup; quiche du jour; escargots Bourguignonne; paté de campagne or country-style paté; fromages du jour, which was a selection of cow, sheep or goat artisanal cheese; a pan-seared 9oz rib eye with sauce béarnaise called Steak Bouchon; poulet roti or roast chicken with braised kale and turnips; gigot d’agneau or roast leg of lamb with flageolet beans, garlic confit and thyme-scented lamb jus; truite amandine, which is sautéed rainbow trout with haricots verts, toasted almond and beurre noisette. I said to myself that if we had time for dinner on the way back to San Francisco, we just might stop by for a treat. But for the moment, I needed something sweet and coffee to keep me awake.

The Bouchon bakery next door had quite an interesting selection of breads, savories, cookies and desserts, including dog biscuits! They had chocolate almond croissants, bacon cheddar scones, pistachio citrus brioches, the signature chocolate Bouchon cookie, traditional French macarons and one called O-noyoudidn’t, which is a chocolate-dipped macaron! I’m not a big fan of macarons so I zeroed in on the lemon tart and rich bread pudding, which turned out to be very good choices. The macchiato was also so darn good I had two servings!

KARLA: After lunch, we proceeded to Beringer for a special VIP tour arranged for us by Kathy Yao of Happy Living Philippines, distributor of Beringer wines in the Philippines. My last wine tour in Napa was when I was 15 years old with mom and my Lolo Joe. I vividly remember hiding behind my mom in order to taste wine from her glass, trying not to get caught since I was still a minor.

This trip to Napa was definitely a different experience. Aside from the fact that I was actually old enough to taste and drink the wines, we were toured around the 200-acre estate, which has so much history behind it.

The men behind the famous Beringer wines are actually brothers from Germany. Jacob Beringer was the winemaker and brother Frederic, the businessman, who both moved to the USA from Mainz, Germany, in 1860. They purchased the estate for $14,500.

The estate includes the historic Rhine House Mansion, which has beautiful stained-glass windows and mahogany wood from the Philippines. The wine-tasting tour is held in various locations in the estate. We started out on the ground floor of a boutique selling wines and unique wine accessories, where one area was designed with a bar for tasting sessions. Mom could not help but have a glass or two while browsing around as we waited for our tour guide.

We explored another wine-tasting room in the Old Stone winery, which houses the original wine-aging tunnels and is now converted into wine-tasting rooms for groups. Since we were on the VIP tour, we were led to the wine tasting in a special room on the second floor of the historic Rhine house mansion and we also toured its many different rooms, which reminded me of our very own Malacañan Palace.

MILLIE: We were invited to sample some celebrated wines like the 2011 Knights Valley Blanc; the 2012 Private Reserve Napa Valley Chardonnay, which comes from Gamble Ranch; 2011 Napa Valley Merlot; the home vineyard wine 2006 St. Helena Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon; and finally the very special 2009 Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, which sells for US$160 per bottle.

The basic rule when one does wine tasting is that you shouldn’t actually drink the wine. One should swirl the wine in its long-stemmed wine glass, sniff and enjoy the bouquet, take a sip and roll the wine with your tongue so that you get to appreciate it and spit it out in a container exclusively for this purpose. You are not to swallow the wine but hey, such good wine can’t go to waste so we drank it all!

After the tour, we couldn’t help but pass by another gift shop that was selling wine bottle openers, wine holders, cheese boards, red wine stain removers, aprons, wine glasses and Beringer wines, which is pretty much everything a wine connoisseur needs.

Also available on sale were flavored oils such as Thai chili olive oil, white truffle extra, lemon and thyme grapeseed oil and more.

We were glad to have spent a rare and timeless wine-tasting experience in Napa Valley’s most awarded winery and appreciate that my friend Nancy Tso took time off to take us there.

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Mustards Grill is located at 7399 St. Helena Highway, Napa, California, USA, or call them at (707) 944-2424 for reservations or directions.

Bouchon Bakery is at 6534 Washington Street, Yountville, California, or call (707) 944-8037 for more inquiries.

Beringer Vineyards is at 2000 Main Street, St. Helena, Napa, California.

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Send e-mail to milliereyes.foodforthought@gmail.com and karla@swizzlemobilebar.com. Find us on Facebook and read articles you might have missed: Food for Thought by Millie & Karla Reyes.