Thought French Laundry only allow you to book one month in advance. I was trying to book it for late June but it wouldn’t let me… We have tried the Restaurant at the Meadowood when they were only 2 star 6 years ago and it was really good.
Well, our plans are almost made. For the first three nights we’re staying at the Carneros Inn (I got a great deal, plus AmEx benefits) and will use it as a home base to explore Napa. We have no trouble driving so we’ll explore the north end of the valley during the day visiting wineries and stick closer to Yountville/Napa in the evening. Friday we’ll head to the wedding and I have the Brewery in Santa Rosa on the schedule for lunch Saturday before the wedding! There are so many suggestions here that we would love to explore that I guess we’ll just have to plan another trip!
updating - got back from our mini vacation in Napa. We ended up staying in the Old World Inn in Napa. It’s kind of a cross between a bed and breakfast and hotel. Great breakfast, not enough outlets in the room, but the rooms were cute (and small but that wasn’t really an issue_ and the beds were comfortable. We had reservations at Morimoto, but didn’t go there because at 3:00 pm on our second day we got a call from The French Laundry that there had been a cancellation and did we want to come. We had a really lovely meal and they did nice wine pairing for us.
Wineries we visited: late start on day one, tacos for lunch then Frog’s Leap and then briefly Rutherford Ranch where we got comped for a visit the next day. Dinner was at Brix. Still have to come on the weekend so we can try their lunch, but we had a great meal and the outside terrace is really lovely. Day two we went to Relic (tiny, new vineyard do things very traditonally including some footstomping) you have to call, then back to Rutherford Ranch did a cheese and then a chocolate pairing. And ended at Tres Sabores which had with some interesting connections to Frog’s Leap and nice Zinfandel. Just before arriving at Tres Sabores we got a call from The French Laundry - we made it off the waiting list this year. We had a lovely meal there - dh had the regular tasting menu and I had the vegetarian one. Amusingly I thought dh’s best dishes were things I don’t really like (oysters, caviar, tapioca, pigs jowl), though even the FL couldn’t make beets taste good. The jowl was so good, I ended up trading with dh for that course - since he seemed to think y vegetable porridge was more interesting.
Ok, you have all gotten me interested in going back to Napa. I haven’t been there since I left Davis in 1982, but it certainly sounds like it’s changed quite a bit since then. Maybe we will get there in the next year or so.