So it starts again... This year, we're mostly in Northern California - wine country and the wild coast. Later on, we'll be visiting the Redwood forests, and the even wilder Oregon coast. Our journal is captured in true point-and-shoot fashion with, well, point-and-shoots: a venerable Nikon Coolpix 5600 and a relatively modern Canon G10. The pictures in this journal are simply downloaded from the cameras, downscaled for the web, and uploaded to our website. Yes, most pictures could benefit from some tweaking... but we are on vacation!
Our film camera kit this year (not featured at all in this journal) consists of 35mm Canon F-1, 6x6cm Mamiya C330, 6x7cm Mamiya 7II, 4x5in Fotoman 45PS and 4x5in Zero Image 45 pinhole.
As our friends know, we love sniffing out good food in out of the way places. Of course, it's pretty easy to spend a lot of money and get pretty good food. It's a little harder to spend a reasonable amount of money for great food - that often requires sniffing around out-of-the-way places for young or refugee-from-the-big-city chefs who really care about their work. Here are some of those places.
Wine bars are a dime-a-dozen along the California wine corridor, but we stumbled into "Vine Tastings" in tiny Windsor, just south of Healdsburg - the place is just off the village green in the middle of town. Chef William (Billy) Oliver is putting out small plates to go with the wines on offer, and most every component is made in-house from locally produced ingredients. That in itself is also not unusual, but chef Billy takes unusual care and pride in his ever changing menu, and on this slow night, personally brought out every plate. We ordered one of everything on the menu, which turned out to be a nice quantity and variety of food for a dinner for two. Chef Billy went 12-for-12 in dishes - it is very rare to have everything on every plate be so good - especially when there were unusual tastes in practically every dish. Even the more prosaic plates like the gravlax and caviar on blintzes and the Kobe beef sliders were impeccably executed. Vine Tastings is very new, and they have some work to do on their service - chef Billy personally saved the evening for us - but don't let that be a deterrent.
Occidental is a bip of a town in the middle of the out-of-the-way west of Sebastopol in California. Bistro des Copains is worth a special trip to visit. First off, they offer BYOB for a small corkage fee - a nice thing after a day of wine touring. There is also a small, but tight wine list. The food is perfectly French, perfectly prepared by chef de cuisine Thomas Halligan. The sweetbreads with forest mushrooms on puff pastry is far too generous a portion, but hugely (literally) delicious. The duck breast was perfectly cooked, pink and juicy in the middle, which is strangely very hard to get in the USA, even when it's specifically ordered that way. House made ice cream on a strawberry-apple galette makes for an ideal finish. Service was efficient (maybe even a little too efficient), friendly and informed.
Ok, it's not exactly fine dining, but what could be better than a huge and delicious plate of huevos rancheros on the deck overlooking California Highway 1 and the coast on a sunny day? I usually shudder at the thought of "all day breakfast", but these folks really should be serving up breakfast all day. The interior spaces of the cafe are hilarious. The service is excellent, and the locals are very friendly.
Well, this is actually one of those fine-dining establishments with the bigger price tags, but that price tag is warranted by the amazing ingredients, perfectly prepared. We had foie gras, on a pan-fried polenta thingie with a dollop of wild flower honeycomb and local huckleberry compote. Waaaay too big a chunk of foie gras. Perfect. Wendy had roast sturgeon served up with a wild mushroom and truffle tagliatelle, and Russ had duck two ways: a leg confit and a seared and roasted breast. Once again (to Russ' amazement - the second time this trip), the breast was beautifully cooked - pink in the middle. The duck came with a celeriac mousse and a huckleberry sauce. Nice room, attentive service. My only complaint was the person who took my phone reservation was pretty unfriendly, and got it wrong - but it all worked out in the end.
We found Wild Rose a number of years ago when Lynn and Daniel Flattley first set up their excellent restaurant in old town Bandon. They have only gotten better. The Wild Rose is a rustic, but very comfortable room, and the locals know it well - so a reservation will be necessary. We had four beautiful dishes, all perfect: seared wild scallops with a cauliflower puree, pesto and truffle oil; crab ravioli in a champagne (I think) chive and cream sauce; over-roasted sablefish with spinach puree, more of that cauliflower and truffle oil (I think) and a roast tomato sauce. Dessert was a Grand Marnier and Bailey's chocolate gateau. MMMmmmmmmm. I just wish they would get an espresso machine....
No visit to Cannon Beach is complete without a visit to chef John Newman's little restaurant near the Cannon Beach Hotel. Chef John has been recently invited to NYC to cook a meal for the James Beard Foundation. This must be our fifth or sixth visit, and chef John never disappoints. Order all of the appetizers - that's often what we do. This night, that means polenta with wild mushrooms, crab cakes, green salad with sugared walnuts and blue cheese and pears, foie gras with seared pears, and the signature lobster ravioli in marsala cream. I'm understating the complexity of the dishes... they are all incredibly garnished with things we often have trouble identifying... dessert was the perfectly prepared Pavlova, with the partly crunchy, partly chewy meringue, huckleberry (I think) sauce and ice cream.
It's roasted on site, there's a long, long list of single-source beans and blends (always, always ask for the "weirdest" coffee in the store - there is always something). There's also a huge selection of single-source and house-blended teas, and to top it off, a selection of unusual spices and chocolate. The best thing here is the proprietor's encyclopedic knowledge of coffee, tea, and spice - and their trivia. We've been coming here for years.
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