Our last day in Napa for Kristine’s b-day weekend extravaganza and our last meal up here. Since didn’t make it to French Laundry on Thursday, we did want to at least try one of Thomas Keller’s other restaurants, in this case, Bouchon, his French bistro. The weather was perfect so we decided to take a table outside.
We ordered a few appetizers to buy us some time to figure out what we wanted otherwise. We ordered the oysters (Kusshi from Washington and some others from Rhode Island that we can’t remember the name of), escargot (of course…we’re a at a bistro!), and truffle fries of course for Kristine.
The escargot came out first. They were in a cast iron pan with 6 indents (sort of like an aebleskiver pan) each with an escargot, garlic butter, topped with a puff pastry. This was generally delicious, but with the puff pastry and it soaking up butter, it didn’t really let the escargot be the star and ended up being a very heavy dish.
The truffle fries were also tasty with nice bits of truffle providing the flavor (as opposed to simply using truffle oil), but again, just a bit greasier than I prefer.
Oysters were light and refreshing. Kristine describes the Rhode Island oysters as “were smaller finer point at the end of the oyster with soft grey and yellow stripes” and “were really delicate. They were better naked. the mignonette over powered them they were so delicate.” Regarding the kusshi’s, because she likes a good mignonette, she preferred the kusshi’s because of the acidity balance.
These 3 starters were pretty filling, but that didn’t deter us from ordering more. We did go with a salad, the Salade Maraîchère au Chèvre Chaud (mixed greens with goat cheese, herbs de Provence with red wine vinaigrette and the Terrine de Foie de Volaille (chicken liver mousse) with toasted baguette. The salad was nicely seasoned and quickly consumed by the four of us. The foie had such a perfectly smooth texture, rich and flavorful.
Lastly, we had dessert, or rather, we had 3 desserts since they all sounded so great. Charlotte ordered the Crème Brûlée, Kristine ordered the Pot du Crème au Chocolat, and Andrea ordered the Tarte au Citron. I just had a spoon so I could try them all. All were fantastic. I love creme brulee and this was a Platonic ideal of creme brulee with a perfect soft custard texture, a bit of vanilla, a bit of egginess, and the signature carmelized sugar top. The pot du creme was also delicious along with the chocolate shortbread cookies. Both were finished in short order. The lemon sabayon tarte was delicious as well, but it was huuuge and a bit heavier on the palate compared to the other two and we couldn’t quite finish it, but we did take the rest to go.
Service was excellent and our waitperson very much took care of us. We were on a very small table and were very attentive to our numerous requests. As we finished the meal, they also gave Kristine a little goodie bag for her b-day which had several packaged goodies from the bakery – shortbread, the namesake Bouchon (cork shaped brownies named after the Bouchons of Lyon), chocolate almond toffee, and salted caramel peanut popcorn. I can personally attest that the shortbread and brownies were delicious with morning coffee and the salted caramel peanut popcorn was dangerously delicious as a snack.
All in all, a delightful experience with perfect company.
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