womantraveler

Wine Country Good Life at Napa Valley's Carneros Inn

Splurging for the best room (one of the east vineyard-facing Vineyard View Cottages) at Napa Valley's Carneros Inn was worth the stretch price, especially the outdoor shower and vineyard views.    Now in off-season there are deals worth considering across the property for a peaceful winter get-away. There's lots of good buzz about the place, most of it worthy. Besides the privacy, we especially liked the patio with overhead heaters, the fireplace, French doors and flat screen TV/DVD/CD combo. I'm told by Womantraveler friends that a girlfriends spa visit at the Carneros Inn tops the list in the highly competitive Napa Valley spa scene, including a room for the day for relaxing and changing. On another visit to the Valley, simply stopping for a glass of wine at the outdoor lounge was a delightful treat. Just inside was the highly rated Farm restaurant -- we can't vouch for it directly but the word of mouth is tantalizing. 

Small Plates, Large Pleasures in San Francisco

We girlfriends dining out opt for the "small plates" restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not that we eat any less, we simply enjoy a greater sampling of dishes -- and tasting the menu's variety is great fun.

To celebrate Leap Year, our choice was Sabor of Spain in  downtown San Rafael. Where did the four hours go?? Assorted olives (aceitunas de la casa) and a bottle of red wine (Crianza) started us off and lingered with us for the entire meal. Next came a butter lettuce and Spanish blue cheese salad, mixed marinated mushrooms in white wine, grilled marinated calamari and tiger prawns -- four "small" plates that amounted to a huge amount of food for two! We could also have ordered regular main dishes as well. Sabor of Spain's vinoteca and food products, as well as occasional live music, make it an "uptown" destination.

The first trip to Pres a Vi in San Francisco's historic Presidio was such a major hit that I've taken other guests back since. Located in Lucasfilm's Digital Arts Center, Pres a Vi is an upscale and animated city restaurant offering inventive and artistically presented "global cuisine" of both small plates and main dishes. A recent visit left us remarking on the endive salad, miso-marinated Alaskan black cod and King Salmon selections. A wide assortment of wines, in flights or ordered individually, pair thoughtfully with the food. And there's live jazz music on Thursday nights. (One friend was less satisfied with the brunch menu due to what she thought was a fairly limited menu and the restaurant's "no substitutions" policy. But you can always check the menu before making your reservation.)

For the best sushi in Marin County and arguably in the Bay Area, Sushi Ran in Sausalito is the right answer. When Bay Area restaurants were ranked by France's Michelin critics for the first time in 2006, Sushi Ran was among those winning a coveted Michelin star. That's in part because the menu is a combination of traditional Japanese and Pacific Rim cuisine served with imagination and flair. There are two sections -- one for reservations and the other for walk-ins. The wondrous sushi bar is on the reservations-only side. And if you're walking in, get there by 5:30 when Sushi Ran opens, or the line will soon have formed. Also come with a clear head and a large appetite -- the menu is lengthy and the wine list has 300 offerings!

Two other local faves: Betlenut on Union Street in San Francisco (Pan Asian fusion) has fabulous food and sidewalk tables for the best of San Francisco people-watching, while E&O Trading Company, with three Bay Area locations, transforms the big flavors of Southeast Asian cooking into dishes beyond the predictable Thai and Vietnamese preparations.

What's "Inn" for New Year's Eve

The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament has wrapped up, but it's not too late to make a note to be in Pebble next New Year's Eve. The Inn at Spanish Bay throws a bash that's worth planning for, even though the details might not be available until after Thanksgiving. On December 31, 2007, the inn threw its most elaborate New Year's event ever, celebrating 20 years of auld lang syne parties with 5 bands and DJs, lavish buffets and terrific fun. Taking advantage of the New Year's Eve package (offered with one- or two-night stays), we settled in at the inn for a couple of days in comfortably appointed accomodations with a cozy fireplace and spectacular views from  ocean to coastal hills. Happily the "house restaurant" is one of the best versions of the popular Roy's restaurants and Chef Roy Yamaguchi's signature Hawaiian-fusion cuisine in a casual setting.

It goes without saying that the Monterey Peninsula location about 2 1/2 hours south of San Francisco is fabulous -- if the weather cooperates. The wild coast can be shrouded in fog, but the spectacular sunny days are unforgettable. A quick reminder of day trips in the area -- Carmel, Monterey, 17-Mile Drive that provides some access to the scenic coast and, farther south, Big Sur, at the moment a coastal perch for migrations of whales, elephant seals and California condors.

Unfortunately Carmel has deteriorated from a quaint artists' community surrounded by elegant wealth to an overexpensive tourist trap overrun with bad or at best mediocre shops and galleries and often fairly outrageous taste, the kind that befits big spenders. The statement seems to be, "if I'm expensive and I flaunt it, I must be good." Sorry, but cost and quality do not necessarily align in my book.  Monterey has the world-famous aquarium, which is awesome, and an appealingly funky spirit fed by casual seaside food and fun. We hear that the nearby Carmel Valley Ranch resort in a less frenetic and lush inland valley setting has undergone quite a renovation and brought in celebrity chef Michel Richard's Citronelle restaurant.

Get Away to Nick's Cove

The Northern California insiders' new retro getaway is Nick's Cove along a curvy stretch of the Marin County coast. It's hot because its impressario is restaurateur Pat Kuleto (Fog City Diner, Boulevard, Postrio and a host of other signature San Francisco dining destinations), supports the credentials of organic farming and sustainable fishing and is sufficiently out of the way for a cache of remoteness. Plenty of people have gotten the word in the past six months, though -- it's already difficult if not impossible to get a reservation on short notice, although they do have a bar and seat walk-ins.

The 45-minute jaunt west of San Rafael, Novato or Petaluma or about an hour north of San Francisco snakes along hairpin turns through vast protected West Marin hills and dairy farms before reaching the town of Marshall on the Tomales Bay. This coastal Highway 1 stretch from Point Reyes Station on the south to Bodega Bay on the north is across from the Point Reyes National Seashore, a coastal wilderness abundant with wildlife. Landside, it's dotted with late-1800s onetime railroad towns and farms of cultivated oyster beds. It's an area full of history, as the story of Nick's illustrates. And far enough from modern civilization, in fact, that even cell phones can't find you here.

Turning a 100-year-old restaurant that was a local favorite and adding 12 pricey bungalows was a bumpy eight-year journey for Kuleto and his longtime partner, Executive Chef Mark Franz. They've preserved the ambiance -- the restaurant is casual roadhouse-style, and the bungalows were built or remodeled from wood-rotting shacks. They are perched along the water's edge, where you can hear the lap of the tide hitting the bungalow pilings and across the road in the groove of a hill. Each cottage is unique. All are decorated in comfortable antiques with luxury appointments -- high-thread count linens, heated bathroom floors, flat screen TVs and Wi-Fi. Winter rates range from $165 to $595 a night, which suggests what the summer season will fetch.

We sampled the inventiveness of Nick's kitchen staff during a wine tasting dinner hosted by Ross Halleck. You can't go to Nick's and not have oysters, which are farmed in the area by Hog Island Oyster Company, Tomales Bay Oyster Co. and others. Halleck Vineyard in the Russian River Valley produces just under 2000 cases of Pinot Noir. That's not far from Nick's, which has become Halleck's local hangout. His Hallberg Vineyards Pinot Noir 2005 was paired with a butternut squash flan, delightfully rich and nutty with white truffle oil. His Three Sons Cuvee Pinot Noir 2006 accompanied the wood grilled Vermont quail stuffed with local chanterelles, pancetta, cannellini bean puree and a balsamic reduction.

This, of course, wasn't the regular Nick's menu, which is harvested daily from the bay out the back door. We'll head back to do that soon. Kuleto, meanwhile, is hard to keep up with -- he opened two new restaurants in San Francisco's Embarcadero waterfront to more fanfare in late January -- Epic Roasthouse and Waterbar.

City Wine Bar Meets Napa Tasting Room

The food and wine mecca of San Francisco continues to present the fineries of gourmet high-style with the simplicity of exquisite neighborhood casual. This certainly comes in the city's restaurants of all sizes and shapes as part of its neighborhood-based identity. Now comes an abundance of local wine bars, where visitors or residents can experience the tasting rooms of Napa and Sonoma wines, Burgundy and New Zealand grapes, and more. These often funky places are not pretentious, but they are knowledgeable. The connoisseur experience is just down the street, with the world at your fingertips.

Not that wine bars are novel, but they are increasingly more prevalent and certainly more accessible to the unitiated. For a "flight" of small quantities of several wines, you can sample a much wider variety than a single winery's tasting room offers out in the Valley. Clearly these venues provide two different types of entertainment -- to go deeper into a single winery's selections or to go wider by experimenting with new and unexpected options at the city wine bar. Yet, while wineries are pushing sales of bottles to go, wine bars offer comfortable seating encouraging lingering and conversation. As a womantraveler, it's good to have the options.

San Rafael's Italian Street Painting Festival

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area June 9-10, be sure to visit San Rafael's famous Italian Street Painting Festival. Sponsored by Youth in Arts, the festival splashes several blocks of downtown San Rafael with colorful and detailed chalk paintings -- plus music and food -- for 60,000 visitors a year. San Rafael is 25 minutes north of the city across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. Get there early to see the paintings develop, or chat with the artists once the work is done. Here are photos from the 2006 event.

   

The Awesome Grandeur of Yosemite

I was unprepared for the awesome grandeur of California's Yosemite Valley. The expressive images captured by photographer Ansel Adams remain sharply tangible in my mind's eye.

Our four-hour drive east from San Francisco slowly curved up Route 120 to the Big Oak Flat entrance station at 4880 feet above sea level, then down to the quiet jewel of Yosemite Valley. Still a high altitude at 3900 feet, you feel cupped in a hand by such imposing granite monoliths as El Capitan (7569 feet) and Half Dome (8836) ringing the views. While the National Park is 1169 square miles, the valley itself, formed by glacial erosion over millions of years, is only one mile across at its widest point and seven miles long. Standing on the valley floor, the only way to look is up.

We visited in the late spring, while Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in North America and fifth tallest in the world (at 2425 feet), was roaring down at its 2007 peak rate of 2000 cubic feet per second. In California, spring is the time of forest waterfalls because the winter snow pack is melting, giving way to dry summers. This year, with the rainfall at only 40 percent of normal, there are concerns that the waterfalls and lush blooming meadows of Yosemite will recede more rapidly into summer. The dogwoods, of course, come only in spring, but in any case, it's always best to visit Yosemite before the crowds around Memorial Day and leave around Labor Day. Reservations at the elegant Ahwahnee Hotel, said to be the most beautiful in the National Park system, must be made weeks and months ahead. (The 1920's era hotel is already sold out for the summer.)

A newcomer to the California wilderness, I learned many things by visiting Yosemite, most memorably that "Sierra" is plural. So the term is "the Sierra," when referring to the 400-mile long, 75-mile wide, at times 14,000 feet mountain range east of the California valley (not "the Sierras"). Thus, the Sierra Club, founded in 1892 by John Muir and a group of San Francisco Bay Area environmentalists to preserve and protect the American wilderness. I also now correctly use the terms, sequoia and redwood trees. While related, they are not interchangeable names for the same species. The giant sequoia, the most massive living thing on earth, grows only in a limited number of forest groves, as in Yosemite, some living up to 3000 years. Redwoods, taller and more conifer-like, require the coastal fog to thrive. The South Entrance, via Route 41, takes you past the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias.

We entered the Ahwahnee through the parking lot of tall incense cedars, also often confused with the sequoia because of their reddish and feathery bark.

Wine and Art at Clos Pegase

Clos Pegase, a temple to both wine and art, is the Napa Valley winery I recommend friends visiting when they're searching through the hundreds of options. Designed in the post-modern style by architect Michael Graves, the winery also houses the internationally renown art collection of owner Jan Schrem. In addition to the winery, a visitor can take a tour (including self-guided with narrative) of the 24 sculptures in the gardens and porticos as well as the art in interior galleries. One of the most famous in the collection is Henry Moore's "Mother Earth," who faces west and is usually bathed in sunlight.

The winery's name is a tribute to Pegasus, the mythological Greek winged horse who touched the earth with his hooves and unleashed the sacred spring of the muses, the wine that flows from grapes. Bacchanalian pleasure is also suggested here in a humorous way. Touring Clos Pegase mixes the fineries of an art museum, a wine cellar and the expansive and welcoming beauty of a Napa Valley estate.

You notice I've yet to talk about the wines, but they are stunning and carefully produced. Small berries, thicker skins, well-drained soil planted in old vines that are the progenitors of really fine wines. Wines are harvested by hand, not by machine, and crops are not densely planted. Our favorites are the Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Merlot offerings. We were fortunate to visit on a slow day and have our own private tour guide, who took us down into the cellars, where art is displayed purposefully as well. From earliest times, people's enjoyment of wine led to them to embrace art and music, and there's a lovely taste of the experience right here.

San Francisco's Top 100 Eateries

The Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants by San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer are out for 2007, and Womantraveler consistently recommends several of them with first-hand knowledge to her visitors. Special favorites are Betlenut (Pan-Asian along the city's Union Street), Buckeye Roadhouse (Mill Valley in Marin County), Delfina (casual Italian in the city's Mission District), Gary Danko (elegant night out in the city), Hog Island Oyster Co. (in the Ferry Building), Silks (revived in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel), Sushi Ran (with a great wine bar in Sausalito) and Terra (Tuscan Cal-Asian in Napa Valley). Not that we are vindictive, but we saw some justice in the removal of Poggio's in Sausalito, a one-time favorite that plunged into indifference in service. Incidentally, there's been quite a dust-up lately between the food establishment and food bloggers about restaurant reviews, but in a metro area where food lies at the heart of the culture, we find Bauer and his his blog reliable.

Presidio Restaurants Create "Scene"

San Francisco's Presidio park, the old military base offering one of the most spectacular locations near the Golden Gate Bridge, has become a center of culture and food since "Star Wars'" George Lucas moved his studios there two years ago from Marin County. Lucasfilm's 850,000-square foot campus, called the Letterman Digital Arts Center after a previous hospital on the site, is a series of new buildings with the latest technology yet architecturally compatible with national historic landmark military buildings dating from the Civil War to the Cold War and neighboring Victorian residences.

The park's revival is seen in the many new eateries populated by employees of Lucasfilm and nonprofits housed on the sprawling Presidio property, as well as locals and visitors who have discovered them. First of all, you can dine and, on a stellar day, see the splendiferous Golden Gate Bridge. It's a lively setting -- employees take their lunch breaks, walking or biking down to the San Francisco Bay or nearby bridge trails.

What I especially enjoy as a Womantraveler stems from the global variety and pleasant service. Young pros spawning their culinary careers elsewhere in the city or known quantities expanding to the hot new scene have brought a vitality for innovation offered in a casually stylish way. We especially enjoyed Dish and La Terrasse. The Presidio Social Club recently got a solid review in the San Francisco Chronicle, and Pres a Vi is a wine bar extraordinaire and sibling of the popular Walnut Creek tapas-style restaurant.