I recently had a milestone birthday and in celebration of that decided to do a girl’s trip to wine country, Napa and Sonoma, with a few of my closest girlfriends. Lucky for me, they love wine as much as I do, if not more.
And since neither of us had ever been to the world’s most popular destinations for wine, we decided to make my birthday an excuse to go drink some fermented grape juice. After all, we love our fruit.
But lovers of good wine, are usually also lovers of good food, as are we. So, we were also on the hunt for the the best restaurants to help soak up the alcohol.
Given that we were visiting from a great food city like Chicago, our standards were definitely high. But Napa and Sonoma did not disappoint.
Here are some highlights of what we ate:
If you can, stay at the Napa Inn. They have the best breakfast in town and everyday its prepared fresh and served hot.
My birthday dinner was at a local wine bar in Napa downtown called Carpe Diem Wine Bar. And here, I had the best octopus of my life. No, I’m serious when I say, that it had us all stunned. We actually went back there the next day for a “snack” before dinner. A gorgeous whole, charred octopus with mint pesto, white gigande beans and wild arugula. Was incredible!
While there, also get their Cheese Platter with some of the best selection of cheeses on it that were carefully hand-picked assortment to give you the best fromage for your vin.
The next day we dined in downtown Sonoma at The Girl & The Fig and I ordered their Seared Tuna with potato gnocchi, mushrooms, roasted shallots and black pepper hollandaise. Blown away!
I don’t know about other Morimotos around the world, but the one in Napa is brilliant. Everything here was phenomenal and you may think I’m crazy to talk about their edamame but it was the perfect cluster of soy beans I’ve had.
In their sushi, the Soft Shell Crab Roll with deep fried crab, asparagus, tobiko, avocado and scallion was crazy good. And the coveted Braised Black Cod they are known for lived up to its hype.
May be weird that one of my other recommendations for you, is from our lunch on the Napa Wine Train. Get their salmon option in a creamy beurre blanc sauce because it is so wonderful. The fish was cooked perfectly. Even their Chocolate Mousse dessert served during ‘tea time’ was indescribably good. And I am not a mousse fan.
Of course, all the wine we drank paired well with everything. We especially enjoyed our visit to Swanson Vineyards, Redmon Vineyard and Grigich Hills Estate.
We’ve talked about going back to Napa for round two, and I’m half tempted to start panning now, because all this food talk is making me hungry again.