Beau-Vine

Beau-Vine
1347 Main St.
St. Helena
(707) 968-9666

Open daily for dinner; jazz brunch on weekends; breakfast Thursday and Friday; lunch Wednesday through Friday

Is Beau-Vine the most interesting new restaurant to open in the Napa Valley in the last six months? Quite possibly it is. It certainly has one of the more innovative menus, with appetizers and entrees divided by region (North America, Oceania, South America) and one of the best wine by the glass programs anywhere, with over thirty wines offered, plus another dozen-plus dessert wines. Add to that the fact that the service is charming, prices are mostly reasonable and the airy, stone walled room on St. Helena’s Main Street is delightful, and you find yourself looking for excuses to go back for another meal.

Actually the menu alone offers plenty of reasons for a return. Try the Billabong Yabbies (like small roasted lobsters with a dark rum, lime and pineapple sauce and an addictive pyramid of Taiwanese black rice) for an appetizer and you have to go back for the blindingly-fresh ceviche, the Argentine parilla, the New England lobster salad or the ricotta cheese gnocchi, all appetizers. Order the perfect porterhouse of lamb or the paila marina, that traditional Chilean seafood stew, and that means you’ve missed the tenderloin of kangaroo with its ethereal bush tomato chutney, or the gaucho pineapple bavette steak, or the vegetarian tartufu steak with risotto. Now do you understand the problem?

The menu is strictly a la carte but the broad choice of side dishes are perfect for sharing and are as carefully prepared as the entrees. One talent the kitchen has perfected is matching flavors, so that despite the diversity of the menu, dishes never fight with one another, working to complement instead, regardless of their relative subtlety or assertiveness. It’s a difficult art to master, but one Beau-Vine has learned exceptionally well.

Pearl

Pearl
1339 Pearl St., Ste. 104
Napa
(707) 224-9161

Closed Sunday and Monday


Small enough to be intimate, large enough to support a diverse menu and a nice selection of wines, Pearl is a block or two off the main streets in downtown Napa and no matter how many times you visit it always seems as if you have discovered something special. Which, in fact, you have.

Pearl is the collaboration of Nickie and Pete Zeller. She’s the chef, he runs the front of the house. In 1995 they sold their popular Brown Street Grill and Pearl was born and they’ve been doing a steady business with a fiercely loyal clientele ever since.

With a patio, a courtyard, high ceilings, a collection of folk art hex signs, an open kitchen and original art everywhere you turn, Pearl manages to be open and lively during the day, romantic in a very California way at night. Not surprisingly the oyster is a constant on the menu both night and day, prepared in a variety of ways. A particular favorite is the Hog Island, Tomales Bay oyster appetizer with a ginger lime mignonette that bursts with freshness and flavors. Seafood in any form is a highlight at Pearl. Grilled halibut with rock shrimp in a green curry sauce is a careful melding of textures and spice; the pistachio crusted ahi pan-roasted rare with prosciutto, capers and currants with an orange vinaigrette is one of those dishes that makes you want to give the chef a standing ovation.

For meat dishes the Tunisian-style braised lamb shank once again reminds us that slow cooking has ample rewards as the meat falls from the bone. The triple double pork chop prepared in an apple-Dijon brine is another sterling example of a dish prepared to the absolute zenith.

The menu changes daily as specials come and go, but some mainstays are constant and should not be missed, foremost the soft taco appetizer: house made tortillas with chopped ginger, flank steak, chilies, cilantro, salsa verde and a delicately citrus-packed lime cream. If they are ever offered with fish, order them immediately, that’s how good they are. Other constants that explain their customers’ loyalty are the quesadilla, the green onion corn cakes with smoked salmon and lemon-dill cream and the soft polenta. Desserts are on a par with the quality of the other courses and if you cannot face one alone, share it with a friend.

Pearl’s wine list offers some pleasant surprises, among them a couple of Gewürztraminers that will make you rethink your opinion of this oft-maligned varietal. There is a solid foundation of the standard Chardonnays, Cabernets and Merlot, but consider a Syrah, a Barbera, a Pinotage, Mourvedre or Malvasia Blanc. Pearl is, after all, a culinary voyage of discovery.

Piatti

Piatti
6480 Washington St.
Yountville
(707) 944-2070

Open daily


Piatti is a mainstay of the restaurant scene in Yountville, no mean feat when your neighbors include the French Laundry, Bouchon and Bistro Jeanty. If there was any doubt as to the restaurant’s commitment to keeping on the culinary fast track it was dispelled a few years ago when chef Peter Hall signed on as executive chef. A veteran of Tra Vigne, Stars and Mustards Grill he immediately began transforming the property from a nice Italian restaurant to a destination. And he did it without taking the sweetbreads off the menu or even changing the recipe. It is a wise chef who knows when to make changes and when to leave well enough alone.

Sweetbreads aside, the menu has made a decided turn away from the standard list of Italian specials. Piatti also readily and happily embraces French cuisine (particularly that of the south of France), all the while making full use of the freshest bounty of California and beyond. Sometimes that bounty is amazingly close at hand. Witness the black Mission olives from the trees out back that are cured at the restaurant. Gravlax (and smoked salmon carpaccio) is made in-house, meats, including prosciutto, likewise. When sausage appears on the menu as a special it is also made in the Piatti kitchen. It is this attention to culinary detail that defines Hall’s cooking and constitutes the backbone of a menu that changes daily.

Some favorites? The Prince Edward Island mussels roasted in the wood oven (which also turns out spectacular personal-size pizzas). Served with angel hair pasta in a spicy sausage broth, it is both hearty and delicate. The lemon herb rotisserie chicken is always popular, the rosemary flat bread with tapenade and D’Affinois cheese is a perfect appetizer, especially if you order the Parma prosciutto wraps along with it. The chef’s take on fish and chips is unlike anything you can imagine, such is the lightness and flavor of a much-maligned dish, and risotto or any of the pastas are never disappointing. The sweet potato packets with lemon sage brown butter, pancetta and pecans are downright startling in that subtle sort of way.

The wine list at Piatti is designed so that food and wine pairings are a natural selection (try the Franus Zinfandel with the honey smoked ham shank, for instance) and reasonably priced. The restaurant takes great pride in offering wines from some of the smaller producers, always an adventure in itself. It is all part of a stylish but comfortable restaurant in the heart of the wine country.