Seattle-San Jose Road Trip
Napa Valley (Friday)
Friday
morning we ate cherries and smoked salmon in the car for breakfast and drove
straight to the Robert Mondavi Vineyard for a tour, having heard that they
offer some of the most complete and informative tours in the area. We got
to go into the vineyard and see different kinds of grapes as they’re
growing, and also tour the inside of the processing areas too. The tour ended
with a seated tasting of one white wine (from their reserve supply), one red
wine, and one sweet wine which they suggest serving with smoked salmon appetizers.
Rather predictably, the sweet wine was the only one I drank more than a tiny
sip of, but I thought the whole experience was very interesting and educational—really!
Lunch was at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher just a tiny bit north in St. Helena, where we split a tuna burger (fabulous, rare slab of tuna steak, topped with an Asian-flavored slaw in the burger), an onion ring/blue cheese burger, and a vanilla Coke.
After lunch, we stopped into a great olive oil, vinegar, and preserves shop in Rutherford and tasted everything they had in the store—perhaps 20 oils, more vinegars, and lots of preserves, sauces, mustards, etc. I bought some olive-oil and yuzu soap for Marnie and a beautiful, creamy, local lilac honey for myself (plus I had a 10% off coupon from Robert Mondavi).
We drove down to Napa on a small road parallel to 29 which was slightly more scenic, and when we pulled into the downtown area we headed straight for Copia, a food and wine center and museum. Copia had tastings of chocolate milk (June is California Dairy Month, apparently), blue cheese, goat cheese, roasted corn salsa, and four kinds of wine. We liked the exhibits, especially the “guess what you’re smelling” one (I swear that what they call “barbecue” scent is instead the smell of a hot vacuum cleaner) and the “guess which candy bar this is a cross-section of,” which I did very well on (Robert was impressed with my knowledge of 100 Grand Bars and O.Henrys, though he did pull through with the Whatchamacalit). Before checking out the gift shop, we sat in on half of a demonstration in their cooking theatre on knife skills and cooking with herbs, and we got another sample (this time a cup of herbed wild rice salad).
From Napa we drove down to Berkeley, arriving just at 5:00 and planning to go straight to our hotel—the same Travelodge on University that I’d stayed at with my parents nine years ago when I was moving there. We were distracted, however, by the “Sho Chiku Bai Sake Factory, Tours Daily until 6pm” sign that we saw when crossing University near 7th Street, so we immediately pulled off and went in. We found ourselves in a silent, temple-like, utterly Japanese place. While we looked at a small exhibit on how sake was traditionally made, two workers moved around the factory floor below, bottling. Afterward, a woman behind a counter seriously checked our IDs and offered us free tastings of fifteen sakes and three plum wines. She talked us through all of them, and since there were so many and they came in clusters (several hot, then the rest cold; several dry, then several very dry, then a few sweeter; one unpasteurized; a few unfiltered and cloudy) we were able really to think about them comparatively, something we had been unable to do at Robert Mondavi when the three wines we tasted were so disparate that comparisons seemed laughable. This was possibly my favorite sight-seeing (and tasting) stop on our entire vacation to date, and when the woman escorted us out at 5:45, she very seriously closed up the door after us. For the record, our favorite plum wine was a Koshu Plum, made with sake instead of chardonnay like many other plum wines, which was very plummy and unusual. My favorite sake was the Takara Sierra Cold Premium Light, which tasted like delicious fresh water, so crisp and clean. Robert liked the Sho Chiku Bai Ginjo Premium and the Shirakabe Gura Premium Junmai (all of these, for both of us, were cold).
We checked into the hotel and changed before heading out—much too early, of course, but Robert was humoring me—to walk to our belated anniversary dinner, a night at Chez Panisse, which I’d never been to. It was really nice to walk through Berkeley—I was reminded of how much I really did like the city, if only I hadn’t been miserably lonely, missing Robert, hating my program, and hating everyone in my program. We got to Chez Panisse a little early, so we wandered through a chocolate shop next door where the French chocolatier complimented me on my chocolate-eating skills as I went through a raspberry ganache and then a chili ganache and just was ready for more.
Dinner at Chez Panisse (downstairs, in the restaurant, not the Cafe) was simple and perfect, really, though Robert was put out by not being able to diversify (everyone eats the same thing). It was exciting to see Alice Waters in the kitchen—when Robert asked why I didn’t talk to her, I pointed out that I couldn’t possibly hope to have a less awkward encounter than when I saw Robert Pinsky (multiple times, actually, given that his office is on the same floor as mine) at the water fountain. The highlights of our meal, for me, were a sparkling white wine aperitif with a shot of homemade Meyer lemon syrup in it (one of the best drinks I’ve ever had—if it were a) not alcoholic and b) somewhat more accessible I would absolutely drink it instead of Coke. I really loved it, if you can’t tell) and then a perfect white nectarine sliced around honey ice cream with honey on top for dessert. Everything in the middle was wonderful too, farm-fresh, of course, and the service was great, but really the beginning and the end stood out for me.
From there we went across the street to the Andronico’s for our second dessert of the evening, and we bought two pints of ice cream that are very hard to find—if not impossible—on the east coast. We got a Laloo’s goat’s milk ice cream in black mission fig and a Palapa Mexican-style ice cream in sweet corn, figuring that, yes, we weren’t going to eat the entire pints, but we wanted to try them, and we really had no other way to. We also gawked at the Bubbie’s ice cream mochi in the freezer case—oh to live in Berkeley! It’s most of the way to Hawaii already!—but we passed them up because, really, we weren’t hurting for food.
Back in the hotel I unveiled both ice creams, being very certain that the spoons didn’t get mixed up to muddy the flavors. Here were our reactions:
Me: Ummmmmm. MMMMMMM! Wow. Oh wow. Oh my. OH MY.
Robert: <silence>
When we finally got a bit more verbal, it came down to this:
Me: This one tastes just like figs and goat! Figs and Goat! And this one tastes just like sweet corn! Sweet corn! Wow! I love them! I love them! Goat—figs—corn! MMMMM!
Robert: Yes, you really can taste the goat. And the figs. And the sweet—corn. I don’t know which one I hate more.
Berkeley and San Jose (Saturday)
For breakfast on Saturday, the last day of our vacation, we drove back to the Elmwood area I used to live in and went to the Nabolom Bakery, which was only a block from my apartment and which I went to pretty much once a week for their cornbread. Seriously, this is the kind of cornbread I crave: made in a small loaf pan, it’s all at once rather open in the crumb and yet so moist it’s slightly gummy (far too gummy for Robert), with corn kernels and sweet bell peppers colorfully mixed into the dough. I was thrilled to grab one of their last two loaves this Saturday morning, and I got Robert a whole-grain apple spice muffin, since I knew he wouldn’t like the cornbread. Apparently, Robert hated the muffin too, complaining about its whole graininess. I thought it was delicious and good for you too, but what do I know?
We drove past the Ashby Flea Market and my old apartment—the latter still looks the same, orange and gold as ever, but seems to have been acquired by a different management company, judging from the banner outside. We then drove over to the corner of Heinz and 7th to take the 10:30 tour at the Scharffen-Berger Chocolate Factory. This was a great tour too, rivaling the sake tour in my book, since we got to taste nibs and different chocolates, and see and touch cocoa beans at every stage of the process. Hairnets donned, we walked through the factory floor itself, and the smell of chocolate permeated our clothes for the rest of the day. Robert made the visit a total success by buying me a “Chocolate Ganache” lip balm which is actually made with real chocolate (not just cocoa butter). Oh, I could slather that stuff on forever!
After this, it was clearly time for lunch. We drove over to University near the foot of campus and found at spot at a broken meter to begin one of our typical progressive lunches.
Course
#1 was an excellent tri-tip sandwich with cilantro-garlic sauce and a mango
smoothie on the side from a Brazilian sandwich shack that was new since I
left Berkeley. It was the big Brazil game in the World Cup, so the shack was
jumping with people eating sandwiches while glued to a TV.
Course #2 was a crepe nutella at Crepes-a-Go-Go, still the first creperie in the states we’d ever seen. Ah, it was delicious—I’m not a fan of some places in Boston that make their crepes so crisp they crackle when biting into them, and this crepe was delightfully soft.
Course #3 was a beef rib for $1.75 (with a side of broccoli) from a barbecue set up on Shattuck outside of a small Thai place near the old cheap spider roll sushi place. All of Courses #1-3, let me note, were eaten out of hand while walking along, except for a brief stop on a bench outside a hardware store for the messiest stage of the sandwich.
Course #4 was a real-crab California handroll from Kirala 2, a take-out version of the sushi place I loved (which apparently got extremely popular), in an upscale mini-mall/food court right next to Chez Panisse on Shattuck. The food court has only been open for three or four months, a woman said, and it’s got a lovely tiered terrace out back, with a small man-made stream, where we ate Course #5.
Course #5 was a tasting selection of six scoops of gelato from Ciao, Bella gelato in the same fout court for $5.50—this is quite the deal, since three scoops—of apparently the same size—cost $4.50. We tried chocolate sorbet and then five gelatos: espresso bean (which was very intense, delicious but strong), zabaglione (marsala-y and great, especially when mixed with a little espresso on the spoon), mango, dulce de leche, and green tea—all were rich and perfect, and we ate them off the colored translucent plastic spoons provided very happily.
We
made our way back to the car and drove to San Jose, enjoying the lovely Bay
Area weather, and thrilled that we hadn’t seen a spot of rain for our
entire trip. In San Jose we went to the Winchester Mystery Mansion, which
was great for our crazy-old-house experience (think of the crazy one we saw
in Scottsdale, after all), but rather on the touristy side, with a bad tour
guide who didn’t give useful information and was clearly reciting from
a script, and a bad tour group, who moved slowly, didn’t move all the
way inside the room, and included a very large woman with a cranky baby. Clearly,
the solution would have been to use Boeing rules—they just work. But
I was glad we went nonetheless, because I for one cannot pass up an old house
that has a tour, and Robert is actually starting to warm to these, I think,
after nearly 13 years with me.
Our
final stop was Japantown in downtown San Jose. I had read that this was a
very historic Japantown, one of the oldest on the west coast and one of the
only ones in its original position, but when we pulled in at 5:00 on a Saturday
afternoon, all the shops (including a tofu-maker) were closed, and the “self-guided
walking tour,” which we’d read about on the web, was as far as
we could tell just four signs on the different corners of a single intersection.
Still, we read the signs and then walked over to a Buddhist church and read
a historical sign there, and then we got Robert a shaved ice at the only still-open
such place, a creperie-waffle stand-coffee shop-boba place called Banana,
because Robert was starting to grow faint with thirst. This was a Hawaiian-style
shaved ice, not a Taiwanese-style one, which was very good, and afterwards,
Robert felt fortified enough to go for dinner. We walked into Yasu’s,
just across the street (still in Japantown) because the menu outside looked
interesting and really, none of the places were crowded. We apparently stumbled
onto a really creative chef—it was just the chef, who did everything
himself, and then one helper who did the drinks and the clean-up, and one
waitress, in a very small restaurant. Everything is served family-style except
the drinks: we had a root beer float—unfiltered sake with root beer
syrup in it—which was very intriguing. Not my favorite drink in the
world, but I didn’t hate it and was glad we tried it. Yes, we’d
been quite the big drinkers the past few days. To eat, we shared a fabulous
albacore poke served on warm rice and a crab roll tempura sliced up and served
with ponzu sauce on greens. The food was unique and beautifully made and presented,
and we were thrilled at our luck.
After dinner, we gassed up, drove to the airport (which is really extremely close to Japantown), returned our car, and watched a Netflix movie we’d carted around in our bag while waiting for our plane. The plane got us in at 5:00 the next morning, so we promptly picked up our luggage, hopped in a cab home, and went straight to bed. We woke up at noon, and for the next four days were solidly on California time. And happily.