Arti­choke Salad

Since it was our 6^th visit to Napa, we decided to try the route to Napa that takes you through Sonoma. The high­way through Sonoma is but 2 lanes; it winds through rolling hills until it reaches CA 29. On this trip we headed straight to St Helena — a small town just towards the north­ern tip of the high­way. In St Helena you will find the train­ing ground for many of America’s great­est chefs — The Culi­nary Insti­tute of Amer­ica at Greystone.The school has its own restau­rant called Wine Spec­ta­tor that is focused on serv­ing chef inspired menus cre­ated from locally pro­duced and sea­sonal ingre­di­ents. We had vis­ited the cam­pus before, how­ever this was our first time at the restau­rant. The restau­rant is sit­u­ated on a ter­raced bal­cony with shaded out­door seat­ing that per­mits a good view of the coun­try side to the east. Inside is a wine coun­try bistro look with wood, stone, and cop­per. The kitchen is clearly vis­i­ble from the entire din­ing room or bar, so you can hear and see the Chefs as they work.

Sar­dine Tapa from Today’s Temptations

Like all restau­rants in Napa, the wine selec­tion has many good choices, so I sug­gest you decide before arriv­ing if you will do a wine tast­ing or save your tongue for the few winer­ies you plan to visit that day. I have found that a day in Napa only allows for vis­it­ing 2–3 winer­ies any­way, so you could just begin your wine tast­ing here at the restau­rant. We passed on the wine tast­ing since we would later be vis­it­ing Robert Mon­davi and the Carneros vineyards.

We tried two of the restaurant’s sig­na­ture drinks– the gin­ger infused peach jas­mine tea and the nat­ural grape juice. Both were refresh­ing and not too sweet. The grape juice was made from freshly squeezed grapes which I had not had before; it was like some­one picked up a hand full of grapes and squeezed them into a glass. I am more used to what you find in the gro­cery store or foun­tain drink machines — both which are concentrates.

Lavash

The appe­tiz­ers at Wine Spec­ta­tor are more invit­ing the entrées — the entrées were bistro fare — good but not out­stand­ing. We ordered 1 entrée (the ricotta stuffed whole wheat ravi­o­lis) and 3 appe­tiz­ers. The soft-shell crab BLT, the arti­choke salad made of olive oil poached arti­chokes, water­cress, wal­nut bagna cauda, and lemony aioli, and their sea­son offer­ing Today’s Temp­ta­tions, which that day was dif­fer­ent bites of Mediter­ranean influ­enced amuse-bouches.