Top Chef and Napa: When Worlds Collide

There is no doubt that at some point soon I’ll give in and write about Top Chef Masters (hint: I think I’m really going to like this show), however as I wrap up my notes from my Napa trip this past March I noticed that the two worlds collided.  Napa Valley Chef Cindy Pawlcyn is both one of the Top Chef Masters contestants and the owner of Go Fish and Cindy’s Back Street Kitchen (and Mustard’s Grill), which were two of the spots of both of my meals my last day in Napa on this latest go round.

You can read all about Cindy on Bravo’s website and here are a few words about my visit to the restaurants.

Go Fish

Go Fish is in a location that was formerly one of my favorite restaurants in Napa, a now defunct but formerly really fantastic place called Pinot Blanc with French inspired food (I suppose French fare wasn’t either profitable or popular enough in Napa). I was really disappointed when Pinot Blanc closed, but my experience with Chef Pawlcyn’s food at Mustard’s Grill (her first restaurant in Napa) has always struck a good chord with my southern roots – very clean, polished food rooted in basic, hearty ingredients; gourmet comfort food, if you will.  Knowing that, I was certain I was in for her interpretation of sushi and seafood and those same honest, exciting flavors and I was really excited about the combination.  I expected Pan-Asian meets down home America all tied up in a gourmet bow.

What I got, to be a little honest, was unfortunately a little t00 generic and a little too safe.  At its core, Go Fish is a well exectuted, but garden variety Sushi and Seafood restaurant.  The lunch menu had some nice things on it (not sure if dinner is different), and everything was executed spot on, but nothing was particularly inspiring or singularly unique.  They did have a really well done wine list that well suited with their menu.  Our selection for lunch, a 2007 Robert Foley Pinot Blanc was a delight: fresh and lively with peach and melon flavors and just a little hint of minerality (and having come straight from an appointment with Foley a welcome respite to barrel samples of massive Cabernets).  All in all, Go Fish is a very well appointed restaurant with precise service and really well prepared food, but it was still basically just pedestrian sushi living in some pretty safe boundaries.

Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen

Dinner, however, was another story all together.  We ate at Chef Pawlcyn’s most ambitious restaurant in Napa, Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen.  It literally is on a Highway 29 backstreet in St. Helena and it was first rate.  The dining room is fitted out in an open, airy bungalow-meets-victorian style and felt like it would be as much at home in Seaside as it was in St. Helena.  This was my third visit to this place and was, by far and away, my best trip yet.  The service has always been very informed and precise without being pretentious and hit a new level of “goodness” the night we had dinner there.

We had just come from Stanton Vineyards (post to come on that AMAZING visit) and two things were certain 1) we were ready for a meal and 2) we needed a palate refresher.    I started with the “Mojito Monte” which was a refreshing blend of Myers’s Platinum Rum, fresh mint, fresh squeezed lime juice & club soda and all that lime juice did the trick.  Following the trend of good restaurants having really good cocktails, Cindy’s has any number of ways to start – or end – the evening (including the “Nutty Lebowski”, an hommage to The Big Lebowski complete with a quote from the movie on the menu) .

The photographs didn’t come out so well for this visit for two reasons: I don’t like to use flash photography in dark restaurants and the lighing wasn’t good enough for flashless photography, and we were semi drunk and ravenous and and I pretty much forgot to take pictures until three or four bites into the course.  I’ll spare you the photo of my mangled, yet delectable Wood Oven Duck, fresh garbanzo beans, green curry, mango chutney & basmati rice.  For a whopping (read: mere) $23 it was more food than I could handle.  I won’t even be cute and post a link to the photos of our appetizers, a Rabbit Tostada with red chile salsa, black beans & feta and Stuffed Piquillo Peppers with cumin braised beef & charred tomato salsa.  Let it suffice to say that Ansel Adams couldn’t have saved the imagery after the jackal-like approach four hungry diners took to these unsuspecting amuse bouches.   By the end, I barely had it in me to help The Boss with her Warm Chocolate Hazelnut Truffle Tart topped with coffee-caramel sauce and espresso ice cream, but I gave it a valliant effort.

Here Cindy’s (can I call her Cindy now?) flavors were as real as I remembered them to be, real and true with zero pretense and yet enough flavor combinations to keep your head on a swivel and I would say that a trip to Napa – particularly if you’ve never been – wouldn’t be complete without a stop at this fantastic place.

We did have a pair of amazing wines with dinner.  One bottle we brought, a 2002 Stanton Vineyards Napa Cabernet Sauvignon which was given to us as a gift by Doug Stanton at our last visit of the day (again, post forthcoming) and another bottle we bought from their wine list.  It was a real find, the 2001 Oakville Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Estate.  After a day of barrel samples at Foley and new releases at Stanton, Cade and Casa Nuestra it was a welcomed respite to drink some wines with age and maturity.

Now, keep in mind these are some cursory notes scibbled into a Blackberry over two months ago, but the ‘02 Stanton was a big, lush gorgeous and still youthful wine.  It hadn’t yet started showing any signs of browning or maturation of fruit.  The precise flavors of blackberry and graphite still dominated, and the wine was full and lush on the palate.  I don’t want to get into my tome on Doug Stanton here, but suffice it to say that this was a very exciting wine and one that was a treat indeed.

The wine we bought off their list was the ‘01 Oakford Cab (n.b. Cindy’s has an excellent corkage policy – free corkage on every bottle you bring in for each wine you buy off the list) and it was a rare gem to find.  It was made by a guy named Marco DiGuilio.  I used to work with Marco in a previous life when I was on the dark side of the wine busines and he was winemaker for Pepi Winery in Oakville.  He helped get the Lokoya program off the ground and set about making some STUNNING Cabernets from Napa – I’m talking cult quality wines here.  Being a bit of a journeyman, Marco never seems to stay in one place very long and for one year only – in 2001 – he made the wines for Oakford Vineyards.  Their estate vineyards are virtually next door to Harlan Estate and the high toned fruit, the grip and verve of the backbone of the wine along with the amazingly long, lush finish do much to show the pedigree of the vineyards.  The wine was 8 years old, but nobody told that to the wine.  It acted like it was just bottled last year and showed a promise of another decade of ageing.  The acidity was in balance, the tannins were still silky and elegant and the fruit was till opening up as we were emptying the bottle.  A fitting end to an amazing meal, indeed.

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