Restaurant at the Meadowood Review

The Restaurant at Meadowood
900 Meadowood Lane
Saint Helena, CA 94574
(707) 967-1205

Hours: Mon - Th (6-9 pm), Fri-Sat (6-9:30 pm)

The Restaurant at the Meadwood was one of a handful of higher-end restaurants in Napa Valley that we hadn’t gotten to yet. Roughly speaking, the ones that have more of a dress code are the ones that tend to be later on the list.  :-P We've been twice already, and it's quite a culinary experience and although it's the  2^nd most expensive meal we’ve had in the area after the French Laundry, it was probably the best meal we’ve had in the area after the French Laundry.

We didn't have a camera the first time we went. I at least had my cell phone for the second time with barely enough light to make out the food. The food looks a lot better than my photos. Take a look at the other sites for better pictures.

The Restaurant at Meadowood Food

(So, keep in mind since this is one of those fancy, shmancy restaurants, the portions are going to be fairly small. It is, after all, a tasting menu. There are usually 9 actual courses, but then they toss in the amuse bouches at the start and then some additions in the middle and then some post-dessert desserts at the end. The portions are small, but it's a borderline exhausting culinary tour with the wine. On our last visit, it was basically 14 tastes: 9 courses with a wine pairing + 5 add-ons.

Meadowood Amuse Bouche

For the two times we've been to the Meadowood, we started off with a little amuse bouche with two tiny beignets filled with crème fraich and fromage with a delicate little stack of garnish precariously balanced on top. I could’ve eaten a bucket of those. Airy, Salty, creamy, cheesy. Mmmm… (Actually, I was lucky to get mine at all because when the waiter first presented the two beignets, my wife initially thought both of them were hers and reached for the entire serving pillow. Yes, pillow. It's presented as a pillow on a pillow)

We've also had the twice baked potatoes with bone marrow and roe. Bone marrow and roe aren't two things that come together in my head, but the saltiness and fishiness of the roe went surprisingly well with the marrow and potatoes.

And then we've also had a savory corn custard with a popcorn top which was somewhere between an amuse bouche and a taste. Its hearty enough with the richness and just-right saltiness of the custard to be a taste.

For the pre-taste dishes, we've also had a mushroom tea that had some dried morel mushrooms in teabags that you poured some broth into to let the flavors of the mushroom seep into the broth. Served with a pecorino and black truffle crumpet. Maybe a little on the gimmicky side, but still tasty and pleasantly unexpected. Fork & Bottle has a nice picture at their Restaurant at Meadowood review.

Meadowood Courses

Next came a thin layer of cold-smoked toro that had bits of caviar and creme fraiche on top with a brioche. You'll hear a lot of folks rave about this, but both me and my wife aren't fans of smoked toro because to us it turns a wonderfully nice layer of creamy, fresh toro now into a bit like smoked salmon, and that’s just so very wrong. Should’ve just let that fish stand on its own. Here's a nice picture from someone's Flickr account. Here's my fuzzy one.

Meadowood course 2: Foie gras

A foie gras sampler followed as another menu. Best foie gras dish we’ve ever had as it was a real kick to have foie gras in so many very different ways. There was the foi gras cube that had a thin sweet, caramelized layer of grape juice on top with a pickled grape. There was a shaved foie gras piece. But then they had their version of a peanut butter and jelly cube with foie gras, and that was laughably good. Don’t let the imagery put you off. Foie gras should be an ingredient in all PB&Js. And the last one was a bit of seared foie gras with a light crust on top, and it’s very hard to go wrong with seared foie gras. The sampler looked a little like this Examiner's picture except they had a strawberry foie gras.

Another visit had a partially cooked foie gras with oysters which was a nice mix too. The mineral nature of the oysters was a nice blend to the creamy goodness of the foie gras. I liked the dish, but it wasn't the foie gras tour de force of our first visit.

Meadowood Course 3

Our next dish was squid in a light broth. It might have been the squid and egg white soy, cauliflower, swiss chard dish that's on the spring menu. My wife thought it was a little too salty, but I felt mine was seasoned just right. Coming after that superb foie gras, it was a bit of a letdown.

On another visit, we had a cooked strip of mackerel, skin side up covered with different types of tomatoes and a nice lemon yellow pepper sorbet. My wife isn't a big fan of mackerel because of the fishiness, but when you have it with the tomatoes, peppers, and especially the sorbet, I liked it a lot more than she did. The sorbet does a wonderful job of tying it together and keeping the mackerel under control with its citrus and pepper borders.

Meadowood Course 4: Lobster

On our first visit, our favorite dish of the night (and of any of our Meadowood visits), was a lobster and sweatbread ravioli with morel mushrooms and truffles which is pretty similar to the a dish shown at ChuckEat's review. Some beautiful pieces of lobster, truffles, morels, and a foamy but rich broth. That was one of the best dishes we've had in the area and a great way to showcase some luxurious ingredients. My one gripe about this is that some function is sacrificed for aesthetics. The bowl resembles a funnel where the bottom is smaller than the top. This is done presumably to give the illusion of volume for a small portion but it does make for a somewhat awkward eating experience where you have to hold your utensils at an awkwardly steep angle to get to your food.

The second time, we had a lobster with carrot gnocchi that was in a lobster consumme. It wasn't the knockout that the first lobster course we had, but it was well done. The carrot gnocchi was interesting. Very creamy.

Meadowood Course 5:

On our first visit, our tongues were still buzzing over the lobster when we received our roasted goat. Now here's the problem with writing a review 2 weeks after you've had a large tasting menu...the dishes can start to blur in a hurry. I do remember it was a roasted goat that was wrapped up in a type of casing. I remember it was a fairly tasty piece of meat . But mostly I remember it for not being the lobster dish which I still pine for. *sob*

On our second visit, course 5 was pressed chicken with abalone, shitake, and chicken broth with bonito. The pressed chicken was a collection of chicken light and dark meat. and with the abalone, it's the chef's new take on surf and turf. Maybe I was hoping for just a little more zing for the precursor to the main dish, but a very nice dish. Broth was delicious (probably downed a whole bread roll on it), chicken was moist, flavorful, etc.

Meadowood Course 6:

Here's a sweetbread and truffles dish. I know this picture makes it look like a dog's breakfast, but that's a lot of truffles going on. There's some sort of braised spinach with cream sitting underneath one of the sweetbreads. It's a luxurious taste, but I guess I was looking for something with a bit more heft at this point in the tasting menu.

Meadowood Course 7: Cheese course

The cheese plate was a blue cheese beignet. So, I usually associate cheese plates as a  way to go from the heavy meal to the lighter stuff. Mix of nuts, something starchy or crunchy, maybe some fruit. That kind of thing. This was a little fried doughnut that oozed out this glorious blue cheese. So much for that transition to the light stuff. It was delicious, but now we are seriously stuffed and basically trying to get through this marathon of a tasting menu.

Meadowood Intermission: the pre-dessert dessert

To cleanse the palate and prep us for dessert, we were served a peach sorbet that sat on top of a yogurt and cucumber espuma foam. This is a great way to wash out the heavier tastes, particularly with the yogurt and cucumber foam which just sort of lifts the heaviness of the tasting menu right out of you.

Meadowood course 8: Dessert 1

Here's there toast and jam dish with strawberries, strawberry jam, and toast ice cream. Since strawberries were in their full season locally, there was  a lot of strawberry flavor was coming out of the jam. The ice cream actually did taste like buttery toast. I wouldn't have minded a starch of some sort (brioche?) instead of the ice cream though as I thought the cream muted the strawberry-ness of the dessert a bit.

Meadowood course 9: Dessert 2

The first time around, we had a lime soufflé with a coconut dessert on the side (coconut jelly with shaved coconut and coconut ice cream) The lime soufflé is the primary desert, but we liked the coconut ice cream and coconut jelly more. Our feeling is that soufflés work better with denser flavors like cheese, chocolates, etc because once you try for lighter flavors, you have to hope that it can stand up against the eggy feel of the soufflé, and for us, lime isn’t one of those flavors. A little disappointed here.

The second time around we had a pain per du with candied bacon, a caramel sauce, and some sort of corn cream . Yes, candied bacon. It's the thin crispy piece on top of the pain per du. In a way, this is kind of like a dessert breakfast with the pain per du, bacon, and corn (especially in combination with the toast and jam taste before this.) I think I liked this more than my wife. The candied bacon goes really well with the heavy pain per du and caramel.

Meadowood post-dessert dessert

And they finished it off with some small and simple smores as the “here’s your bill” culinary farewell. Of course, by now we are so stuffed that I think we're going to explode in the restaurant a la the Monty Python sketch.

The second time around it was chocolate truffleswith some light cakes that had fennel and housemade ricotta which were a really pleasant surprise. We are pretty stuffed by the time we get to the end, but the fennel and ricotta cakes were light and fluffy enough to fit in nicely.

The first time around, the highs of  Meadowood were very high, some of the highest we've had since moving here. The weaker parts might just be personal preference on our part, or maybe the strongest dishes make you appreciate the other ones less.

The second time around, we didn't get the highs of the first, but it felt like the tasting menu was more even from start to finish.

If you can blow the big bucks (~$700 with tip and wine pairing), definitely give it a try. We didn’t have to fight tooth and nail to get a reservation here like the French Laundry, but the food is in that neighborhood to us.

Meadowood setting and service

The first time there, the service was a little uneven for a restaurant at this level. At the start, the wait staff took a surprisingly long amount of time to take our order. No wine,  no bread, just sitting around for what felt like 10 minutes despite a number of wait staff walking about, and although the place was surprisingly full, it’s not like the place was super busy either.  When they got to us, then everything started to go smoothly. Sommelier told some interesting stories while dishing out the wine. A waitress was explaining the different wine areas in France to another table, and so on. The dishes were explained as they came out, but then another blemish popped out when one of our meals was served without any explanation of what it was. Just dropped the plates off at our table and split. We asked for the labels of one of the wines we liked. That never came either. These are quibbles, but we dropped $650 on that dinner. For $650, they can do better than that. The chef later came out to check on the guests later in the evening as things were winding down during the night. But you can catch any restaurant on a bad day. The second time around, the service was perfect.

Meadowood is like Auberge du Soleil in that it’s in an absolutely gorgeous, luxurious resort. It’s also similar to Auberge du Soleil in that the roads in the resort are very narrow and twisty. Watch your speeds going in and out, particularly at night because the lighting is a little on the sparse side. The signs to the restaurant are surprisingly small with small print and not terribly useful either. Somebody get them a usability consultant!  Getting around was a bit of a challenge. We went the wrong way 3-4 times going in and out,  and some of the roads end abruptly. At one point, we weren’t exactly all that far away from accidentally driving straight onto the golf course. Oops. And obviously, if you’re going for a large wine pairing at the tasting menu, you should allow for plenty of time to detox before you start driving through those little paths.

I’d like to go back during the day sometime as my impression was that the place was quite pretty and serene. Very secluded from the rest of Napa Valley. The online photos definitely make it out that way. But since it was pretty dark, and we didn’t want to end up driving our car through the 18^th hole or hitting some late night pedestrian, we were more focused on getting out than the scenery around us. I guess at $450-$1000+ a night, that buys you some very nice scenery. Some of the dwellings are on some really steep inclines. If yo'ure staying there, I think you can have someone come and take you to and from the restaurant as perhaps trying to climb a 45 degree slope at night with heels after a 9 course tasting menu with the wine pairing is probably not such a good idea.

Cost of our meal

9 course tasting menu + wine pairing + tip = $670. Ack. Actually, come to think of it, I forgot to check if the gratuity is already included in the tasting menu like it is with the French Laundry. The Restaurant at Meadowood has a cheaper 4 course menu for about $100 where the portions are larger.

Other Meadowood reviews and links

• ChuckEats review (great pictures and writeup and just a fabulous site in general)
• KevinEats review (some terrific pictures and a great writeup)
• Fork and Bottle review
• Yelp reviews
• TripAdvisor reviews
• San Francisco Chronicle's review
• Examiner review
• Napa Valley Register review