French Laundry Restaurant

It’s always a picturesque evening in the Napa Valley. The sun is usually found dipping behind the mountains into the sea, bathing the sleepy little town of Yountville, California and the vineyards beyond in pink and golden twilight. Most nights, you’d be perfectly content to relax and enjoy the legendary beauty and rural peace of California’s wine country.

But this evening, both you and your gourmet cohorts have but one obsession on your minds... the gratifications of the palate. Your destination, the French Laundry, in Yountville, California, is an unassuming, rustic, quaint, stone cottage restaurant on a street corner in the heart of town. You enter the grounds through a mortared stone wall, passing by raised beds of tender organic greens, herbs, and vegetables. You could almost imagine yourself in the French countryside, but in reality you’re about to dine at what is arguably America’s finest restaurant, Chef Thomas Keller’s French Laundry.

Among the illustrious restaurants on this planet, there is but one that inspires among its patrons an enthusiasm akin to religious fervor. The pilgrims do adore their delectable shrine and its patron chef saint. This is why, in all of the world's high profile culinary magazine polls, the raves pour in for the French Laundry Restaurant and for Thomas Keller as one of the finest chefs in the universe. Stepping through the door, you have the uncanny sense— familiar to those of you who frequent the triple-Michelin-starred gastronomic temples of Europe— that something important is indeed going on. This is a moment you will relish long before you sample the significance of what awaits you.

Your assiduous waiter seats you before a white tablecloth in a room decorated unpretentiously in soothing beige and cream hues. As you sit sipping a glass of sparkling wine, you look over your personalized menu, dazzled by the variety and virtuosity that must go on behind the scenes to produce such an array of culinary delights. The consummate skill possessed by Keller and his staff haven’t gone unnoticed. Critics at Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Wine Spectator, Time, and USA Today have all given The French Laundry the top spot in their national rankings. Keller himself is the only chef to receive consecutive Best Chef Awards in the James Beard Foundation’s history.

Every night at the French Laundry Restaurant Keller and his able staff prepare three different prix fixe menus, one of which is always vegetarian. From soup-- a delicate puree of summer beans poured over a confit of green pole beans and yellow wax beans— to succulent new crop potato and périgord truffle canneloni, to uncommonly delicious thyme ice cream, served with bitter chocolate and drizzled with warm olive oil, each course is a symphony of tastes and textures, each is lovingly described in detail by a knowledgeable server, and each is perfectly paired with the vast array of only preferred wines. The progression of tastes from one transcendent course to the next, the gracious and exceptional service, and the intimate, romantic atmosphere conspire to render those more mundane concerns irrelevant.

At the French Laundry Restaurant, a meal is not simply food; it is an expression of love, made with the respect, attention and unconditional acceptance that true love demands. To consume Chef Keller's truffled egg— an eggshell, re-filled with white truffle custard, topped with black truffle coulis— is a revelatory experience. Strange would be the man or woman who did not smile at such caressing richness. And his version of coffee and doughnuts will turn the smile into a gurgle of pleasure that food can be not only so delicious but also such fun.

The French Laundry restaurant in Yountville California, is indeed a sacred shrine, to which every fundamental gourmet should make at least one pilgrimage in his or her lifetime.