Since retiring 10 yrs ago, DH and I travel to eat. Since we live in the San Francisco Bay Area, we travel a regular circuit around NorCA, revisiting favs and trying new places. We travel midweek, staying 3-5 days. On average we visit 240+ restaurants/yr, all price points.
We've had many terrific meals, but I'll confine this to restaurants still in existence. Turnover is rampant here, so anyone reading this in 2 yrs can assume that at least one of the places listed no longer exists or worse, has a new chef, LOL.
I should note that altho we don't care what we spend, my DH really doesn't care for what he calls "frou-frou" food (with a couple of exceptions). He likes to say I'm the gourmet and he's the gourmand; but he holds a degree in hotel and restaurant mgmt, so he's extremely picky about service.
You will not find most, if any, of these restaurants on a "Best of" list. These are our personal favorites, all of which we have visited multiple times. This is exceptional food and top-notch service, yet not the highest prices. I'm a very good cook (my mother was a cooking instructor and owned a cookwares store) and I love cooking, but these are restaurants that surpass what I can or am willing to do.
1) Sake 107/Petaluma CA. Chef/owner Eiji Ando’s home prefecture of Aichi in central Japan has the only two producers of hatcho miso, which is miso aged for up to two years. It is a dark brown, not beige/red/white, with a richer, deeply intense flavor. It gives a flavor to his dishes unlike any other. His owari sauce for the pork katsu is amazing, far superior to the usual harsh Worcestershire-based sauce of other versions.
His sashimi selection is kept small so that only the freshest is offered. We were especially impressed by the mana gatsuo, Japanese star butterfish which has a much better texture and flavor than the Pacific (CA) or Atlantic varieties. The umi masu, ocean trout, and hotate, Hokkaido scallops, are also favs. The sake tastings are very fine, with all the waitstaff well-trained in the many different sakes offered. The Dewansansan is especially good with a meal, a semi-dry with a wonderful floral bouquet.
Auberge du Soleil Restaurant @Auberge du Soleil Resort/Rutherford, CA. It's one of those cliches that if a restaurant has a view, it has mediocre food. It's almost always true, too. Auberge du Soleil is a rare exception. Set halfway up a hill and looking west towards the Mayacamas Mountains that divide the Napa Valley and Sonoma County, the hotel's restaurant has a nice dining room, but the real attraction is the narrow outdoor patio that snakes across the hotel's entire width. Make a reservation in advance and you'll likely score a table along the front (of the 13x we've visited in the last 10 yrs, 11x we've had a prime seating).
On a sunny day - which here can be in February as easily as August - there is nothing more quintessentially Californian than sitting on Auberge's patio, drinking champagne and eating lunch. And don't miss dessert - pastry chef Paul Lemieux has been at Auberge even longer than execchef Robert Curry, and his desserts are like California sunshine: light, delicate, never oversweet.
Aubergine at L'Auberge Carmel/Carmel by the Sea, CA. L'Auberge is a Relais & Chateaux hotel, as is Auberge du Soleil. Aubergine, however, is tiny in comparison to its sibling AdS restaurant. Barely 12 tables, its prix fixe menu is a bargain in comparison to many SFBA restaurants. Service and presentation are top-notch, as good or better than many 2- and 3-star Michelin-rated SFBA restaurants. AdS is sybaritically relaxing; Aubergine feels luxurious and decadent at a bargain price.
Michael Warring/Vallejo, CA. Never heard of Vallejo? Not surprising. It's a lower-end suburban community in-between Berkeley and Napa, just over the Carquinez Bridge. Also, this restaurant is located inside a teeny-tiny strip mall that itself hides inside a rural housing development beside a golf course.
Not only are you not going to see any walk-ins in this restaurant, I can guarantee you your GPS will send you in exactly the opposite direction once you drive through the gated entrance to the development. I just had our GPS updated in September and it STILL tried to send me the wrong way - "Turn left". No, you stupid little machine, the restaurant is to the RIGHT!
Once you finally find it, MW is a small, prix-fixe, reservation only restaurant that is run by chef Michael Warring and his wife Allie. It's only open Wed-Sun, dinner only, because they have a young kid and want a real life. It is spare and modern inside, with a Zen-like simplicity. It matches the food because Michael does Modernist-style (yes, he hates the word but it's still the best description) food. He keeps it real - there are no silly gels bouncing everywhere or foams on every plate. The food is clean, precise without fussiness, and delectable.
His brioche is absolutely killer, and I say that as someone who travels around NorCA eating bread from Bouchon, Tartine, Acme, Firebrand, Village, Semifreddi, and other artisanal boulangeries (bread is a passion here in NorCA - it goes along with the housemade charcuterie that's everywhere too). It is a four-course meal, full of subtle flavors, light but satisfying. There is passion and creativity in every bite. Michael does the cooking, Allie does the wine and most of the serving. The two of them are very happy doing what they love. There are no cookbooks or plans to "expand the empire", thank goodness.
Because of where MW is located and the restricted hours, the price /pp is absolutely crazy, especially in the sky-high SFBA. In 10 yrs he's raised his price.....$10. It has gone from $59/pp to $69/pp. IMHO you will not get finer food anywhere, even if you visit Benu, Saison or Atelier Crenn (these are the Big 3 in NorCA; not French Laundry, Chez Panisse, or even Manresa, altho Single Thread is coming up fast).
Last but certainly not least:
Belotti Ristorange et Bottega/Oakland CA. Michele Belotti is from Bergamo Italy (not Milan, as often assumed, altho he cooked in Milan). This is Northern Italy, not Southern, so the cuisine is influenced towards French/Austrian than Sicilian/Mediterranean. His Agnolotti are exquisite. His pasta dough uses twice the amount of egg yolks as usual, so it has a supple chew. The flour is from Italy, which still produces the best hard wheat flour.
But it's the sauce that stands out - straight from classic French cooking. Michele makes his own glace de viande. Everyone knows what a demi-glace is - well, the glace de viande is a demi-glace reduced by another 50%. It takes a variety of beef cuts and three days to make. A teaspoonful of this with melted cultured butter blended into it is divine.
I can tell you there is no French restaurant in NorCA, possibly all of CA, that makes its own glace de viande any longer. It is screamingly expensive and time-consuming, and I personally think Michele's a little nuts for still doing it. Although DH and I are properly grateful, since he's only 10 min from our home [smile].
And his tortino! Totally turns your idea of creamed spinach upside-down. This is a silky puree, souffled with a still-flowing quail's egg yolk hidden in the center. Wrapped in wilted spinach leaves and unmolded, with black truffles shaved generously over the bowl, it is beauty to the eye and heaven on the tongue. We have friends who hate creamed spinach, but flipped over this dish.
An insider's tip- not a restaurant, but a bakery:
Monterey/Carmel is one of our favorite areas, but it is one of the most expensive of all. Superb weather, glorious scenery, people with $$$$$. Yes, this is where Clint Eastwood lives and was in fact, mayor of Carmel for a number of years. Big French-American community down here. Family ranches, farms, and wineries abound.
Parker-Lusseau Bakery/Monterey CA. Three modest locations in Monterey, but altho most go to the Hartnell St. shop (it's cuter and stays open later), we go to the source: Munras St. is the original and where all the patisserie is baked. M. Lusseau is a master patissier and far surpasses the overrated Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery/Napa, or newcomer Arsicault Bakery/SF.
These are the fragile, delicate Parisian-style croissants, becoming increasingly rare even in France (where sadly, big-corporate pre-baked goods are making huge inroads into the restaurant culture). The PL croissants are the classic 27-layer folded pastry, made with French cultured butter. They are neither glazed with sugar nor loaded with excess salt. If you pull the crust off one end, you can unravel the paper-thin dough layers like a spool of thread - I have pulled a PL croissant out to two feet long before I tore it off and ate it.
They are so buttery, they are the only croissants we eat plain, no butter or jam. Take a bite of a plain PL croissant and you'll taste sweet butter, not salt. After eating one of these, you realize what is sold as "croissants" elsewhere, are mostly just a few folds of brioche dough, with cheap butter and even cheaper flour.
Despite PL having the same rating as other French bakeries in Monterey, don't be fooled. We've visited ALL of them, and none are even half as good as Parker-Lusseau. PL is not cheap, but they are no more expensive than any of the other better quality NorCA bakeries/patisseries (they are, in fact, the exact same price as Bouchon Bakery; we compared them earlier this year).
++++
People have asked us why, with the time and income we have, why we don't fly to exotic destinations. Our answer is simple:
We spent 35 yrs working in the San Francisco Bay Area. So we only spent limited time in Napa, Sonoma, Monterey, Tahoe, et. al. - mostly weekends, occasionally a long 3-day weekend. And really, when you're tired, who wants to get in the car and fight weekend/holiday traffic?
So a few decades ago we started spending long weekends at home - we lived in San Francisco at the time - and discovered the delights of playing tourist in our own backyard. We could even go downtown and (gasp!) find parking, because locals were off skiing or visiting family in other states.
When we retired, I told my DH that we had never had time to explore NorCA on weekdays. "This is an area where people come from all over the world to visit, and feel lucky just to spend five or six days here. They never get to see anything besides the usual "top 10 tourist attractions". Why don't we do a bunch of weekday driving trips and really explore the West Coast?"
My DH was all for it. We've had so much fun exploring odd corners of our area that we never knew existed. Even friends who have lived and explored their home area for 20 yrs are surprised when we tell them about places they never realized were literally 'just down the road'.
Traveling weekdays and in off-season, it's amazing how few people are around. We drove the entire length of the Redwood Highway, and I think over 2 days time we maybe saw ONE other car traveling south, as we were. We would stop and hike through the trees, and there wasn't anyone else around.
We occasionally take longer travels around the West. I love the PNW (I have family there and Seattle is an amazing city to visit). Had a fabulous time in New Mexico with an amateur historian as our guide that was an incredible 'insider's look' into that unique history and culture.
There are still so many places to go yet, LOL - and foods to eat!