A jumble of colorful summer peppers and stone fruit star in this lively tasting salad.
Besides ones from my own home state of California, the wines that I find myself probably sipping most come from our neighbor to the north — Oregon.
Especially because Pinot Noir happens to be one of my favorite varietals, and grows exceedingly well there.
So, I couldn’t have been more overjoyed to see a new cookbook that highlights not only Oregon’s more than 50-year-old wine industry, but its rich food traditions found at its storied wineries.
The incredible seared house-made ricotta at the Imperial Hotel restaurant.
Amador City, CA — At 0.3 square miles, this Gold Country town is indeed the smallest in the state by size.
It amounts to roughly 6 blocks.
What it lacks in magnitude, though, it more than makes up for in its rich history and present-day charm.
Jose Marie Amador, a wealthy rancher and gold miner, founded this Gold Rush town that’s one hour east of Sacramento. By the time its most famous mine closed in 1943, an estimated $24 million in gold had been mined, according to Visit Amador City.
The downtown is teeny, all of a block and a half, made up nowadays of wine tasting rooms, home-ware shops, cafes, and the Amador Whitney Museum. At its heart is the Imperial Hotel, a historic brick building originally built in 1879.
The historic Imperial Hotel.
Last fall, Kevin Carter and his partner Cassie Davis took over the hotel, refurbishing it, before reopening it this spring. Two weeks ago, I was invited as their guest to check out the redone property, which includes a 130-seat, on-site restaurant headed by an executive chef who will be familiar to South Bay folks: Max Benson, whose family operated CB Hannegan’s in Los Gatos for 37 years. When Benson’s mom moved to Amador City, he eventually decided to follow suit.
Canapes of Wagyu tartare topped with Wagyu “caviar” at Gozu.
Nowadays, there are many restaurants where you can enjoy a Wagyu steak. But at Gozu in San Francisco, you can sink your teeth into smoky skewers that spotlight both familiar and unusual specific cuts of the prized Japanese beef.
When Chef-Owner Marc Zimmerman opened his hearth-centered restaurant in 2019, it was thought to be the only restaurant in the United States to directly import from Japan full cuts of top-grade A5 Wagyu. That amounts to a whopping 750 pounds in one shot.
That gives him the ability to use nearly every part of the outrageously marbled beef, often in audacious ways, including burning the bones as charcoal and fermenting lean cuts to make shoyu.
Japanese A5 Wagyu being aged at Gozu.
You can experience it for yourself with a $125 four-course menu or a $225 tasting menu. Or opt for the a la carte Stickbar menu that allows you to try individual skewers, priced from $14 to $55, depending on the cut.
Olive oil-poached steelhead trout at The Elderberry House.
When Ethan de Graaff was just 13 years old, he knew there was no other choice but to become a chef.
Now, the head chef of The Elderberry House in Oakhurst, he explains with a chuckle, “Once my dad started using mayo as a sauce on everything, I knew what I had to do.”
Today, he oversees the menu at the fine-dining restaurant at the Old World Chateau du Sureau, a 9-acre oasis in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, not far from Yosemite National Park. He works in conjunction with Culinary Director Chris Flint, the former chef de cuisine at New York’s storied Eleven Madison Park and former executive chef of Michelin-starred Maude in Los Angeles.
Also tasked with overseeing sister property First & Oak in Solvang, Flint was hired in late 2022. Since his arrival, he’s brought back the restaurant’s tasting menu and leaned into sourcing locally even more.
Last week, when I was invited in as an overnight guest of the Relais & Chateau property, I had a chance to experience the roll-out of his first full new menu.
Chateau du Sureau.Keys to your guest room.
You might say my visit was more than two decades in the making. Way back when, while staying at another property near Yosemite, my husband and I had made dinner reservations at The Elderberry House. Unfortunately, it happened to be one of those precarious winters with such a deluge of snow that we were alarmed to see a snow plow had gone off the side of the road. Because the onslaught kept forcing the closure of the roads, we ended up canceling our reservations, fearing that even if we made it to the restaurant, we might never be able to get out again.
Finally making it here was definitely worth the wait. Imagine pulling up to a turreted estate in the European countryside, and you get an idea of what Chateau du Sureau is like.
Dining on beef tenderloin tips and gnocchi overlooking the river.
Idleyld Park, OR — It’s here that you’ll find the proverbial secluded cabin in the woods.
Albeit one with history, famous guests, a fabulous wine list, and homemade pies that truly tempt.
The Steamboat Inn sits perched on a bluff above the North Umpqua River in the middle of the Umpqua National Forest. It is a true mecca for fly-fishing, especially for steelhead.
Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn stayed here to do just that, as did Jack Hemingway. Just look for the framed black and white photos of them hanging in the lobby.
Step inside the bar-lounge-library to find a map of the world with pins affixed to indicate where guests have hailed from. Indeed, they’ve come from every state in the United States, as well as every continent, even Antarctica, when a group of scientists stayed here seeking some R&R.
The Steamboat Inn.The view from the deck of a cabin.
From Roseberg, it’s a 38-mile drive to get here, a road flanked by majestic towering trees that take your breath away.
