Thirty years ago, when most of the Napa Valley was still mostly farms and Michelin-worthy restaurants were practically non-existent, two men had the foresight to build a French-style, fine-dining restaurant on a magnificent hillside in Rutherford.

Robert Harmon, who had developed condo resorts in Hawaii and Lake Tahoe, teamed with legendary French restaurateur Claude Rouas, who owned L’Etoile in San Francisco, to create the restaurant at Auberge du Soleil. Four years later, the intimate 50-room inn was constructed. Now, the company, Auberge Resorts, operates a total of eight luxurious properties throughout the United States and Mexico.

The restaurant now boasts a Michelin star and quite the stellar list of chefs who have worked there, including the-late Masataka Kobayashi (founder of Masa’s in San Francisco), Albert Tordjman (owner of the quirky Flying Saucer in San Francisco), Richard Reddington (now owner-chef of Redd in Yountville), and Joseph Humphries (most recently, the head chef of Cavallo Point in Sausalito).

Chef Robert Curry, formerly executive chef of the restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, has headed the kitchen for six years now.

Last week, he created a special dinner to celebrate the restaurant’s monumental anniversary. The four-course meal, which featured dishes influenced by each of the past three decades, was a private affair, enjoyed by Robert Harmon, his son Mark (CEO of Auberge Resorts), and a small group of local food writers, including yours truly.

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YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CA — Imagine hiking, snowshoeing and skiing, then dining on creative fare from celeb chefs — all in a breathtakingly spectacular setting.

That’s what Yosemite National Park is all about in the winter, when its “Chefs’ Holidays” takes place at the historic Ahwahnee Hotel, now through Feb. 4. Marking its 26th year, the event features 29 prominent chefs from around the country.

Three chefs are featured per session, which includes a “Meet the Chefs” reception, three cooking demonstrations, a five-course gala dinner with wines in the grand Ahwahnee dining room, and a tour of the hotel’s massive kitchen.

And what a hotel it is. Opened in 1927 with a concrete and steel frame designed to withstand fire, it cost $1.25 million to build or the equivalent of $19 million in today’s dollars. During a year of construction, costs grew and the project had to be scaled back. The building went from a planned 10 stories to seven. Although the kitchen had already been built, the dining room was reduced to a third of its original size to about 300 seats, as opposed to the original 1,000. As a result, the kitchen is actually 200 square feet larger than the main dining room.

Yours truly was lucky enough to be invited as a guest to the second of the eight sessions planned. This one, held during the second week of January, featured chefs Michael Tusk of Quince in San Francisco; Jesse Cool of Flea St. Cafe in Menlo Park; and Colin Ambrose of Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor, NY.

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