Bottega - A Restaurant that Lives Up to the hype!

Yes, we finally ate - with a lunchtime reservation, no less - at a Napa Valley restaurant that actually lives up to its hype. The new-as-of-last-year Bottega, set in charming and starred-restaurant-full Yountville, had as splendid a repast as I have ever eaten. Bottega is a small restaurant in the middle of a large Inn setting and focuses, I believe, on mostly Northern Italian specialities. It was a lot of fun for husband G and I to dress up, as we hadn't been on a "date-date" in some time. We ate there at lunch because it's a tiny bit cheaper - and you can get away with not ordering wine and dessert without looking crazy. There were people dressed up in designer outfits and people in t-shirts and jeans. I was happy I'd worn a dress.
My husband G had a divine pasta dish topped with fresh ricotta and swimming in roasted rabbit and chanterelle mushrooms in a kind of red wine sauce. Really very good. However, my dish was so much better! It was perfect, perfect browned ricotta gnocchi with delicious juicy duck, roasted chestnuts and butternut squash. And the chef (Michael Chiarello) came up afterwards, not usual with a "celebrity chef" restaurant, and asked me how everything was, and I told him truthfully I'd just had the best gnocchi I'd ever eaten, and that includes trips to Italian restaurants in New York City and the south of France. The funniest part of the meal was that we were seated at a table between what appeared to be two aging blonde socialites discussing plastic surgery and what appeared to be a some sort of crime-syndicate couple (very Sopranos, but upscale!) So we spent a lot of time telling each other how delicious our food was, and also eavesdropping. And one of the socialites said to the other, "This place is expensive, but not expensive for Napa Valley!" Which I have to say, I agree with. My pasta was around $16 - and worth every freaking penny! Next time, though, I want to try the confit de canard with moutarda di fruitta. (I think I just mixed my French and very poor Italian spelling there.) I could only finish half of my pasta dish - I imagine I'll only be able to get through one quarter of an entree!
Here's a link to their dinner menu:
http://www.botteganapavalley.com/dinner.html
The service wasn't super attentive, except for a very friendly desk hostess and maitre-d - it was packed full when we were there, we couldn't get a drink refill, but maybe it's like that all the time? The waitress did know how to answer questions about the menu, and steered us accordingly to our delicious lunches, although she didn't visit us much during the lunch (see lack of drink refill opportunities.) Though it was cold outside (in the fifties) the restaurant was about a billion degrees - so dress accordingly!
Anyway, it gets two thumbs up from us! Finally, a place in Napa Valley that didn't make us long for (gulp) Seattle's dining scene!

California: Will It Drive Us Away?

So, you've probably heard that, for the last few years, California has had droves of people leaving. The two biggest problems my husband and I have had with the state, in the last fifteen months of living in Carlsbad and now in Napa, have been:
--gigantic taxes. Income taxes are high, sales taxes are high, even going to the DMV is expensive! And in return, you get crummy schools and crumbling roads. Good times.
--The health care here is abominable, compared to Ohio, Virginia, and Washington State. The ERs are overcrowded (not so much a problem here in Napa...) and the lack of primary care doctors looms large. The ER doc at Napa's Queen of the Valley hospital I saw when I sprained my ankle said it took him a long time to find a primary care doc who was even taking patients. The ones that are taking patients don't take insurance and require a $1500 payment up front before seeing you. It takes months to get routine tests, like an MRI, which might have taken me three days in the Seattle area. That's a problem throughout California; it must have to do with state laws and paperwork, because I had it at both ends of the state even when doctors agreed an MRI was neccessary.

But, on the good side: it is supposed to be 60 degrees here today, while the rest of the USA is in deep freeze. Even now that the leaves have fallen off the vineyards, the green hills surrounding us are still beautiful. There are still more good restaurants than you can shake a stick at (though many of them not, sadly, in our price range. Yesterday during a stroll through Yountville we were pressing our noses against the charming glass at French Laundry, where we will never eat because it is too expensive unless Thomas Keller offers to have us in for free because he likes us. It could happen, right?)

In Seattle it rains nine months a year. But you can see a doctor whenever you want! Plus, no income tax! See my struggle?