Napa: Bottega

Our second dinner in Napa was at Bottega (http://www.botteganapavalley.com/), Michael Chiarello's newest restaurant. We've been fans of Michael Chiarello's since my sister first gave me Michael Chiarello's Casual Cooking and we read about grey salt, scoffing, "OMG, how crazy! Who needs a special kind of salt?" Naturally, we have four kinds of cooking salt now, not including pickling salt, and one of them is grey salt. And when we buy it, I dry it out in a 200 degree oven and then grind it in the mortar and pestle, just like he says to. Never mock your cookbooks.

So obviously, we were looking forward to Bottega very much. The space itself is warm and inviting. The kitchen is open enough for you to see some action but closed enough to keep you from seeing too much. There are some cool-looking patio spaces around fireplaces outside that looked very comfortable.

I started off with the yellowin tuna crudo which comes topped with these pretty perfectly ripe persimmons (not overly ripe, soft, and drippy like when I eat hachiyas at home) on top of a pretty pink salt block. Delicious. And with a delicious olive oil.

I did struggle a bit with some of my tuna cutting which ended up making it a little saltier but that was user error. I can't help wondering though... they just wash off that salt block and reuse? I looked for an indentation (like how the bed sags?) in the salt block when I was done and didn't see one.

Josh started off with a wood-grilled octopus with pickled red onion and arugula. The octopus was wonderfully tender and went well with the arugula. Josh liked it very much.

Good things come to those with a little fork. Life gets even better when there is a shell bowl.

My pasta course was house-made pasta with manilla clams, Calabrese sausage, garlic, basil, parsley, and white wine. It was delicious and the pasta was wonderfully fresh. The sauce, the clams, the pasta were perfect. I could have done without the sausage though. I liked the sausage in the sauce but I piled the sausage bits in the shell bowl.

Josh's pasta dish was the divine ricotta gnocchi with his nonna's sauce (a simple but classic tomato sauce) and pecorino. It is simply amazing the lightness, the texture of this gnocchi. Like little pillows of love. These gnocchi were softer than marshmellows.

For my main, I had the brodetto, a deeply-flavored tomato-based "stew" (my word) with monkfish, rock cod, mussels, and the more tender calamari that ever sat in a soup. A rather large blockly crouton covered in a paprika-saffron rouille sat in the middle. It tasted rather buttery to me, though according to the menu, it was olive oil.

This dish was a bit strong for me. The seafood was delicious and wonderfully cooked. The sauce was thick and unctuous. You put a spoonful in your mouth and you're like, wow!

Josh's main course was this luscious porchetta. The server told us that each week, they roast a whole pig and wrap the pork belly around the loin and serve this luscious porchetta. We have been in search of a delicious porchetta ever since a disastrous porchetta a few years ago. We saw the porchetta sitting pretty on the counter and we also watched it disappear by 7pm. I can't think they only had one of these.

Anyway, you can see that the loin and pork belly are connected so they are not really wrapped, but that's a fine point. It was so delicious, tender, and flavorful. Absolutely divine. And the polenta... I've never had polenta like this. So creamy and cheesy. Well, you know what good grits are like right? Except extra-fine consistency. Yum. And some brussel sprouts too. I didn't try those. I went straight to the pork and corn.

For dessert, I had a goat cheese panna cotta. It's topped with a pineapple gel and there was a cranberry compote-y thing on the bottom. Very good.

Josh had these deliciously light zeppole. He just loves fried dough. I think the dipping sauce was a lemony thing. He really enjoyed this. I had one. They were pretty tasty.

I picked up a cookbook while we were there and it turned out that Chef Chiarello was in the house! He came over to sign my cookbook (!) and take a picture with us! I know it's so totally dorky but I am pretty happy with it. We raved about the dinner. He mentioned that the "hard" porchetta recipe for the whole pig is in the cookbook. You know I'm not going to try to roast a whole pig but... I'm gonna need to figure out a way to have that again.