Back in the Bay

I spent last week back in the Bay Area visiting my Mom and Dad, my old buddies from Davis and the girls from my freshman year dorm at Cal. We took a lot of meals outside which is the best. I live in an apartment so al fresco dining feels like a luxury. Mom and Dad gave the thumbs up to my new Pinot Noir which we enjoyed in the backyard with grilled steak one night and (leftover) steak salad with and perfect avocados the next. Later in the week, Mom treated me to lunch at Va de Vi in Walnut Creek where we sat under the big oak tree. She and I shared a beautiful peach and burrata appetizer with cauliflower pita bread (I need to find this in Seattle) and a summery corn risotto garnished with a prosciutto chip. So good.

My day in Napa Valley was super fun, thankfully the weather was not hot which was great for me but maybe less awesome for the Cabernet Sauvignon that was just starting veraison, the process of the grapes turning from green to purple. It was very cool to tour Realm with my old friend Cooney and then I met my old friend Alice for a tasting at Tres Sabores which was a throwback kind of Napa Valley in the 90’s patio tasting of Zinfandel blends. It was beautiful overlooking the vineyards off Whitehall Lane and fun for Alice and me to catch up. After some real slow traffic southbound on Highway 29, we shared some tacos and delish rice and beans from Mother’s Tacos in Napa in my friend Cooney’s backyard. I brought a bunch of my wines down from WA to get some free consulting out of my old classmates - I was curious as to their take.

Later in the trip, I got my haircut in San Francisco which is why my hair looks so great in this photo and then my friend Julia suggested we get lunch at Chez Panisse Cafe (uhhh yes please?) which was delicious. We both got a glass of Lassalle Champagne and split a fennel salad with anchovy, butter bean and parsley, a little gem salad with cherry tomatoes and seared halibut with aioli, potatoes and green beans. 100% lovely. Then she and I walked around North Berkeley admiring roses and wine shops. She dropped me off at Caffe Strada which looked exactly the same and I met up with some of the girls from my freshman year dorm. Foothill was unlocked so we checked out our old suite and the dining hall and then walked by some of the new construction and recently built buildings around campus intermixed with the old buildings that were old back when we were students there. The pandemic brought us back together after 30 years via group text. Go Bears!