On our whirlwind trip to Napa, where we stayed for one night at Hudson Ranch and then skeedaddled back on home, Matt and I had to get a good look at the mecca of all restaurants and the symbol of the dream and orthodox that any serious chef aspires to possess…. Thomas Keller’s French Laundry. No, we did not eat there, they were closed for lunch for the record, but we did drag Autumn with us to be a weird food groupie and scope out the place. She’s easy going and was game, and if she was bewildered by the mad excitement Matt and I displayed over this location, she certainly didn’t show it.
Keller has a garden which stands directly across the street from his restaurant on a valuable patch of land that could otherwise host a four star hotel. There were no fences to keep us out, so we wandered around it’s inspiring grounds, each aisle purposefully labeled, and when it’s gardeners paid no mind, we felt that maybe this was Keller’s intention. If you can’t acquire dinner reservations, at least you could snap up an heirloom tomato. Even a chicken coop was out in the open with kale growing inside for a mid afternoon snack. What I’d do to taste those eggs, but it’s funny because I did nothing and let them be in their unlocked coop. There was just something so reverent about this public/private garden that quietly asked you not to sully any of it up.
We came, we went, and we left the tomatoes, as well as everything else, for dinner service.
