Today was a great day. Sun was shining, the breeze was gently blowing, the wine was flowing. Not much wrong with a day like that, but to make it even better everywhere we went we met Bears fans. And I MEAN EVERYWHERE! There were fans at the wineries, fans at the restaurant we went to for dinner, fans as we were walking down the street. As our waiter put it - Bears Fans Represent!
We had the opportunity to check out a few of the wineries in Napa and there was one I would like to highlight. We went to Razi and I can't begin to explain how great this winery was. It is not a fancy winery or a huge one, but the owner was as friendly as can be and walked us through his wines, the process and all sorts of other information on the area. He also happens to be a Bears fan but that was only a bonus. Razi is one of the few wineries where they don't make the tasting process a profit maker. While they ask that you call for an appointment for a tasting, they were more than happy when we just stopped by. Fred sat us down in his tasting room and started pouring his wines and letting us know everything we could have wanted to know about them. He kept pouring wines and if you looked like you enjoyed one of them particularly he would pour you more of it. Overall a great experience, and he has some pretty good wines as well. If you are in the area you should definitely check out Razi wines.
Dinner was at Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc. For those who are not familiar with this restaurant it is the hight of restaurant efficiency and serves some pretty good food as well. There is one menu each night. You get what they are serving or you don't eat there. The menu changes each day. You do have a couple of options. Sometimes they have an add on course you can select, you can order cocktails, you can order the wine pairing and they offer soft drinks, coffee and tea. That is pretty much the whole deal. The menu tonight was an Iceburg lettuce wedge salad with their house made thousand island dressing, heirloom tomatoes, olives and bacon. By the way, the thousand island dressing is nothing like the stuff you used to get out of a bottle as a kid. This was followed by Grilled New York sirloin with roast vegetables, polenta and a great reduced sauce. The second item was catfish fish and chips. The breading was great, but I can honestly say the F&C at Camelot the day before was better. The cheese course was a Comte and then a Pecan Tassi. Oh and everything was served with great bread from Boudin Bakery. So just that would make it a very good meal, but the best part in my opinion was watching the efficiencies built into the way the restaurant operated and how that translated into superb service for the customer.
For those people who are not interested in dissecting how business run you can skip the next paragraph.
It starts with how they bring water to the table. They have 2 taps for pouring water into carafes next to each other. The server puts a carafe under each tap and pulls the handles to fill them. Right next to the taps is the bread station with sliced pieces of bread and the baskets. The server puts 5 or 6 pieces of bread in a basket along with a tub of butter and takes it and both carafes to the table, fills the customers glasses with one of them and leave the other at the table for the customer so they have a full carafe. Elapsed time under 40 seconds to fill the water and bread and head for the table. The bar is located in the center of the serving area right next to the path to and from the kitchen so there is no wasted effort for the servers to have to go to another area to get the drinks while the food may be waiting to be served on the other side of the restaurant. Having a single set of items coming out of the kitchen obviously simplifies the ordering as well as the serving process and lets the servers concentrate on making sure the customers are fully taken care of. Everything in the entire restaurant is done in the same efficient, but efficient aimed at taking care of the customer, way. It is refreshing to see a business that does things well from a business as well as from a customer standpoint.
Tomorrow is the big day - GAME DAY! We will be heading down to the stadium early and will give a full report on this new football location. One thing we can report is that there is a LOT of discontent with the stadium being located in Santa Clara about 50 miles out of San Francisco. We will let you know tomorrow if the new stadium lives up to the press.
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