Fancy Vegetables at Ubuntu

A few short hours after we rolled ourselves out of the French Laundry, we found ourselves in downtown Napa (which had an awful lot going on) at the entrance of Ubuntu.

Now if you've not heard of Ubuntu, it was probably one of the biggest restaurant openings last year. Jeremy Fox, who was sous chef at Manresa, has been very well-reviewed and Ubuntu came very highly recommended. I was told that I wouldn't look at vegetables in the same way once I dined there.

The space was more industrial than I had expected with stairs that led up to the yoga studio (apparently, there are lots of mat-toting passers-by if you dine here at lunch). And the menu was very interesting, with many, many terms I was not familiar with.

Our server told us that many of the menu items came from the restaurant's bio-dynamic 2 acre garden. Yeah, we had to ask what exactly that meant...

We started with the set of three bites - olives marinated in pesto, marcona almonds with lavender sugar and sea salt, and the chickpea fries. I loved the almonds with their unusual finish and the chickpea fries because, well, they were fried.

We had a harder time deciding on the dishes, so we went with the waiter's recommendation and did "the cycle". It was a fancy name for "bring us one of everything on the menu, please". That's 13 dishes. For the 4 of us. After 10+ courses at the French Laundry. Hmmm...

Artichoke, Arugula and Parmesan Salad
This was my favorite dish of the entire meal. It was an amazing salad. The artichokes were a revelation - I don't usually like artichokes. The juices left at the bottom of the dish were even great mopped up with bread.





Crunchy radishes with chevre and nori
This was a pretty dish but just ok for me as I'm not a big radish fan. Hubby really liked it though.

Today's Leaves & Things
Dressed lightly with olive oil, this was a great light green salad.





Beet Tartare with Pistachio "dirt"
This was probably the most impressive presentation - and the "dirt" was delicious. I'm not much of a beet fan but it was served with grapefruit wedges, peppers and lettuce, and was quite good.

Mustard greens, truffled pecorino with rosemary cracker
Again, beautiful presentation. Delicious but a little hard to eat. Everything fell apart when you served yourself, so you had to put together each bite by piling everything back ontop of the cracker.

Warm sunchoke carpaccio with black trumpet mushrooms, shaved fennel
Did you know that a sunchoke (also known as a Jerusalem artichoke) is not related to the artichoke at all?! This is what you can learn during a meal when one or more of your party wields the iPhone.

Rustic "yellow eye" bean stew
I'm not usually a bean fan but this stew was terrific.


Carrot gnocchetti
This looked a lot like mac 'n cheese. But it was little mini carrot gnocchi. It was good, but very rich.

Fregola in spinach broth with broccoli rabe
Fregola is a pasta, in case you didn't know - I didn't. I think I liked this dish, but also think I might have been filling up so that my food appreciation ability was beginning to be seriously compromised.

Yellow corn grits smoked with hickory, with fried brussels sprouts and apple sticks
I liked the brussels sprouts - they were fried.

Cauliflower in a cast iron pot
This is the dish that all the reviewers raved about. It comes out mouth-burningly hot but I didn't quite see what all the fuss was about. See last comment about compromised food appreciation due to severe over-indulgence.

Finally we had two pizzas - a nice margherita with super ingredients and a sauerkraut and emmental pizza, which so scared me that I was only able to muster a single bite.

Phew. 13 courses plus 3 bites at the start. We were exhausted. But we rallied for the dessert course. Which was (dare I say it) way better than the French Laundry's. I had the meyer lemon and white chocolate parfait, served with rose geranium meringue. Just look at this dessert! It was sooo pretty I almost didn't want to eat it. But then I did anyway. It was great. I'd come back just for this.

Their signature dessert is the cheesecake in a jar - so we ordered that as well. Vanilla bean "cheesecake" in a jar with sour cherries and a lovely nut crumble on top. It would have been great with another fruit. I am not a sour cherry fan. But it almost worked, it was that good.

And so I came to the end of yet another meal and trotted back to collapse in bed with visions of meyer lemon parfaits dancing in my head.