With so many friends visiting for Kjell and Huong's wedding, we decided to take a trip up to Napa to spend some time together and visit a few wineries. Of course, we had to have a great meal, and started the day with a lunch at Thomas Keller's Bouchon. Now, I've actually been to Bouchon before, but it was years ago, right after it had opened, and I went to a New Year's Eve dinner with my family. I didn't think it was all the spectacular at the time, but it was worth another try.
We didn't have reservations, but since we arrive fairly early in the day, they were able to accomadate us. They started off by serving us a lovely warm baguette along with some butter.
I wasn't actually that hungry, so I decided I'd just have a salad and soup. Of course, I did order a pretty heavy salad and soup. I started off with a duck confit salad served on frisee with poached cherries and pickled turnips. Let me say, this dish was wonderful. The duck was cooked perfectly and was soft and delicious. The pickled turnips were really well done- crisp, tart, and still tasting of turnips and lastly the cherries. I'm not a fan of cooked fruit, especially if it's going to be served to me cold, but those cherries really were great.
I then ordered a traditional onion soup. It was actually much heavier that what I wanted, but the only other soup involved fennel and I hate fennel. So I had this bowl of soup, covered in an enormous layer of cheese. It was too much for me. I had a few bites of it before I gave up and handed it over to Juliet to finish off. (She's kinda like Tom, finishing off the things I'm always too full to eat).
Overall, we had a really enjoyable lunch at Bouchon. The service was friendly, everyone enjoyed their dishes and other than the slightly high price tag (which we expected) it really did meet all our high expectations.
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