A wine country jaunt

By Paul Reidinger

AT SOME POINT toward the end of the 1990s, one's experience of the wine country became entirely speculative. One had gone there with some frequency earlier in the decade – biked the back roads, dawdled in sleepy tasting rooms, nibbled at the occasional restaurant – but the great boom sent shock waves of tourist traffic rippling northward. The Golden Gate Bridge became a garrote and Highway 29 a torrent of cars, while the onetime sense of rural serenity dotted with the occasional genteel town gave way to high-priced boutiques and outlet malls – the very worst, in a way, of city and suburb together. And so one turned elsewhere for bike trails and bucolic interludes; one wistfully contemplated the wine country from afar but did not go there. It made no sense to fight bridge traffic and Highway 29 traffic only to find oneself encased in mobs of city people who made up most of the traffic one had just fought.

Naturally I was apprehensive when a recent Saturday jaunt to Bistro Jeanty was proposed. Saturday is holy day for day-trippers, but on the other hand ... Bistro Jeanty. I can hardly think of a more succinct statement of my faith in Bistro Jeanty than that I was willing to risk driving there on a clear, mild weekend afternoon in late spring. Much has been made of the profusion of high-end restaurants that have opened in the wine country – and particularly in the Napa Valley – in the past decade, from Catahoula in Calistoga to the French Laundry in Yountville, but whatever the ever buzzing food press says, none surpass, in basic pleasure and satisfaction, the country-French redoubt longtime Domaine Chandon chef Philippe Jeanty opened five years ago.

Having duly fasted (in the knowledge that the Jeanty culinary style is the antithesis of nouvelle cuisine and its precious portions), we set out. Bridge: clear. Other traffic: none to report, not even around that horrible raceway at the junction of Highways 37 and 121. Parking: found a spot directly across the street from the restaurant's entrance. Seldom – and perhaps never – have the wine country auguries been so favorable. Wait for reserved table: less than two minutes, and despite the healthy crowd, there were spots available on the bench near the host's podium.

Bistro Jeanty is perhaps northern California's premier place to go with people who fear French cooking – its reputation for fussy formality and the (supposed) icy snootiness of those who prepare and serve it. The mood, of relaxed bustle, sets one at ease immediately, as does the color scheme: walls painted various shades of lemon and cream and hung with fin de siècle French advertisements for comestibles. As in France, the service staff are courteous, attentive, knowledgeable, and they do not hover. You are left in peace to enjoy your food – which you will, because Jeanty's cooking is meant to be enjoyed, not pondered or dissected. It is the ancient cooking of France, the kind of food Peter Mayle describes so vividly in his cycle of memoirs about living in Provence.

It is, for example, rillettes de canard ($8.50), a meaty pâté of duck and goat cheese, served in a ramekin with a set of toast rounds and a matching set of cornichons. An avaricious person might easily have devoured the whole thing, but four avaricious people managed quite successfully to share it as a starter – with help, of course, from a frequently replenished bread basket.

It is wise to order cautiously, as dishes tend to be generously sized. The least overwhelming of our main courses was a sandwich of merguez sausage ($12.50), spicy lamb links, lightly charred, swaddled in a split baguette smeared with nose-clearing mustard, and topped with a heavy shower of Bistro Jeanty's deservedly famous, crispy-tender, herb-flecked pommes frites. Did someone say calories? Oh, beyond count, but it's important every now and then not to care.

Although pasta, as a cultural signifier, is indelibly Italian, French kitchens handle macaroni in its many guises with an unself-conscious verve that is almost, but not quite, possessory. A combination of pot roast-like braised lamb cheeks, shaved artichoke hearts, and gemelli pasta – joue d'agneau ($18.50) – was simple and seasonal and approachable in the true spirit of Italy, yet at the same time utterly French in its slightly off-center elegance. It's plenty for two, if they're not too avaricious.

Even salade niçoise ($13.50), with its appeal to abstemiousness, turned out to be a formidable platter of butter lettuce, quartered tomatoes, albacore tuna, and olives, drenched in a sunny combination of lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil that freshened everything on the plate but did not reduce the salad's scale.