Category: BiteClub

Only in Napa could a guy spend fourteen years and countless millions building a 121,000 square-foot castle to a collective yawn. Maybe it was the decade-plus of building. Maybe it was just another castle in a valley full of McMansions, chateaux and bombastic monuments. Maybe it was because you had to pay $15 bucks just […]

From pig’s feet and escargot to jellied bone marrow, the French have an uncanny ability to drown pretty much anything in béchamel or brown butter and make it exceptional. But what keeps eaters beating a path to Chef Philippe Jeanty’s Yountville restaurant is his elevation of rustic cuts and home-style French cooking from merely palatable […]

Despite the construction dust, cardboard-covered floors and heady smell of fresh paint, things are cooking at the forthcoming Peter Lowell’s Café in Sebastopol. Not so much the hearth-baked pizzas or braised rapini planned for their late-September opening; not the minestrone or fresh bagels listed on the first menu; not even a hint of dandelion greens. […]

This isn’t a story about Ubuntu. But it starts there, on a very hot, very sticky Napa afternoon not so long ago–in fact last Friday. The story opens with BiteClub standing a the dark, all but empty restaurant wondering…um…exactly what happened to the breakfast and lunch service scheduled to start last week. No dice. Maybe […]

Fire it upToques off to the fall crew of the Santa Rosa Junior College Culinary Café, which re-opened on Wednesday. With their every move on display in the open teaching kitchen and fishbowl bakery, the heat is on these eager chefs-to-be from day one. The debut menu includes a variety of seasonal dishes–from spiced carrot […]

Chinese food needs a good agent these days. After years as the reigning exotic starlet of the American palate, she’s really let herself go–appearing regularly in freezer sections and mall fast food courts. She’s licensed her name to abominations like orange chicken (which tastes like neither) and spongey egg rolls and tasteless fried rice studded […]

After a rather horrifying incident with yak butter tea a few years ago, I pretty much swore off any further experiences with Tibetan food. Yak can do that to a person. A recent shout-out by a BiteClubber over my noticeable lack of Indian coverage, however, prompted me to take another look at Shangri-La, a Himalayan […]