Austin Yankee
Social marketer by day.
Wine and Food adventurer by night.
A native New Yorker and recent Austinite rediscovers the Big Apple.
-
After the morning SoLoMo session, the Wine Sisterhood Mischief Maker crew had lunch at Oxbow Public Market’s Kitchen Door. Chef Todd Humphries and Chef Christopher Litts prepared a unfussy lunch of comfort food using simple ingredients in inventive ways.
The first course:
Shaved Celery Salad with candied pecans, dates, gorgonzola creamy white balsamic vinaigrette. Thinly sliced celery, pecans and dates danced a sumptuous tango in my mouth along side the gorgonzola. I would have never thought to pair these ingredients together but now I plan to rethink how I use celery in salads in the future.
Herbed Flatbread with buratta cheese and olive tapenade. Burrata is a soft texture Italian cheese, made from mozzarella and cream that has a buttery quality to it. I could have made a whole meal from just the flatbread alone but I was not trying to blow all my calories on bread, when there was plenty of wine to be drunk. ;-)
The 2nd Course:
We had a choice of Grilled Loch Duarte Salmon served with warm asparagus salad, fried capers and hollandaise sauce or Roasted Chicken served with green peppercorn gravy, mashed potatoes and mirepoix vegetables, a traditional French culinary combination of onions, carrots and celery.
I am not a fan of hollandaise sauce so I opted for the roasted chicken. Since everyone is so seemingly healthy in Napa, I was pleasantly surprised to find a thin layer of crispy skin with the fat rendered out on my chicken. God bless the Chef’s! Crispy, yet tender chicken dredged in gravy is there anything better than that?
Oh yes, chocolate chip and snickerdoodle cookies that would send Girl Scouts back to their test kitchens to reinvent their time honored cookie recipes.
All in, a great meal with great company. Next time I’m in Napa I plan to visit the Oxbow Market again to sample the rest of the food court and see whats on Kitchen Door’s local ingredient driven menu. There is something for everyone there.
Try Kitchen Door: 610 1st Street Napa, CA 94559
-
I feel special. This weekend, I’ll be a guest of Wine Sisterhood at their first annual Gathering of women in wine. Three and a half days of wine tasting, food pairing, social media sessions and merry making with other thirsty wine loving women is the perfect working vacation before SXSW.
I’m looking forward to the Food and Wine Pairing session with Thirsty Girl and wine media personality Leslie Sbrocco. And can’t wait to meet Christine Trice from OMG I so need a glass of wine or I’m gonna sell my kids, I don’t even have kids and have felt this way, oh so many times. LOL Healthy lifestyle personality, Sonia Hunt will be there, as will Extraordinary Mommy vBlogger Danielle Smith and my hero and friend Aliza Sherman
The agenda includes a visit to Bottega in Yountville, the Kitchen Door at the Oxbow Market in Napa, enjoying Swanson Winery for a VIP tasting and attending a blending seminar at Conn Creek Vineyards. There is even a meet & greet and dinner with some amazing female winemakers in the barrel room of the Black Stallion Winery, an olive oil tasting at Round Pond Estate and a gala dinner at Farmstead Restaurant in St. Helena.
I think you can still get in on the action HERE. Don’t worry, if you can’t make the Gathering this year. I will be live blogging/Tweeting/Trovering/4SQing the whole thing so you can can follow right along here.
