{"id":171,"date":"2016-01-31T21:36:04","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T21:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=171"},"modified":"2016-01-31T21:36:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-31T21:36:23","slug":"cindy-pawlcyns-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=171","title":{"rendered":"Cindy Pawlcyn\u2019s Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is not a restaurant review, even though it\u2019s almost about a restaurant, one of our favorite restaurants, but just a little to the left.\u00a0 It feels as though Mustards Grill (www.mustardsgrill.com<\/a>) has been along Route 29 north of Yountville forever, but actually it opened in 1983.\u00a0 Steve would have sworn that he ate there on his first trip to Napa Valley in the 1970\u2019s, but evidently it wasn\u2019t so.\u00a0 But we have eaten there a lot of times since.\u00a0 The outside looks like an old fashioned road stop restaurant but the inside is bistro style and cozy. You\u2019ve got to love a place that proudly proclaims on its outside banner that they serve \u201csteaks, chops, ribs, garden produce and way too many wines<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 There have been many memorable meals there and way too much wine, but this is about the garden adjoining the restaurant.<\/p>\n

\"mustards\"<\/p>\n

Photo<\/em> courtesy of Mustards Grill<\/em><\/p>\n

The founder, proprietor and resident guru of Mustards is Cindy Pawlcyn.\u00a0 She also owns Cindy\u2019s Backstreet Kitchen, a restaurant located on a back street (of course) in St. Helena.\u00a0 It has the same sort of food but a very different ambiance. For one thing, there\u2019s no garden.\u00a0 Cindy (evidently no one calls her Ms. Pawlcyn) erected a vegetable and herb garden on two acres just besides Mustard s, so that she could have fresh ingredients for her kitchen(s).\u00a0 There are other restaurants with private gardens, Thomas Keller\u2019s across from French Laundry being the most famous.\u00a0 But no other that we are aware of is so accessible to the public as is Cindy\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Diners are invited to stroll there before or after a meal.\u00a0 (There\u2019s no prohibition against walking through the garden without dining, but we would not recommend it.\u00a0 Mustards\u2019 web site says they also grow winter vegetables, too.\u00a0 What a wonderful feeling walking among herbs and vegetables in a garden just outside the restaurant you\u2019re about to walk into. \u00a0Or after your meal, you can smell all the aromas of those fresh ingredients that were just on your plates.<\/p>\n

We are both city folks, but Lucie has family in rural areas who have what the Quebecois call jardins potagers<\/em>, or simply vegetable gardens, so all this isn\u2019t quite that unusual to her.\u00a0 She rubs the herbs lightly between her fingers to extract and smell the essential oils.\u00a0 Steve knows nothing about gardening and he is fascinated to see what a string bean or a pepper looks like before it\u2019s ready to eat.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s fun in seeing what your food looked like before it even was ready to go to the kitchen.\u00a0 Perhaps more so, it keeps you in mind that, for all the fun of going to Wine Country to taste exceptional wines, you could stay home and open bottles if all you wanted was to taste wine.\u00a0 When you\u2019re in Cindy\u2019s garden, you know you\u2019re in the country.\u00a0 We both love Cindy\u2019s restaurants, particularly Mustards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is not a restaurant review, even though it\u2019s almost about a restaurant, one of our favorite restaurants, but just a little to the left.\u00a0 It feels as though Mustards Grill (www.mustardsgrill.com) has been along Route 29 north of Yountville forever, but actually it opened in 1983.\u00a0 Steve would have sworn that he ate there … Continue reading Cindy Pawlcyn\u2019s Garden<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}