This is not a restaurant review, even though it’s almost about a restaurant, one of our favorite restaurants, but just a little to the left. It feels as though Mustards Grill (www.mustardsgrill.com) has been along Route 29 north of Yountville forever, but actually it opened in 1983. Steve would have sworn that he ate there on his first trip to Napa Valley in the 1970’s, but evidently it wasn’t so. But we have eaten there a lot of times since. The outside looks like an old fashioned road stop restaurant but the inside is bistro style and cozy. You’ve got to love a place that proudly proclaims on its outside banner that they serve “steaks, chops, ribs, garden produce and way too many wines”. There have been many memorable meals there and way too much wine, but this is about the garden adjoining the restaurant.
Photo courtesy of Mustards Grill
The founder, proprietor and resident guru of Mustards is Cindy Pawlcyn. She also owns Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, a restaurant located on a back street (of course) in St. Helena. It has the same sort of food but a very different ambiance. For one thing, there’s no garden. 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). There are other restaurants with private gardens, Thomas Keller’s across from French Laundry being the most famous. But no other that we are aware of is so accessible to the public as is Cindy’s.
Diners are invited to stroll there before or after a meal. (There’s no prohibition against walking through the garden without dining, but we would not recommend it. Mustards’ web site says they also grow winter vegetables, too. What a wonderful feeling walking among herbs and vegetables in a garden just outside the restaurant you’re about to walk into. Or after your meal, you can smell all the aromas of those fresh ingredients that were just on your plates.
We are both city folks, but Lucie has family in rural areas who have what the Quebecois call jardins potagers, or simply vegetable gardens, so all this isn’t quite that unusual to her. She rubs the herbs lightly between her fingers to extract and smell the essential oils. Steve knows nothing about gardening and he is fascinated to see what a string bean or a pepper looks like before it’s ready to eat.
There’s fun in seeing what your food looked like before it even was ready to go to the kitchen. 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. When you’re in Cindy’s garden, you know you’re in the country. We both love Cindy’s restaurants, particularly Mustards.