{"id":2180,"date":"2022-09-29T18:20:01","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T18:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2180"},"modified":"2022-09-29T18:20:01","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T18:20:01","slug":"mustards-grill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2180","title":{"rendered":"Mustards Grill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Power Tasting<\/em> does not review restaurants.\u00a0 This article is about a restaurant, but it\u2019s not about the food, the drinks or the service but rather a special restaurant as a destination in itself.<\/p>\n

Mustards Grill has been sitting alongside Route 29<\/a> in Yountville since 1983.\u00a0 It was opened by Cindy Pawlcyn back then as a self-described \u201cdeluxe truckstop\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 We\u2019ve been to truckstops, and that\u2019s not what Mustards is.\u00a0 Truckstops have big rigs in the parking lot, showers, and large persons more intent on nourishment and a quick getaway than on fine dining.<\/p>\n

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Photo Courtesy of Open Table.<\/em><\/p>\n

What Mustards is and always has been is a roadhouse, a great American throwback, and that\u2019s what makes it a Place to Visit.\u00a0 If you feel as though you\u2019ve heard of roadhouses, that\u2019s probably because you came across the term in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was the ultimate chronicler of an emergent upper middle class in the 1920\u2019s, now a century past.<\/p>\n

A roadhouse was a drinking and dining establishment in the rapidly changing outskirts of major cities.\u00a0 The boys had come marching home from World War I and having seen Gay Paree wanted no more of life on the farm.\u00a0 Prospering in the post-war boom, they had snazzy roadsters and straw boaters and wanted to get out of town and have a good time.\u00a0 The girls of the time were no less eager, with their bobbed hair and turned down hose.\u00a0 Roadhouses spring up to meet a market demand.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to Mustards.\u00a0 Napa Valley was making some pretty fine wine in 1983, but once the sun went down, there was no place of any quality to get a meal or a drink.\u00a0 Like the soon-to-be-suburbs of the 1920\u2019s, Napa was changing its identity from a rural sector not too far from San Francisco into a winemaking (and tasting) mecca.\u00a0 Ms. Pawlcyn started Mustards to meet a latter-day market demand for a simple place with not so simple food and lots of wine.\u00a0 (It\u2019s also worth visiting for its vegetable gardens, which we addressed in a previous article<\/a> \u2013 still worth reading.)<\/p>\n

She tipped her intentions on the side of the building, announcing that steaks, chops, ribs and \u201cway too many wines\u201d are to be had within.\u00a0 From that day to this, Mustards has kept its promise.<\/p>\n

There was a seamy side to roadhouses back when, including dancing flappers , gambling, bar fights and prostitution.\u00a0 None of that is present at Mustards, of course, but for out-of-town visitors there is a sense that you\u2019ve happened upon something only the insiders know about, something like a speakeasy (the urban equivalent of a roadhouse).\u00a0 That\u2019s because you\u2019re as likely to be dining at a table next to locals and winemakers as other tourists.<\/p>\n

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A Stutz Bearcat.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\n

We always drive up to Mustards in a car we rented at the airport.\u00a0 Please excuse us if we pretend that we\u2019re in a Stutz Bearcat, the quintessential roadster, wearing racoon coats.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been stopping at this bit of Americana through all the years of its existence and we can\u2019t thinking of being in Napa Valley without going there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Power Tasting does not review restaurants.\u00a0 This article is about a restaurant, but it\u2019s not about the food, the drinks or the service but rather a special restaurant as a destination in itself. Mustards Grill has been sitting alongside Route 29 in Yountville since 1983.\u00a0 It was opened by Cindy Pawlcyn back then as a … Continue reading Mustards Grill<\/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":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2183,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2180\/revisions\/2183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}