Wham Bam Thank You Lamb

It's a sunny, rosy day in Mendocino, so get those pruners out! At least that's how I see the photo above, one of many we took of the bounteous botanical gardens in Mendo. If you have a thing for rhododendrons, this is the garden for you--it's a riot of bloom in May. Luckily we went to the 47-acres of the gardens well-fed, for another MacCallum House bonus is that breakfast is included, and it's sit-down, order from the menu, and enjoy it with a complimentary mimosa, even. (Don't mind if I do...it might be a Tuesday, but it's vacation.) I was very happy with my Benedict, and Chryss liked her breakfast burrito so much, she ordered one both mornings we were there. This is direct food made good by a sure hand and high quality, fresh ingredients.

In between is walking, lots, along the headlands and along the mouth of Big River. And then that trip to the Botanic Gardens. All that walking meant we got a hungerin' and a thirstin', so we went looking for a deer we could chase down and a fresh mountain spring. Oh, ok, we just continued up the 1 back to Ft. Bragg, and let Yelp once again be our guide, leading us to Piaci. It was after 2 so we worried we might be caught in the not-serving-vortex between lunch and dinner, especially when we first peeked in and saw no customers and just one worker, back in the kitchen, busy prepping at a meat slicer. But we also saw this beer board, so we asked if it was too late to get food. Turns out it wasn't, and even better, it meant the lone worker sat down on his side of the bar and we chatted away.

Topics ranged from Piaci having some roots to Russian River Brewing--and indeed, their styles of thin crust pizza are similar--to the man coming from the Yucatan, but really liking it in Fort Bragg, to how border towns (like Tijuana) are bad, as they can attract the worst from both sides. He knew his pizza and knew his beer and by the end we knew he had a hard time communicating with his teenage daughter and we got a beer for free. It was like making friends, which northern California seems to do so well. Now why Santa Barbara can't have more casual spots like this--good, simple food, great beer--I don't know. To add insult to injury, I had to be introduced to one of our beers from (mostly) back home, Firestone's Wooky Jack, way away here. It's a silly name for a fine RyePA with a lot more malt and alcohol kick than most.

We did something in-between lunch and dinner, promise, but this is a food blog, so whatever it was doesn't matter. Let's let this photo, more or less the view from our room (well, outside the fence that protected the hot tub privacy by our room), suffice as a breather. (And no, we didn't see or hear any ghosts in the graveyard. Rats.)

Dinner was at the MacCallum House itself, and somehow we lucked into having one of the several small dining rooms all to ourselves, too--a bonus romantic touch. Our breakfasts had us very excited for what was to come, and we weren't disappointed. Chryss kicked off with the hearts of romaine salad, sans the bacon (they're very accommodating de-meating stuff for vegetarians, btw) but with Point Reyes farmstead blue cheese dressing, herb croutons, roasted peppers, and oil-cured olives. Reading that list, you know it was fine. I had the soup of the day, a green garlic/leek deeply rich with those enticing spring flavors. Somehow we both skipped the grilled clam flatbread with Trumpet Royale mushroom duxelles, garlic, Vella dry Jack cheese, house made mozzarella, oregano, and chile gremolata--partially because we just had pizza for lunch, partially because it sounded like a main masquerading as a starter. But we both were sad, too.

 For mains, Chryss chose the chive gnocchi alla gratinata with morel mushrooms, snap peas, creamed spinach, and Vella mezzo secco cheese that turned out to be much more a gratin than a pasta-ish dish, as you can see. It's also a rebuke to anyone who thinks you have to have meat to eat well.

Not that that stopped me from chowing away on a hunk o' animal protein, for lookie here, I was very un-Mary like for I had a lotta lamb: a braised Niman Ranch lamb shank over mascarpone polenta, bathed in a gloriously gooey cherry and cabernet reduction, and then topped with its own salad of sorts--Point Reyes farmstead blue cheese, toasted walnut & arugula salad. The salad was completely necessary, for a mere smear of gremolata would not have offered enough balance. Nope, the peppery greens and bit of an acid tang from the dressing was absolutely needed to cut all the richness of the braised to ultimate tenderness lamb, that sauce, and the cheesed-up, soft polenta. We're talking flavors pushed to their extremes yet in fine harmony. (Although I might have cut the blue cheese--as fine as it tastes, it was one more push on the rich side of the scale, and perhaps a bit too much.)

We had no room for dessert, and can you blame us. Plus there was a bit of our 2009 Breggo Pinot Noir to finish, a fitting way to set up a transition to our next two days in Anderson Valley.

My Steak Has a First Name, It's D-I-A-N-E

Enough oysters--let's get meaty! Or that will be my theme for this day (the third of the trip), as we'll get to in a bit. First there's a quick breakfast at Blackbird down the street from the motel, a cute coffee shop with a not-particularly-cheery clerk but good lattes, an indescribably gooey sticky bun that comes from Bovine Bakery in Pt. Reyes Station (great baked goods, but that's got to be the worst name--"eat here and become a cow!"). The photos on display are impressive, too, very much Walker Evans-esque black-and-white shots of the same people in the same poses and settings years apart. It seems an easy cliche, capturing time on the move like this, but the portraits are all gorgeous.

As is our drive, up and up the Sonoma and eventually Mendocino coasts. There's a quick stop to see the church in Bodega Bay, luckily free of birds, a peek at Land's End in Jenner, to watch the Russian River pour into the Pacific, and a lot of thinking about Denis Johnson's wonderful, twisted gothic Already Dead, which describes this coast so well. We also stop at Fort Ross, as a bit of a walk mid roadtrip is always welcome and the place seems so odd: what did they need to fight off then--nobody is here now. Just to show we took pictures of things other than food, here's one of my favorites from Fort Ross:

Now the dress up kids camp that was occupying the other end of the fort in their faux Russian colonial wear didn't offer us any of their rations, so we got back to the car and kept heading north, through Sea Ranch, the most branded community in America it seems (especially given its paradisaical location), to Gualala and a Yelp-aided chosen place called Bones Roadhouse, that offers Texas-style wood pit barbecue...with a view of the Pacific. There's also several Lagunitas beers on tap so the food almost doesn't matter. It ends up fine, the slow smoked Memphis pulled pork I have is deeply flavorful and tender and of the two squeeze bottle BBQ sauce choices, the mild is actually better--more range of flavor than just hot. The mac 'n' cheese side is a bit too soft, but we'll make up for that with an amazing mac 'n' cheese in a few days.

Full, we head north, with a brief stop at the Point Arena lighthouse as we seem to be collecting those. (It is worthy, if nothing else than for the view, and the bit of a charge being 115 feet up in the air in the replacement for a lighthouse that the 1906 earthquake toppled.) Our goal is Mendocino, where we have a great TravelZoo deal to stay at the MacCallum House Inn for two nights. I'll get to the food there in a bit, but I want to comment on one clever thing they do--each guest gets a $7 credit wooden poker chip to use each night in the bar or restaurant. Of course you never spend just $7, so it's a shrewd loss leader.

For dinner this night, however, we drive even further north, to the town of Fort Bragg, working hard to be something as the timber industry about it went elsewhere. It's also the home of North Coast Brewing, and their Tap Room and Grill, not-quite-gruesomely located in an old funeral home, where we plan to have dinner and drink beer. And not just ant beer, for North Coast is home to one of my all-time favorites, Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout. If you've never had this beer on tap, you've never had it, and if you've never had it at the brewery, you've never had it as good as it gets. Creamy on the mouth, bread and hops on the nose, and then that deep complexity of bittersweet chocolate and coffee and toffee followed by more hops than you might expect in a malt-monster like this one (it is 75 IBUs). One time when a friend tasted and it simply said, "It's sweet," I almost punched him. Luckily he wasn't there that night.

As for food, Chryss was perfectly happy with her mussels and frites, even if it was a bit of a miserly portion. No doubt, they were made in some mighty good beer (oh, they had Red Seal on cask, too--making a good beer yet better). I opted for what at North Coast is something crazy expensive, the steak Diane special for $29.95.We're talking one serious slab of Brandt beef , rather indelicately but deliciously drowned in the Diane sauce, zippy with barely crushed peppercorns and warmed (but not flambéed) with brandy.

That was a lot of cow, especially given the sides would have made (as slightly larger portions), a wonderful dinner all by themselves. The braised greens were done just to the point of soft and so redolent of garlic I made sure Chryss ate some so we would both reek equally. That savory bread pudding was sort of more a stuffing, chock-full of wild mushrooms and red pepper and the bread moist on the inside but the outer edges were pleasingly crisp and crusty from time in the oven.

We skipped on dessert as we had those $7 chips burning a hole in our pockets for back at the MacCallum. There we sat in the bar area and Chryss enjoyed an Eldeflower martini--made with St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur, of course, but also Square One Cucumber Vodka, orange bitters, and sparkling wine--something light, bubbly, and lovely, while I had to have some of the best the region has to offer, a Germain Robin brandy, the Fine, which might be the bottom of their barrel, but then their barrels are so much better than most that at $8 for a very healthy few fingers of it, I couldn't say no, especially on a misty Mendocino evening alongside the hearth at the Gray Whale Bar.