One of our best experiences was finding a nice little French/American restaurant off the central plaza in Sonoma called The Girl and the Fig. Until that point, we had pretty much subsisted on a diet of wine and In and Out Burgers, which, although nice, was making me feel kind of greasy and malnourished and drunk.
We were drawn inside by the promise of a dessert, which I will get to later, and were pleasantly surprised to find everything we tried on the menu was excellent. I mean, really excellent. Excellence on the level of 71 Clinton, or Nobu, or In and Out Burgers.
Speaking of In and Out Burgers, have you ever been to one? They have a guy who makes French fries with his bare hands. It's incredible.
Anywho, we started off with a cheese platter, which I was disappointed to find only contained one California cheese. Usually, American cheese (and I'm not just referring to the orange processed piece of suck you get at the supermarket) is pretty bad. However, in the last five to ten years, a number of excellent cheese-makers have sprung up, most located in the Napa Valley area.
The one California cheese we did get to try was Vella Dry Jack, a Monterey Jack cheese aged two and a half years, rubbed with cocoa, wine, and some other stuff I can't remember. It was all the more exciting because the Vella Cheese Company makes Vella Dry Jack down the street from the restaurant. You could practically taste the guy who walked it over.
The other cheeses were French, but equally excellent. For the life of me, I can't remember what they were, either, but they went very well with the tiny slices of baguette and candied fruits on the tray.
This is probably a good time to mention that, true to its name, most of the dishes at The Girl and the Fig have figs in them, including the cheese platter. They probably bake girls into most of the dishes too, but don't put it on the menu so you're surprised later.
We followed up the cheese platter with a salad of arugula, pecans, Laura Chenel chevre, fig, and port vinaigrette. This time the figs were grilled, and soft. The girl was a Laura Chenel chevre, an excellent goat cheese you can only really find in good ole' CA.
As for wine, we chose a Roederer Estate NV Brut, an excellent sparkling wine from the Anderson Valley, to accompany our meal. One of the nice things about the wine list, if you're a pretentious snob, is that they don't have any Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot, or any of the other regular wines. Everything on the list is "unique wines that are Rhone varietal based and created with a California passion." Blah, blah, blah, go cook some figs.
Okay, back to the meal. For entrees, I chose the grilled eggplant, summer vegetables, and sheep's milk cheese pasta, which was pretty good, though not spectacular. My special friend got steamed mussels pernod, with garlic, leeks, fresh herbs, croutons, and matchstick frites, which was apparently spectacular. I wouldn't know, I don't eat things that get cooked in their own urine.
The mind-blower was the dessert. The first was a warm fig and thyme crisp, with fig and port ice cream. You'd think we would have been sick of figs at this point, and yet... Delicious, warm, very soft and rich, mixed with delicious ice cream that cleverly mixed the flavors of port wine and figs. One of the best deserts I've ever had.
That is, until I had the lavender crème brulee with wild flower honey. Generally, I don't like crème brulee. Sure, it's fun to crack with your spoon and all, but it usually is a bit too sweet, and leaves a sharp aftertaste in the back of your throat. The lavender got rid of that. There's no better way to describe this, but the whole dish tasted like softness. Just sweet, and utterly amazing. A perfect end to an almost perfect meal.
In the end, the bill was astronomical, but luckily, my special friend had a special deal with her special place of business, and they picked up the bill. Rock.
It was an utterly excellent meal, only points off for the good, but not great pasta dish, and some really uncomfortable chairs that were probably built for giants. Service and ambience? Spectacular. Much better than In and Out Burger. I give it four and a half zombies out of five.
So if you happen to be passing through Sonoma County, check out The Girl and the Fig. You won't regret it. Unless you do.