Wednesday, April 8

napa light lunch: ubuntu

ubuntu butter
so after wine tasting we wanted to eat a super light lunch. i had received an email from open table a few weeks ago promoting various restaurants, and ubuntu was on the list. typically, i don't like to go by these types of emails, but the place looked really great and had good reviews. plus, it was vegetarian, and i wanted to ensure that none of us would somehow overeat before going to french laundry!

chickpea fries
let me just preface everything with: this restaurant is amazing!! i love it. we were all so pleasantly surprised. the food was fresh, creative, and soooo delicious. the waiter explained to us that they food is "biodynamic" - which we had not heard of. we stared at him blankly and then he explained it nicely to us. we started with chickpea fries (above). sad that there were so few - this was gone within minutes. i would say these are more chickpea-ish than fry-ish, which i like.

corn grits close up
what can i say about this dish?? only that it was so amazing and tasty, i just recently tried to re-create it. this is the "bowl of local yellow corn grits infused with goat’s milk whey (lots of parmesan, agretti, slow egg, trumpet chips with savory)" it was creamy but you couldn't really taste the goat milk. i think we all ate this one the second-fastest. this also comes in an awesome UFO shaped bowl (see it here).

cauliflower in cast iron pot
this is the cauliflower in a cast iron pot - roast-puree-raw, vadouvan, cilantro, brown butter toast. yes that is my good friend cilantro sitting at the top, but i managed to avoid it when i tasted this little creation. YUM. (and extremely cute)

bean stew with egg
bean stew: "rustic rancho gordo ‘yellow eye’ bean stew w/ torn bread, rosemary, chili & braised swiss chard." we added an egg because eggs are awesome. the menu states that you can add a "domaine de la chance" egg to any dish. (can someone please explain this "domaine de la chance" thing?)

domaine de la chance egg
here is the delicious egg up close.

sauerkraut and emmental pizza
sauerkraut and emmental pizza. absolutely delicious and destructor - who hates sauerkraut - stuffed his face with this. the way it's prepared takes the emphasis off that sauerkraut-y taste.

the rest of the photos are here.

1 comment:

Nanciful said...

Wow, everything look amazing! Especially the cauliflower in a cast iron pot. Great photos!