One of my friends coordinated a lovely Napa trip at the beginning of the year. It was nice seeing friends fly in from LA since I haven’t seen them in quite a long time. We started out at Peju and then worked our way through to Trefethen, Domaine Carneros, and then had a lovely dinner at Boon Fly Cafe at the Carneros Inn.
We had a quirky weird host who asked us about aliens at Peju but since our group was so big they put us in the side private tasting room which was nice.
We also had a newly engaged couple in the group! Congrats Cindy and Alan w/ her 3 day old ring! 
No Napa trip is complete without a pitstop in Bouchon! We went there and had lunch and gorged ourselves on the pastries. I ended up sharing a loaf of bread with butter followed up with a macaron! Tres bien!
On a side note, I think the macaron there are more like the Italian style macarons. The pastries were crisper and held up more firmly. I bought a box back for Sam and I to share and they were delicious even a day later! I’ve only made French macarons in the past but I found an awesome recipe on a cooking blog that featured an Italian style macaron which includes melted sugar to make a stiffer more stable meringue.
My idiot brain forgot to pack my extra battery and by the end of lunch, I got the low battery alert so I didn’t get shots of Trefethen and Domaine Carneros. I have to say though, I really wish I had my camera for Domaine Carneros. It was beautiful. I love how some of the sparkling wineries have such beautiful settings. In the past Mumm was a favorite for Sam and I for its views. I think I need to add Domaine Carneros onto the rotation just for the building/stately-ness. (Is that even a word?) The view from Mumm is better but the architecture of Domaine was amazing. What I don’t get is the gazillion stars leading up to it… I’m sure they’ve had their fair share of tipsy people slipping when trying to make their way down to their cars!
Post Domaine, we went off to Boon Fly Cafe for dinner. Our server was great but their need severe retraining for their floor supervisor. For all the horrid details, I’ll shamelessly redirect you to my yelp review.
Now for my endless food porn:
We shared some appetizers…
The pork belly was excellent. One of the best pork belly preparations I’ve had in a long time. The glaze was perfect and the apples and cabbage went perfectly!
I’m normally not a fan of poached eggs (runny yolks scare me which reminds me to tell that story on a different day) nor do I like goat cheese, but this salad was pretty good. Once I got over the yolk flavor.
The other half of the table got the fried shrimp appy.
We got mac and cheese. Can’t go wrong with mac and cheese. All that was missing was a good dash of truffle oil and some shaved truffles. But then everything’s delicious with truffles.
I ordered the flank steak entree which came with plenty of sides. I definitely know they have truffle oil in the kitchen since my fries came deliciously truffled!
MMM… The red wine jus was delicious and the pricing was fair, it was an entree that didn’t break the bank. I wasn’t a huge fan of the creamed spinach that it came with.
I <3 truffled fires so they get their own picture. 😉
Personally I think that Boon Fly Cafe needs to get their stuff together since my medium rare steak came out closer to medium/medium well.