The restaurant at JUSTIN Winery was led by Executive Chef Rachel Haddstrom (who we never saw) and offered seasonal menus with ingredients sourced from the onsite 26 acre farm for dinner Thursday through Sunday. They have one Michelin star and a Michelin Green Star. It’s a large place with lots of buildings and at first Google maps sent us to the wrong spot, but after some searching with another lost diner we found the right spot. As you entered what looked like a large house you walk through the first room of wines, foods and souvenirs for sale and then into a huge bar room. There were no seats but tons of glasses because, I assume, that’s where they do wine tastings. Keep going and we got to the indoor dining room which had a glass wall to some of the vineyards and the outside patio tables, which were all covered with white cloths. Windows in the bar area looked out on more vineyards and unclothed patio tables. Quite an operation and more staff than diners. They offered one tasting menu with some optional supplemental courses and an option for the main course with an additional charge. Wine pairings were offered with extra charges for wines to go with added courses. The basic tasting was $225 per person with pairings adding $110 and with supplements you could easily add over $200. We chose the basic tasting with pairings and added the cheese course supplement. It was a beautiful setting and pretty food but for the drive and money I way preferred Six Test Kitchen.
Set-up
Food
Some amuse bouche started the tasting. A cold dish of chawanmushi custard topped with crab meat was almost too cold to taste. It was very mild.
A trio plate held an acorn pillow with a liquid center of squash and cheese which had a crisp shell and was decorated with flowers. A delicate beet shell was filled with spiny lobster for a nice bite. A canelé that was topped with green garlic and cheese had a nice chewy inside and crisp edge. It was good.
The tasting started with halibut crudo mixed with elderberry, green garlic and strawberry. Radish grown on their estate was a featured part. Some creme fraiche was mixed with the green garlic and mint and the sauce was made with lemon balm and elderberry jus. The halibut was tender but really didn’t sing with the sauce.
As so often these days bread is a course rather than an accompamient for the food. A laminated brioche came with hand churned butter topped with black Perigord truffle. The brioche was flakey and buttery but served at room temperature rather than warmed. The butter was good but the truffle was tasteless.
Local Black Cod was plated with vegetables from their garden – stinging nettle, English pea, carrots, asparagus, artichoke and snap peas with a velouté of green garlic. The vegetables were outstanding and all cooked to perfection. They were all so young and fresh – just bursting with flavor. The cod was seared on one side and also perfectly cooked to silky lovliness. This was an excellent course.
Liberty Farms duck was plated with beet, long pepper, pickled cherry, and rose. A leaf of Swiss chard wrapped some duck confit. A tuile decorated the meat and added some texture. The nicely rare duck was chewy and fairly tasteless but better with the sauce. The beets were good but bled into everything to make it redder. It was an okay plate.
Our supplemental course was a Challenhocker soufflé with hoshigaki (dried Japanese persimmon) and estate greens. Challenhocker is a Swiss semi-hard cheese whose name means “hiding in the cave” which was what the persimmon was doing in this soufflé. It did come straight from the oven and stayed quite hot but was lovely and the persimmon was excellent.
An olive oil cake was topped with Oroblanco grapefruit sorbet then with an estate honey tuile. It was good but not as special as it sounded.
A Star Anise chiffon cake was topped citrus sorbet of Bearss lime, blood orange and lemon verbena then topped with another tuile (a bit repetitive?) This one was sweet but not as citrusy as I expected. Lots of texture though.
Last treats were blood orange pâte de fruits, a dark chocolate ganache topped with black truffle, which this time did have flavor and fragrance. Last was a hand-painted bonbon filled with smoked caramel and waygu beef. It was best of the 3 and there were a lot of these in various flavors for sale in the gift shop.
They gave us a bag to go with your menu from the evening along with a few parting gifts.
