1 post tagged “barbersq”

I've been looking forward to this weekend for exactly 61 days, ever since our foodtastic friend JenC booked a dinner reservation at much praised (and much expen$$$ive) Thomas Keller restaurant, The French Laundry. The secret to getting a coveted dinner date? According to Jen: booking 2 months in advance, and mutton bashing on OpenTable.com minutes after reservation times begin!

After semi-hastily packing up our weekend bags early this afternoon and driving up to Emeryville/Berkeley area to meet up with Jen, her sister Vivien, and their friend James in the parking lot of the Scharffenberger chocolate factory, we headed for Vino Bello, a timeshare at the tip of of Napa Valley. Our first dinner of the trip was at BarBersQ (Official Website | Yelp Review), which was a very classy BBQ joint. Our server was a great lady, and in no time delicious appetizers and entrees were set out in front of us. JenC and I took out our gorillapods and Canon cameras and took our first food pr0n of the weekend. I have apprenticed myself officially to JenC as her "food fluffer" (they explained what that actually was afterwards......). She has been teaching me all the manual functions of my Canon SD1000 that I've never known before, and now I'm practicing on this trip so prepared to be inundated with food pr0n. (Thank you Jen!!!)

My favorite part of the meal had to have been the Grilled West Coast oysters. There were 6 for the 5 of us, and I pilfered the last one. :] Alan also ordered an amazing pulled pork sandwich, and it was gone in about 30 seconds - but I snuck one bite out of it, and it was fanTAStic, on the same level of the best pulled pork I've ever had (which is from Daisy May's in New York City). The full rack of ribs we got to share were pretty good - I always find ribs that have been dry-cooked lacking in juiciness, which I like, but the BarBersQ special sauce rack made them absolutely delicious. Same thing with the chili - good, but not special, until a drop of the specially made, organic hot sauce (it was named Frog's Leap or something like that, made specially for the restaurant).

Dessert was also especially good - I got the key lime pie. The graham cracker crust was extremely good, but the pie was a bit tart - for genuine key lime I'd probably still recommend getting them in their native state of Florida. The pecan pie was wonderful,  especially with the chocolate and caramel mixed in.

Three guys at the table next to us started to take interest in our constant yammer about setting up macro shots and taking pictures of every dish that came out way. Eventually they struck up conversation with Jen, and lo and behold, the guy was the OWNER of the restaurant we were sitting in. His name was Jean (spelling?) and he was a very nice guy who was very interested in what we thought of the place (and very curious of our gorillapods on our cameras). We ended up spending two hours eating, chatting, and taking pictures. Jean gave Jen a long list of wineries and restaurants he recommended, with Jen fervently taking notes.  We're definitely gonna be running out of meals before meal ideas, but we'll make the best of our time here!! Here's hoping that the rest of this trip is as cool and promising as the start!

Full Flickr set here - will update as the days progress!