Bistro Jeanty
6510 Washington St., Yountville, CA
http://www.bistrojeanty.com/
Review date:   March 2011

We are spending a couple of days in the Wine Country and wanted to try some of the restaurants we missed the first two trips. Bistro Jeanty has been open since 1998, and Phillippe Jeanty’s hearty French bistro cooking is perfect for cooler weather. This being March, it's rainy and cold, and such dishes sound very appealing.

Carlos chose the veal tongue and endive salad for his starter, with the boudin noir sausage for his entree. The salad has a robust mustard dressing, which Carlos felt overwhelmed the veal tongue, which itself was very tender in half-inch slices. He would have preferred a milder, less contrasting dressing, although he did like the salad.

The boudin noir, or blood sausage, isn't often seen these days. Carlos and I are fond of calf's and chicken livers, and since he hadn't tried the French sausage (it's a common sausage in other countries), he wanted to try Jeanty's version. It comes with roasted apples and mashed potatoes, but he asked if another side could be substituted. Like many restaurants, Jeanty doesn't allow substitutions, but the waitress did offer egg noodles instead, which Carlos accepted.

The reason for this is that boudin is a very fine-grained sausage, and the blood makes it both soft and moist. Carlos felt the mashed potatoes were too similar in texture to go well, whereas the egg noodles with their chewier texture, made a better match. The apple slices were tart and very good with the sausage. 

He liked it so much, in fact, we asked the waitress whether this was housemade or commercial. It's made by a company named Pacific Gourmet, and has a wonderful thin crispy skin that gives a great textural contrast to the sausage itself.

I chose three starters for my meal, and began with the marrow Bordelaise. We love marrow but don't see it on many menus. When we do see it, it's often a miniscule portion. This was three good-sized marrow bones, served piping hot. We're not usually in love with overheated plates, but it's necessary for marrow or the marrow just congeals into a greasy mess. 

The thinly sliced toasts were perfect – still soft inside – but it was the Bordelaise that wowed us. Classic Bordelaise is made with marrow, which gives it that wonderful gelatinous smoothness that one finds in stewed oxtails, but marrow has a slightly milder taste. Vegetarian Bordelaise can be a reasonably good substitute, but everyone should have the real thing at least once in their lives – preferably with a lot of fresh bread handy to mop it up with.

The only thing that marred this was that since this was on the regular menu, I asked the busboy for a marrow spoon. It was amusing to see how this request totally flummoxed the entire waitstaff. First they brought me a soup spoon(!), then they brought me an espresso (demitasse) spoon and a lobster fork.

These last two are apparently their standard flatware for marrow bones. They work, but not as well as the proper flatware. Still, the marrow was wonderful spread on the toasts and drizzled with the sauce. If we lived closer, I would order this once a week – so it's just as well Jeanty is a full hour's drive away, LOL.

My second course was the escarole salad with a warm bacon dressing and soft-boiled egg. The dressing was tart with apple cider vinegar, mellowed slightly by the egg. I've had this salad executed better, but it was good if not perfect.

The third entree was the least successful. Listed as pork belly with a lentil and foie gras ragout, the lentils were too salty and had the very odd addition of quite a lot of raw chopped onions. The pork belly was supplemented by two thick slices of lightly smoked fresh bacon, which added enough salt to put it over the top for me. I left most of it.

Food this substantial precludes dessert, so we finished with our usual cappuccinos. We asked for them dry, which they were, and the foam was beautiful. The blends, however, were fairly harsh for both the decaf and regular. This turned out to be a common thread in our trip this time, which was discouraging.

We enjoyed our meal at Jeanty, although it's substantial, heavy food. I'm surprised that Chef/owner Jeanty doesn't change the menu radically even in summer. Dishes that are comforting on a rainy cool day might be unappealing when it's 90 degrees on a hot sunny day.

Jeanty isn’t perfect – Michael Bauer of the SF Chronicle had such a bad experience here in 2008 he knocked them off his Top 100 list completely and gave them one star. But our experience overall was good, despite the absence of a marrow spoon, and for that dish alone I would give them four stars. 

Four starters, on entree, three beverages, with tip was $107.