Goose & Gander/St. Helena lost its chef, but we hope they'll find a better one. "Goose & Gander chef Kelly McCown flying away to Sacramento": http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/02/24/goose-gander-chef-kelly-mccown-flying-away-to-sacramento/

Goose & Gander
1245 Spring St., St. Helena, CA
http://www.goosegander.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/gg-menu.pdf
Review date: August 2014

I'll admit it – this was my mistake. 

We spent our first day in Napa eating lunch at Auberge du Soleil on their exquisite patio, then followed that 5-star meal with dinner at Etoile at Domaine Chandon winery, which was even better.

So asking Goose & Gander to follow those two 5-star meals was just expecting too much of a restaurant that is really more aimed at Mustards and Redd "value" diners.

It doesn't help that St. Helena is a town that annoys the crap out of me. It's probably the single biggest reason I prefer Sonoma to Napa. I love driving, but hate stop and go traffic. 

And traffic grinds to a halt in St. Helena, because 29 goes right through the middle of this tiny historical town. There's no way around it except by taking a detour onto the Silverado Trail. Going north from Napa, trying to reach G&G for lunch on a holiday weekend, means that 4 miles out from town the traffic slowed to a jerky 20 mph. Which is 5 mph slower than one is allowed to go through town anyway.

And this was with reduced traffic due to the earthquake scaring a lot of folks away. Ugh.

G&G is in a converted Arts & Craft house, quite sizable. We opted for the outdoors for our lunch, as the day was in the low 90's. This meant cast aluminum backbreakers...er, chairs, on an uneven decomposed granite patio. There was an outdoor speaker next to us, something that makes us wince and consider asking for another table. 

Fortunately, after a few minutes the music was turned down and flipped to Solid Gold Hits of the Early 1970's. We bemusedly kept exclaiming, "Wow, haven't heard that song in ages!" as the Muzak cycled through original recordings of Bob Dylan, John Cougar Mellenkamp, Cat Stevens, Paul McCartney, and even Steely Dan (really haven't heard that one in a while!).

Perusing the menu, our eyes were immediately caught by the Spanish octopus, grilled with pimentón and served with potatoes, apples, arugula, and a green olive tapenade. The plate held four good-sized arms, but although delightfully tender (pressure-cooking, I explained to Carlos) and then given nice crisped edges on the grill, the octopus itself was tasteless, without any salt. 

All the salt was supposed to be supplied by the tapenade, livened up with preserved lemon but not very salty at all. A couple of the halved fingerlings had salt sprinkled on them, but most didn't have any. The apples and arugula were good, but I wasn't in love with the dish. It just didn't come together for me. I prefer lower levels of sodium in my food, but I do use salt when I cook, and there just wasn't enough of it used in the cooking of the various ingredients to bring the dish into focus. Salt sharpens the flavor of food, and using it erratically seldom works well.

We chose an order of the corn croquettes. This is a generous order of about eight small deep-fried balls, panko crusted. They were more like arancini with corn instead of corn by itself, but there was a nice spicy chipotle chile flavor with a bit of cheese. The execution was good but the flavors got boring after a while. The red bell pepper dip did nothing for them; I preferred using the green olive tapenade from the octopus dish.

Carlos also tried the mushroom soup. It's a bisque with a pesto drizzle, and some chopped sautéed black chanterelles added a pleasant touch of texture along with the taste of the butter in which they were sautéed. Nothing remarkable, but satisfactory.

For his entrée, Carlos chose a starter, the small charcuterie platter. It was generously portioned for 2-3 people to share as a starter. There was prosciutto, soppressata, finocciona, and salame. They were served with whole-grain mustard, cornichons, caperberries, and crackerbread strips. There was also a wedge of paté de Compagne, which was very good and a nice variant on the usual, a sort of cross between paté and headcheese. He said it was nothing unusual, but a well-executed dish.

I ordered the sturgeon, which came in a broth with cherry tomatoes, shallots, and Castelvetrano olives which are my favorites. But the fish was heavily dusted with plain loose bread crumbs, which I thought was strange. The moment I took the first bite, my nose and tongue told me the fish wasn't fresh. The broth was tasty with good ingredients, but it had no complexity. It was just a bunch of stuff heated up briefly together. We called the waiter over and I had the dish returned to the kitchen.

For a quick meal, I opted for the starter of braised meatballs, which come in a tomato sauce with goat cheese. The waitstaffer who delivered the dish declared it was feta, which it certainly was not. It's a substantial starter, with three good-sized meatballs. I found the meatballs had also been rolled in breadcrumbs, which gave them an odd texture as the mix was already quite loose from using a fair amount of filler (probably more breadcrumbs). But it was delivered quickly and easy to eat, which was what I wanted.

Although it's not on the menu, there was a hard cider available – Sonoma's Hatchet brand. It was tangy, and a nice accompaniment to the meal that cut down on some of the high salt in the meatball dish.

The service was cheerful, but not very professional. The whole experience was somewhat jarring after the smooth perfection of Auberge and Etoile. Market Restaurant is around the corner on St. Helena's Main St., which we visited February 2014, and although they have their flaws I think the food is better there than at Goose & Gander. 

We have yet to try Archetype, the re-purposed restaurant formerly known as French Blue, which is now managed by the excellent Solbar restaurant management. The former Solbar chef de cuisine Ryder Zetts has taken over the Archetype kitchen. We really enjoy Solbar, ranking it only slightly lower than Auberge, so we are looking forward to trying Archetype on our next trip.

Goose & Gander isn't a bad restaurant. But with all the competition in the area, we wouldn't bother coming back here. There are restaurants on our side of the Bay that do as well or better than this one. We don't need to drive two hours to eat at a "B-" level place.

Two people, lunch: four starters, one small plate, one hard cider, with tip was $91.