🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <b11icd$bgg$1@machaut.medieval.org>, Todd Michel McComb
<mccomb@medieval.org> wrote:

> In article <b11gel$p59$1@agate.berkeley.edu>,
> D. Gerasimatos <dim@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
> >So what is the allure?  It's a good restaurant, but not distinguished
> >in any way.
> 
> We particularly like their menu, and aren't alone.  When we've had
> "best Napa restaurant" discussions, Bistro Jeanty has been getting
> some votes, so we aren't alone.  Maybe LA people have different
> preferences.

Each time I go back to Napa, it's more crowded with tourists and
tourist trap shops. (I go about every couple of years...probably less
often now that the transformation to theme park has progressed so far.)

This last time we drove as far as Calistoga looking for a value meal.
Ended up paying $15 each for burgers in a "tres rustic" converted
barn.It was a relief to head past the petrified forest and get over to
Santa Rosa, a semi-real town.

Napa in the mid-70s was a fun place to visit. Wine tasting, funky
stores, and uncrowded country roads. Today, traffic jams even in
mid-week. And most of the stores and shops look artificially "quaint."

I read an interesting book about the situation in Napa: "The Far Side
of Eden," by Conaway. Here's a telling anecdote: a woman from the East
Coast took her huge divorce settlement and built a hillside chateau so
she could fulfill her dream of raising goats and making "chevre" for
the Napa Valley restaurants. (No doubt she has plenty of serfs to do
the actual goat raising and cheese-making.) 

This is the world of boutique wineries, dot commers pressing olives,
and divorcees paying ten million dollars to be able to sell $734 worth
of chevre to Bistro Jeanty.

Why doesn't Disney just buy the entire valley, and the Napa Train, and
rename it Main Street, Walt Disney's Napa California Adventure?

--Tim May