The Restaurant at Meadowood’s annual 12 Days of Christmas guest chef series is underway. Here at Inside Scoop, we’re reviving our own tradition of tracking each night through the chefs’ words and their food — with a little help from Bonjwing Lee, a.k.a. the Ulterior Epicure, who is responsible for the gorgeous photos above.
You can check out past years here: 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010.
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As is tradition, Christopher Kostow and the Restaurant at Meadowood took back their kitchen on the final night of the annual 12 Days guest chef series.
“To this day, my favorite day cooking every year is our night,” says Kostow. “You feel like you’re smarter because you just did 12 Days. We always do new dishes. We focus on what we do. The guests are almost the same every year.”
The 12 Days event may or may not continue next year — that’s a conversation Kostow and restaurant director Nathaniel Dorn seem to have every year — but now that it has become such a global thing (see the Chronicle’s big picture view of the event here),
“I think this restaurant and the work we do has the capacity to remind the people who live here how nice this place is,” Kostow says of Napa Valley. “I think people root for us. I really think people root us, the work we do in the community and the relationships we’ve developed, supporting small purveyors.”
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Day Twelve of the
Twelve Days of Christmas
December 20, 2014
ground aji beet caviar
rye crumpet
samp grits dungeness crab
urchin coastal grasses
romanesco cuttings hawayej
‘peking’ squab elderberry pumpkin plum-skin shiso
mangalitsa pork wakame
cabbage sunchoke
cow’s milk cheese aged in spruce
last year’s persimmons
date cream
rancho chimiles walnut oil
pear cooked in pomace
acorn rosemary
marron glacé
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Jean-Philippe Fichet “Le Tesson” Meursault 2010
Bond “Vecina” 2004
Bond “Melbury” 2005
Bond “Pluribus” 2005
Bond “Quella” 2009
Previously:
· Day One: Matthew Orlando, Amass (Copenhagen)
· Day Two: Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli of Frankies Spuntino (Brooklyn)
· Day Three: Kobe Desramaults, In De Wulf (Dranouter)
· Day Four: Alexandre Gauthier, La Grenouillère (La Madelaine sous Montreuil)
· Day Five: Blaine Wetzel, The Willows Inn (Lummi Island)
· Day Six: Joshua McFadden, Ava Gene’s (Portland)
· Day Seven: Virgilio Martinez, Central (Lima)
· Day Eight: Grant Achatz, Alinea (Chicago)
· Day Nine: Corey Lee, Benu (San Francisco)
· Day Ten: Esben Holmboe Bang, Maaemo (Oslo)
· Day Eleven: Ignacio Mattos, Estela (New York City)