Though the sleepy town of St. Helena, Calif., is in the heart of wine country, its chief role in Northern California’s booming tourism industry is that of a drive-through. It is among several towns that one can unwittingly pass while driving around the region–unlike such destinations as Sonoma, 24 miles southwest, or Napa, 9 miles south. Which makes it all the more remarkable that an establishment in St. Helena–the Restaurant at Meadowood, helmed by chef Christopher Kostow–is one of just two restaurants in the western U.S. to hold three Michelin stars. (The other is the French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s nearby bastion of haute cuisine.) Even more remarkable: the Restaurant is quite possibly the only restaurant on the planet to have earned such an accolade without a menu.
Instead, Kostow crafts bespoke prix-fixe meals for each guest. If you make a reservation at the Restaurant, you’ll be asked what you eat, where else you’re dining nearby and why you’re visiting. Your answers determine your courses. (Though the Restaurant doesn’t advertise the practice, staff members Google each guest for clues to their culinary bent.) “If they ate at the Laundry for lunch, I’ll lighten it up,” says Kostow, 36. “And I’ll serve them different stuff than what’s going out to tables nearby, to create a sense of”–he makes popping motions with his hands–“lively excitement.”
Kostow speaks at a rapid clip, digressing (and cursing) freely on topics from Socrates (he was a philosophy major at Hamilton College) to In-N-Out Burger (he prefers Shake Shack). But when he is frowning over a dish, plating his food with tweezers, his focus is razor sharp. His subtle, region-specific style is evinced by, for example, a pair of canaps–an orb of savory carrot cake and a disc of dehydrated tomato–served atop leaf pressings from Meadowood’s on-site garden, followed by whipped yogurt with pickled plum. The final course: an array of mignardises representing stages in the life of a grape.
“The first part of a chef’s career is supernomadic,” says Kostow, who has cooked in kitchens across Europe and up and down the California coast. “From a creative point of view, once you say, ‘I’m going to cook from this place, I’m going to be as Napa-y as I can possibly be,’ only then do we really become good.”
Putting down roots is also good local business. Kostow intends to build a food destination around himself in St. Helena–just as Keller did down the road in Yountville 20 years ago, going from one three-star restaurant to an upscale empire of eateries, cookbooks and community engagement. However localized and personalized Kostow’s food may be, his ambitions are anything but small.
Kostow, the second of three boys born to an attorney and an elementary-school teacher, grew up in Highland Park, Ill., one of the suburban backdrops of John Hughes’ 1980s teen movies. After college he took a job shucking oysters at George’s at the Cove in San Diego, where he quickly rose to lead chef. In 2006, at age 30, after stints in Paris, Antibes and San Francisco, he became executive chef at Chez TJ in Mountain View, Calif., where he earned two Michelin stars. He jumped to the Restaurant in early 2008; two years later, he’d scored his Michelin hat trick.
“I can’t think of too many people who have done what he’s done so early,” says San Francisco chef Michael Mina. Keller, Kostow’s culinary forefather, takes a longer view: “Chris is someone who exemplifies the progression of American cuisine, who has great skills, a wonderful knowledge of what he’s doing and who he is.”
The Restaurant does a brisk business, filling its leather-rich, 44-seat dining room every night at $225 per person. In the next room–bracketed by sliding doors like a submarine air lock–is the pristine, tricked-out kitchen where Kostow presides over a two-dozen-member team for roughly 14 hours a day. He stands at the kitchen’s center, plating alongside his sous-chefs. “I’ve never worked at a restaurant where the chef takes everyone aside and asks, ‘How are you doing?'” says Kim Floresca, executive sous-chef. Sous-chef Alfonso “Poncho” Vasquez agrees, saying a personal connection with Kostow is “a requirement. I think it’s written in the bylaws somewhere.”
During service, though, Kostow is nobody’s pal. He pop-quizzes the fish cook on a dish’s components, and when his answer is incorrect, Kostow’s sour expression wilts him where he stands. When a newbie stationed at the wood-burning stove asks Floresca a question she’s just answered, Kostow snaps at him. But later he walks both offenders through a few techniques, a task traditionally delegated to the sous. “If you don’t have a relationship with that lowest guy, you’re f—ed,” Kostow says. “That’s where these chefs who get big also get lost. That cook only knows of them through their media, the books and the TV. They don’t really know the guy.” If you don’t know the guy, the logic goes, you’re not fully invested in executing his vision.
To visit the restaurant, you turn off Napa Valley’s central artery, Highway 29, which is home to many of the region’s–and the world’s–most renowned wineries. Then, after crossing the Napa River via a narrow, century-old stone bridge, you declare your intentions at the gate to Meadowood, a 250-acre resort. Only those dining at the Restaurant or staying at the hotel, where rooms start at $475, may enter.
So it’s startling when Kostow speaks of his desire to correct the Napa Valley’s reputation as merely “a playground for the rich,” in his words. “I mean, it is that,” he says, “but that’s not the whole story. When you have a concentration of wealth like you do here, historically what arises alongside that wealthy class is the artisan class. You need people to build these wineries, to design things, to make the wine, to make the food.”
Kostow has collaborated with olive growers, vinegar makers, woodworkers and the region’s artists on everything from custom oils to the coffee table in the Restaurant’s lounge. He enlists local ceramists to make the Restaurant’s china; with Kostow’s input, potter Lynn Mahon has created ovoid platters streaked with ash and flat black plates that resemble slabs of slate. Promoting local artisans will help put St. Helena on the map as a tourist destination in the valley, and so will an expanded menu of Kostow restaurants. He is in talks to open a casual restaurant near Meadowood and has designs on a barbecue spot nearby.
Kostow also has a firm grasp on the synergy of community relations and public relations. “We want the Restaurant to be like a city on the hill, to exemplify good things in the community,” he says. He requires every chef who cooks during Meadowood’s Twelve Days of Christmas event–a dozen guest-star dinners held in December, which have featured the likes of Masaharu Morimoto and Marcus Samuelsson–to speak to students at the nearby Culinary Institute of America.
Last year, Kostow broke ground on a one-acre garden at St. Helena Montessori. Alongside Kostow and his staff, the students (from preschoolers to adolescents) grow fruit, vegetables and grains and tend chickens, goats, beehives and wooden pens of future escargots. After harvest, they plan and eat a lunch at the Restaurant made from their bounty.
Kostow is impatient to transform the perception of the valley from elitist enclave to vibrant artisan haven cum locavore utopia: a city on a hill where Kostow is mayor and magistrate. “I want to do it all now. I want to do it all right,” he says. “I want to do these other restaurants, and I want to make changes to the existing restaurant.” He pauses, throwing his hands up. “And let’s have a baby!” he says, laughing. (Kostow’s wife Martina is due in February.)
But doing it all is done one plate at a time, and right now Kostow has both eyes trained on his food. This evening, a young couple from San Francisco sprang for the $500 seats at the chef’s counter. Kostow served most of the couple’s dishes himself: granola with sunchoke and sea lettuce, lily stuffed with spot prawn, a plane of poached pheasant. But it was a cook who arrived with their shabazi-spiced lamb, which was sauced tableside. Upon taking a bite, the woman burst into tears. “It’s just so beautiful,” she said.
Kostow glanced at her plate, took the sauce from the cook who had served them, approached the chef’s counter and spooned more onto their lamb. “He was too stingy with this,” he explained, before high-fiving the crying woman and returning to his post.
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