The French Laundry Restaurant Review
6640 Washington St. (Creek St.) 
Send to Phone
Yountville, CA 94599
707-944-2380 | Make Restaurant Reservations | Menu
The French Laundry Restaurant is one of our 2012
| Top 10 Napa/Sonoma (CA) Food Rating Restaurants
| Top 10 Napa/Sonoma (CA) Romantic Restaurants
| Top 10 Napa/Sonoma (CA) Wine List Restaurants
| Top 10 Napa/Sonoma (CA) Special Occasion Restaurants
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• The French Laundry is one of our Top 10 Molecular Restaurants in the U.S.
Go behind the scenes of The French Laundry restaurant! Watch our exclusive interview with chef Thomas Keller.Watch our exclusive interview with chef Thomas Keller at The French Laundry on GAYOT.com's YouTube Channel at the 28th American Wine & Food Festival• Read a profile of chef Thomas Keller and check out our review of his The French Laundry Cookbook.
Cuisine
Open
Lunch Fri.-Sun., Dinner nightlyFeatures
- View
- Romantic setting
- Private room(s)
- Reservations required
- Outdoor dining
- Parking lot
- Jackets required
Wine
Great Wine List* Click here for rating key
 There are few restaurants where dining inspires a pilgrimage. The French Laundry’s vortex compels zealots from around the world. Many document their odyssey here be it by snapshot or blog, relaying every detail from the hard-to-score reservation, to the journey beyond the blue door. Each bite is recalled in slo-mo detail to those who live to hear about it and sigh, anticipating their own someday passage into culinary adulthood. The wizardry unfolds inside chef-owner Thomas Keller’s understated French country sanctum where nine-course prix-fixe meals are executed in Harry Potter-like fashion --- one wonders if the perfect execution isn’t magic? Timothy Hollingsworth is the chef de cuisine. Behold the “oysters and pearls,” sabayon of pearl tapioca with Island Creek oysters and white sturgeon caviar. Red snapper belly “en escabèche” pairs with French Laundry garden fennel and olives, while Elysian Fields Farm “côte d’agneau” is accompanied by panisse, “caponata” and artichoke. Desserts have included “pecan pie” with verjus-poached honey pears and ice cream flavored with grains of paradise; and buttermilk sherbet and Marcona almond “waffle.” The cheese cart makes a detour; instead, the cheese course is composed and presented in the same labor-intensive fashion as the rest of the meal. The wine list is appropriately extensive. Servers have telepathic powers; they are intuitive, scrupulously precise and deliberately paced, allowing you to soak in the three or four hour experience that, alas, seems to vanish all too soon.
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