Terra : Cooking from the Heart of Napa Valley (9780307815323)
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We still remember when we first walked up to the century-old fieldstone building with its arching French windows and graceful iron lanterns. It literally beckoned us in, bewitching us with its rustic warmth, European sophistication, and genuine antique feel. It was love at first sight—we were sold. So on September 26, 1988, we took over as the owners of the operational yet unnamed restaurant. It went so fast we didn’t have time to overthink what we were doing.
In a stroke of good luck, no doubt aided by the speed with which the deal was done, we acquired the corporation that owned the restaurant. This meant that the restaurant could continue to run without us having to do the usual paperwork required by governmental agencies and suppliers for a start-up. How we were going to run a restaurant from Los Angeles while we got organized and Hiro worked for Wolf for at least another month was a mystery. Has someone ever done something so wonderful for you that you didn’t know what to say? That was how we felt when Barbara Neyers offered to take care of things for us in the interim. She kept the restaurant running with the old menu still in place, and I flew up on weekends to work and learn how she did things. After a raucous Halloween party (a tradition we brought with us), we led the moving van to our new life in Napa Valley.
We like to joke that the day we walked into the kitchen, Hiro took the sauté pan out of the cook’s hand in mid-toss and finished the dish. It certainly felt like that. We slowly changed the menu over the next couple of days and changed the name two weeks after that. I think if we had ever had kids, they still wouldn’t be named—it’s such an overwhelming responsibility. Finally, after considering a spate of names, we took a cue from our surroundings and settled on Terra. It evoked the Italian influence of the valley and, quite simply, the earth that we owe our inspiration to.
Probably the most daunting task was writing that first menu. We wanted to put everything we had talked about, tasted, and learned into it. The project became bigger than anything we had done before. Hiro had the good sense not to overextend himself and to let me do so either. As a result, the first menus we wrote were smaller than the one we offer now. It’s usually the other way around.
Hiro and I had never run the front of a restaurant, done bookkeeeping, or used a computer (Hiro still can’t). Yet here we were with a restaurant that kept all its accounts in a computer we inherited with the business and a reservation book filled with the names of local customers. We did have one thing going for us: the generous support of family and friends. I grew up in Napa Valley (my family owned Stags’ Leap Winery), so we had plenty of people coming by to wish us well, to eat, and to hope along with us. One night, business was ridiculously quiet when two local vintners, Bob Long and Bob Pecota, came in for dinner. They saw that there were only two other tables seated and told us to keep our spirits high, not to worry, and that everything would be okay. I think one of them had a crystal ball in his hip pocket.
For the first couple of years, we did everything ourselves, from fixing the plumbing to painting the sign hanging out front. (Some things we did better than others—after two disastrous attempts to paint our sign, we resigned ourselves to having no sign at all.) Hiro asked Jim Neal, a co-worker from Los Angeles, if he wanted to move up to Napa and be our sous chef. What we lacked in business experience we made up for with opinions. After dining all over Europe and Japan and eating our way through California and the U.S., we had learned what we wanted in service. We wanted a warm, comfortable environment where our customers could feel like our invited dinner guests without sacrificing the experience of a fine dining restaurant.
One of the changes we made early on was the size of the tables and the number of seats. We didn’t want to lose seats, but the tables we inherited were really small for serious diners. We wanted our guests to leave Terra basking in the afterglow of an evening filled with great food and delicious wine shared with the good company they came with—not with the folks sitting nearby. Our ultimate goal was to have guests tell us that dinner at Terra was everything they had hoped it would be. That’s a tall order when you consider that the local clientele and the visitors who come from all over the world have high expectations!
Being in Napa has given us the opportunity to work closely with the growers and producers of some of the best quality, hand-picked foods that are the cornerstone of our cooking. Over the years, these business relationships have grown into friendships that make our work all the more enjoyable. Because our community is small and relatively centralized, we have the luxury of going to many suppliers for foods, even if they only produce one or two items.
Our suppliers are often the first to show us exciting new offerings, whether newly available heirloom tomatoes or delicate greens. When this happens, we’re careful to get to know the ingredient before we put it on the plate. Flavor evolution does not occur just because a new ingredient is available, but because you know how to use it. Hiro’s food is characterized by its layers of flavors and textures. He believes this multidimensional quality lends each dish a depth that astounds with every bite, each forkful revealing yet another facet. This is easier to achieve with appetizers, which tend to be small yet can pack a powerful punch. Main courses present more of a challenge, since an intense flavor wouldn’t be as successful in a larger portion, but at the same time you don’t want the dish to be conservative or boring. The balance of these two courses, finished by dessert, is what Hiro strives to create each night.
Once Terra was established, the critics and food writers all wanted a two-word description for our cuisine. Breaking one of the basic restaurant marketing rules, we told them it was southern French and northern Italian in style with a Japanese sensibility. The usual response was silence, then, “But what kind of food is it?” Then we’d give the longer answer. We’re classically trained in French and Italian cooking and apply those culinary techniques to what we create at Terra. Napa Valley shares much of the climate and vegetation of France and Italy, as well as an appreciation for many of the same foods, so the French and Italian influence makes sense. Put more simply, every dish we make is a reflection of our experiences, both personal and professional. We don’t put dishes on the menu just because we think they would be popular. Because of that guideline you won’t find chicken served at Terra. We think chicken is mostly unremarkable and believe that people eat it throughout the week and want something they don’t eat at home when they go out for a nice meal. We especially like to prepare offal and other less common rustic foods. We worry that as Americans cook less at home and have more money to spend on expensive cuts of meat, such staples from the past will be eradicated from the country’s cuisine. That’s why you’ll find tripe and sweetbreads on our menu alongside goat cheese ravioli and fried rock shrimp, as we continue our mission to reconnect diners with foods that have unfairly fallen out of favor over the years.
In many restaurants you can’t make substitutions or special requests. Chalk it up to our Spago roots, but we find this ridiculous. Just because a dish isn’t on our menu doesn’t mean it’s not worth cooking. We know great cooks can cook anything and it will be memorable. So at Terra, the guests never get that no-substitutes treatment. And we don’t have hard-and-fast rules about what is appropriate for each course either. If you want to order three appetizers instead of a main entrée, bon appétit!
When it comes to wine, we tell everyone to drink what they like and don’t be afraid to try something different. We spend a lot of time trying to find less common varietals. There are countless bottles of Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet to choose from. What about trying a Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Aligote, Pinor Noir, Syrah, Zinfandel, Mouvedre, or Sangiovese, among others? There are some unforgettable wine combinations, like Foie Gras and Sauterne, Lamb and Petite Syrah, Mussel Saffron Soup and Chardonnay. But what if you can’t drink two bottles or you just feel like one wine? Or you’ve ordered a variety of dishes and one wine won’t match all the different ingredients and flavors? To encourage diners to make the most of their time with us, we
offer an array of by-the-glass selections and love to help our guests negotiate the list. We love to dine this way, and know it makes for a more enjoyable evening. At the other end of the spectrum are the special wine dinners we do for customers when they have an extraordinary wine to drink. We have done such dinners for groups as small as four and as large as 500. One of our favorite guests, the Duckhorns, regularly ask us to do a special duck dinner to go with their vineyard’s remarkable Merlots and Cabernets. These dinners are fun and challenging, and we usually get to try the wine before the dinner—an invitation we never refuse.
We hope that what sets us apart is that we take what we do very seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. The wait staff and the kitchen staff like each other and approach their work with the same ethic and sense of humor we do. Then there are the customers who have been dining with us for so long that they feel like part of the operation. Sure, we have the usual surprises and upsets that come with running a fine dining restaurant in a destination locale, but we feel very lucky to be living this life. We cook from our hearts. We consider Terra an extension of our home, and each patron a friend coming over for dinner. Our cooking is a reflection of who we are—our heritages, our travels, our memories, and our own tastes. Each dish contains traces of Hiro’s Japanese ancestry and his classical French and Italian training, plus the flavors of my Lebanese and European background and Napa Valley roots. Each of these components is fundamental to the food we prepare, and we hope that as you make our recipes you’ll taste our history in them.
A Day in Our Life at Terra
After people hear how Hiro and I ended up together in Napa Valley, they then want to know what it’s like running Terra day in and day out. We thought a fresh set of eyes would probably do a better job of seeing all the things that go on here, so we asked Carol Doumani, who is a writer and also my aunt, to visit as an observer. To give you a glimpse of our lives, of how the day (and night) unfolds six days a week, 300 days a year, at our restaurant, here is Carol’s account:
4:30 A.M. (yes, it really begins this early!)
I arrived at Terra bleary-eyed, knowing that one person is already inside and has started her busy day. The pastry chef, Susan, likes to work when she can be the only person in the kitchen, when the fragrance of sizzling garlic and the cacophony of pots and pans that comes from a kitchen full of cooks are absent, and all of the ovens and counters are hers alone.
As the front door swings open, I am enveloped by the intoxicating fragrance of sweet pastry crust, earthy yeast, and the heady aromas of fruit, almond, vanilla, and chocolate baking in the oven. Though the lights are out in Terra’s dining room, with the help of the warm glow emanating from the kitchen, I can see that all the tables are set, ready and waiting for the first seating, still some twelve hours away. Through the arched windows of the fieldstone façade, dawn breaks in pinks and purples across the Valley, and I pause to think: This feast of sights and smells just might be worth getting up for.
Susan welcomes me into the kitchen with a smile, but no handshake, which, under the circumstances, is a good thing because she’s up to her elbows in a huge bowl of dough. On the counter are peaches, nectarines, and plums, bowls of finely chopped nuts, and more butter than I’ve ever seen assembled in one place. Watching her make the dozens of elements that will be assembled into six different desserts for the evening menu is like getting a crash course in the art and science of pastry from a choreographer. She rolls out dough, mixes batters, peels, slices, and sautés fruit, juggling baking sheets between refrigerator and oven, all in what appears to be a carefully rehearsed sequence of dance steps.
Lined up on the trays are the results of her work: twenty apple tarts, fourteen peach crostata, a battery of chocolate mousselines, a few dozen deftly shaped brandy snap tubes to hold the orange risotto (which she has also whipped up), and too many other sauces, cookies, shells, and candies to count. Four hours later, I congratulate myself for exercising remarkable restraint, having sampled only a few of that day’s offerings when the temptation was to indulge in a dozen desserts, one taste at a time.
9:00 A.M.
Manny, the head prep cook, arrives through the back door, backlit by the morning sun, which has now climbed its way up the sky. It’s a spectacularly clear Napa Valley day, and the small-town streets of St. Helena are still quiet—except, that is, for the delivery truck that’s pulling up.
Manny checks in case after case of water, wine, and beer (rest assured, the Budweiser is strictly for the staff—everyone gets a glass of wine or a beer after their shift, and the King of Beers has its devotees).
An old Ford truck pulls up in front of the restaurant, and Terra’s gardener, Christy Thollander, steps out. She’s wearing overalls and a straw hat and carrying a flat of brilliant blue verbena to augment what is already blooming in the flower-beds outside the entrance. Christy’s father, Earl, is a well-known California artist, who coincidentally painted the first piece of art Lissa ever bought when she was sixteen years old—a picture of a moon over a rustic cabin. It’s amazing how almost every person involved with the restaurant is connected to Hiro and Lissa in some other way. This kind of history is what gives the place so much of its soul and makes Terra a fixture in the community rather than just a good restaurant. It’s one of those rare enterprises that embodies a way of life for everyone involved.
The sun is beating down now, and Christy liberally waters the flowerbeds as she talks about the four beds in the restaurant’s garden, two of flowers and two of herbs. Right now, the stunning flowerbeds are awash with sunflowers that are easily six feet tall, and, at their base, with blue verbena, gerbera daisies, and sweet William. The herb beds are lush with rosemary, Thai basil, chives, rose geranium, and pineapple sage. Christy picks off a pale green leaf, rubs it between her hands, and holds it out for me to smell. It really does smell like pineapple.
11:00 A.M.
By the time Hiro and Lissa arrive, there are cases and cartons stacked in an organized jumble everywhere they will possibly fit. They come from vendors all over the Valley, and as far away as San Francisco, and they keep pouring in. Manny has checked in some of them—beverages, paper goods, and dry goods—but the produce is awaiting Hiro’s discriminating eye before it’s unpacked, examined, and approved.
Hiro says a quick hello and heads into the kitchen. He’s in his white chef’s jacket and baggy chef’s pants, with his hair pulled into a tight knot at the back of his head. His warm, relaxed manner and obvious eagerness to begin the day sets the tone. After twelve years of the same routine, you’d think that he would have grown weary from twelve to fourteen hours a day, six days a week, in the kitchen. But Hiro is in his element at Terra. This is where he wants to be. This is where his heart is. He sets out his knives on the stainless steel counter, ready to work.
Lissa heads for the dining room, ready to get on with the business of the day. Her arms are full of notebooks and mail, and a large bag is slung over her shoulder. She drops everything on the nearest table and heads for the espresso machine. I peek inside the bag and see that it’s filled with handmade pottery sugar bowls. Moments later, double latte in hand, Lissa sets up shop at a table near the front door, where she will work well into the afternoon. I ask her about the sugar bowls, and she tells me that throwing pots is one of her hobbies, and that every so often she makes new sugar bowls and plates for the restaurant. “We wanted handmade plates but couldn’t find any we liked, so I thought, well, maybe I can make them,” she explains, as she picks up the phone to answer her first call of the day.
It’s a travel agent inquiring about their next guest-chef engagement (Hiro and Lissa are invited all over the world to cook), and Lissa makes the arrangements. The next call is from Lissa’s mentor and friend Nancy Silverton at Campanile and La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles. She wants to reserve a table for one of her chefs who will be in the Valley next Saturday. The restaurant is completely booked, but of course Lissa says yes. She can always figure somethin
g out.
11:30 A.M.
Watching Hiro at work is truly impressive. Many chef-owners in his position spend their days orchestrating the work, but not Hiro. There he is chopping carrots for the stock, a task the least-trained prep cook could be doing. With a shrug, he explains that there aren’t more important things he ought to be attending to—that everything is important.
Meanwhile, Manny whirls into action. He dumps a case of baby artichokes on the counter, and deftly starts cleaning them with a paring knife. I can’t help staring at the pile, knowing that it would take a novice all morning and then some to work their way through that stack. Ten minutes later, Manny’s on to the tomatoes, peeling, seeding, and dicing them into perfect concassée. He then turns his attention to several cases of local wild mushrooms, which he cleans and slices.
The pace in the kitchen begins to pick up. John, the sous chef, arrives, and he and Hiro run through the menu and the quantities of each dish they’ll be preparing tonight. Sea bass sold well the night before—forty portions out of 162 dinners served—and today is Friday, so they’re betting on selling even more fish.
Barney from Forni Brown Produce calls to tell Hiro that he’ll be replacing the Lollo Rossa lettuce with red oak, since the Lollo Rossa is looking a little peaked. As he hands Lissa the phone, Hiro laughs and says, “Barney says the red oak is so fresh it doesn’t even know it was picked yet.” Now it’s Lissa’s turn to talk with Barney, whom she affectionately calls Captain Gossip. They catch up on all the news, following their golden rule: no bad news, just the good stuff.
12:00 NOON
The kitchen is humming. And so is Hiro. Stocks are simmering on the ten-burner stove, along with beets, sweetbreads, and white beans. John slices smoked salmon and covers each carefully prepared plate with plastic wrap. Manny asks Hiro how he wants the corn prepped, and keeps checking in deliveries as they arrive.