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French Laundry Restaurant: Can’t Get A Table

A better title for this post might be: “French Laundry: Jumping Through Hoops To Get A Table.”

So, I’m on the phone with French Laundry – the best restaurant in Napa Valley and the only one in the Bay Area of California that managed to get 3 Michelin stars.

I am trying to make a dinner reservation for three weeks from today. The polite reservationist seems to chuckle a little at my request before she politely says, “I’m sorry, we are fully booked for that night”. I try the following night. No. Maybe lunch on that weekend? She coldly assures me that the French Laundry is fully booked, for lunch and dinner, throughout the next two months. “Would you like to get on our waiting list?”

I research a little and find out that to get a table at the French Laundry, you would need to make a reservation two months in advance and even then chances are you won’t get through to a reservationist in time to place your reservation (“you want a table at 6:30pm? Sorry, all we have left for that night is 9pm). I also learn that when the French Laundry was still accepting walk-in reservations, people actually drove 60 miles to the restaurant just to make a reservation.

Is it really worth it? Is the experience THAT good? I’ve eaten at great restaurants before, including 3 Michelin stars restaurants in France. I regularly dine at the very upscale Gary Danko in San Francisco (only 1 Michelin star, which amazed many patrons) and willingly jump through their reservation hoops, a pre-requisite to get a table there. But last time we went to Danko, my first course was a little too salty and the service, though attentive and polite, was a little rushed.

Frustrated with my French Laundry experience, I logged on to Opentable and found out that there are quite a few highly rated restaurants in Napa Valley that accept online reservations. Booking a table at one of those restaurants is a simple, straightforward process.

So for our next Napa getaway, I am going with a few of those. I heard someone say once that it’s better to dine at a 2-star restaurant on its way up than at a 3-star restaurant on its way down. For now, I am sticking with the talented chefs that are still working their way to the top.

Photo by katie cowden

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