
Mange to Basta! My Pasta Freska Experience.
Formal attire french laundry restaurant series#

The building is a small two storey stone and wooden structure that blends into its surroundings and can be easy to miss. The French Laundry is located on the main street of Yountville, a tiny town in Napa Valley with a population of a few thousand people. Battle strategy: don’t eat during the day if you can or only enough to take the edge off, drink lots of fluids (tea is great), wear formal but comfortable clothes. From talking to them and others, and much reading on the Internet, I had an idea of what to expect. We joined two other friends there for dinner at the beginning of February, both of whom had been there before. Then a few months ago, the opportunity presented itself and my husband and I jumped on it. But actually dining at the restaurant felt like something out of reach. Eventually I realized what the French Laundry was, bought the book, read it cover to cover, and even cooked from it. And then I walked away, thinking there was no way a book like that would ever be practical. For the next half hour I pored over its pages, gawking at the beautiful photographs of dishes that were so different than anything I’d seen before. Wait, a cookbook that didn’t show food on the cover? Huh.

Then the title puzzled me, ‘The French Laundry Cookbook’. An elegantly folded napkin neatly held together by a wooden clothespin placed on a plate against a white background. The minimalist cover was what caught my eye. It was years ago, while browsing the book aisle, that I came across a large tome in the cookbook section. Since this is the least dressy of the dress codes, its open to interpretation, but Id probably avoid wearing head-to-toe activewear.

In general, going out to eat means dressing a touch more elevated than something youd be wearing to cook dinner at home.
Formal attire french laundry restaurant code#
Costco is not something that one would normally think of as being associated with The French Laundry but it was there that I had my first encounter with the famous restaurant. What to Avoid: A casual dress code at a restaurant is honestly a little vague.
