The French Laundry

Address 6640 Washington Street, Yountville
Opening Hours Dinner nightly; lunch Friday–Sunday
Admission Set menu, several hundred dollars per person, service included

Three Michelin stars, the highest restaurant grade in the country, and consistently on every short list of the world's best restaurants — The French Laundry is the reason Yountville is on the global food map. Thomas Keller's tasting menu runs nine courses, sometimes more, and changes constantly: a signature is the salmon "cornet" served as an amuse, deliberately small to begin in lightness rather than weight.

Reservations open exactly two months in advance via the Tock platform, at 10am Pacific, and disappear within seconds. A jacket is required for men. The garden across Washington Street supplies a fair share of the produce and is open to the public to walk through. Expect a four-hour meal and a bill that will surprise no one.

eating out restaurant fine dining
A story
Thomas Keller bought the failing restaurant in 1994 after a stretch of his own career he later described as a long crawl through bad jobs. He paid for the down payment with cheques scraped together from forty-seven friends and investors. The building was originally a French steam laundry built in 1900, hence the name.