A NEW DESTINATION BLOOMS IN WINE COUNTRY.
Chris Cosentino boldly reinvents fine dining at Acacia House
What does luxury look like today in restaurants?
The answer lies in Acacia House in the newly opened Las Alcobas in St. Helena. The 68-room hotel is spread over three buildings including the centerpiece: a white Colonial Revival mansion built in 1907 that houses the restaurant run by Chris Cosentino as well as six guest rooms upstairs.
Diners walk through the expansive wraparound porch and into a lounge and the 50seat restaurant, which blends modern and traditional touches in a practically all-gray color scheme that plays out on the floors, walls and tabletops. Once you are seated, the luxury can be seen and felt in the heft of the weighted flatware and the thinness of the glassware. The staff has revived a centuryold tradition of sweeping crumbs off the table between courses with a tiny silver bristle broom and dust pan.
The service staff maintains a hospitable tone, channeling what you might see if you were a guest in a grand house. Casually dressed in pants, shirt and apron, the staff is well-trained in the ways of fine dining; if you ask for something, the reply will be “of course, sir” or “right away, sir.” Still their demeanor stops short of seeming obsequious.
At first it seemed surprising that the owner, who also opened a resort in Mexico City, tapped Chris Cosentino and his partner Oliver Wharton to run a kitchen that also provides food for room service and the spa. Cosentino has an independent streak; he built his reputation on bold rustic cooking at Cockscomb restaurant in San Francisco where diners can share a pig’s head, beef heart tartare and duck-fat cauliflower. It’s the type of menu that would make a proper Edwardian woman clutch her pearls.
Yet at Acacia House, Cosentino strategically blends his bold style with a more refined approach.
He gives a nod to his meatcentric background in such dishes as lamb tartare ($16), balanced with a powerful dose of mint and cumin with a swipe of green harrisa that wraps halfway around the serving bowl. The loosely formed patty is partly covered with crackers made of chickpeas. He also adds his signature powerful punch to hamachi crudo ($18) set on a beautiful mosaic of watercress and basil oil, strawberry puree and rosé wine vinegar. Thin rounds of serrano chiles on each of the five slices of raw fish make a diner sit up and notice.
One night Cosentino offered a whole, meaty kampachi collar ($20) thickly strewn with toasted chiles, fried basil and whole green peppercorns. Fish collar is one of my favorite things because the meat is always moist and mild, but he takes the dish to another level.
Alternately he shows refinement in the chilled melon soup ($14), a much-needed refreshment on 100-degree summer days. Waiters present the bowl centered with meticulous dices of cantaloupe, crisp prosciutto and prosciutto snow made from dehydrated fat. They then bring a copper pitcher on a plate ringed by herbs and pour on the clear cold broth, displacing the pre-set ingredients and causing golden drops of olive oil to float in jewel-like bubbles to the top.
One of the most memorable dishes was also the most straightforward: a snack of crudités ($15) arranged over a mound of crushed ice and served with a bowl of Tuscan bean pesto. It was as if the chef went through the farmers’ market and picked up a bit of everything: baby turnips no bigger than a thumbnail with all the leaves attached, frilly leaves of lettuce planted vertically in the ice mound, sugar snap peas, several kinds of carrots, radishes, red bell peppers, purple and white cauliflower, baby fennel, and green beans.
The leaves were beaded with water as if picked at first light, and the sauce added the contrasting creamy and assertive elements.
In another starter he combines radishes and uni ($20). The whole radishes, many also with their leaves left intact, are planted in a circle of uni butter. Whole lobes of the seafood and spikes of seabeans are interspersed between the vegetables, making a dramatic and original combination.
He adds touches of luxury in unusual places. On top of the crispy fried Iberico pork schnitzel main course ($49), Cosentino piles a melange of watercress and English and sugar
snap peas with a gossamer coating of ranch dressing — then nestles a heaping tablespoonful of black caviar in the middle. I got into a debate with another diner as to whether the caviar was wasted in the midst of the breaded meat and tangy sauce (I thought it was), but we agreed that it dramatically showcased Cosentino’s clever mashup of styles.
Roasted Cornish game hen ($36) is made into a roulade, wrapped in pancetta and precisely sliced into four thick medallions. Instead of serving a slab of beef as he would at Cockscomb, here a deeply flavored, charred Kobe rib eye ($52) is sliced into four pieces and fanned over a rectangle of gratin potatoes and sauteed spinach with a restrained pool of bone marrow Bordelaise studded with green peppercorns. The presentation is crowned with thick rings of lightly grilled onions and roasted jalapeños, yet another illustration of the carefully orchestrated theme.
Desserts (all $12) created by Curtis Cameron, who also produces all the breads, are completely thought-out, the type of combinations you’d find at the French Laundry or Manresa.
The dessert that will probably forever be on the menu is his reinvention of eclairs. Cameron’s are square at the ends rather than rounded. Every plate includes three, each with a different filling — most recently blueberry cheesecake; brown butter, bourbon and peach; and chocolate, coconut and almonds.
Other desserts include a chocolate bar with hazelnuts, crumbles of pretzels, root beer caramel and shards of crisp toasted meringue; and a much more expected but no less alluring combination of roasted strawberries in a pastry crust with toasted almond ice cream.
Like the food, the wine list put together by Zoe Hankins highlights a local approach. Several producers are called out in the front. With the price of the food and the wealth of the clientele, this could be an opportunity to pad markups. That’s not the case here; it’s clear the hotel wants to appeal to locals. The list includes some well-chosen bottles in the $30 range, hard-to-find wines such as the 2015 Stony Hill White Riesling for $50, and my favorite rosé, Robert Sinskey Vin Gris, for $60. If you can find it at retail it would sell for around $30.
There’s also a full bar, and I highly recommend the Las Alcobas margarita ($15), perfected at the sister hotel in Mexico City. It’s served in a stemmed glass and has a pleasant boozy kick with the right balance of sweetness. A salty slick of foam on top elegantly replaces the need for a salted rim.
It’s not easy to bring so many diverse elements together in a hotel setting and to successfully appeal to a wider audience, but Cosentino and Wharton have woven it all together. All the elements combine to create a very modern restaurant that embraces everything we love about Napa Valley.