The legions of hopefuls squatting online to score seats at the French Laundry are a formidable group. You might not be near them, but you can feel them palpably in the tense seconds between the opening of reservations and the quick slamming of the gates as you realize every table for a month has just been snapped up.
The nearly 30-year-old, three-Michelin-starred restaurant — for years, the only starred restaurant in the United States — continues to be one of the hottest in the American restaurant scene, releasing tables at 10 a.m. sharp on the first of every month. You can’t simply go to the restaurant; you have to work hard for the privilege of spending $350 on dinner.
I secured my first visit pre-pandemic somewhat normally by putting my (fake) name on the waiting list for just about every date I could access on Tock, the reservations website favored by high-end restaurants. Later, in the comments section of a now-defunct blog post, I scored my second visit in early 2020 from a person who couldn’t make their date. (On Tock, these reservations are like concert tickets: transferable but not refundable.)
After the pandemic hit, grabbing a seat became noticeably harder. So I began my descent into the darkness: the online black market for French Laundry tickets.
I scoured third-party websites like Facebook and Reddit, where there are pages (including a private 11,000-member group) devoted to buying and selling French Laundry reservations. On the Wild West of Reddit, nearly every two-person reservation being sold includes a finder’s fee of about $300 on top of the $700 that the meals actually cost. And from how quickly those tickets vanish, that fee clearly isn’t too high.
Finally, I got in by connecting with a couple on Reddit looking to share their four-top. I was essentially playing roulette here, in the hope that my dining companions wouldn’t be too awkward (and vice versa). Ultimately, it was fine — even if I was intruding on a stranger’s 10th wedding anniversary dinner. In the Facebook group, many people get into the restaurant this way, with the thought that any social discomfort is a small price to pay to get into the club.
All of that lead-up only heightens expectations, and that’s a lot for one restaurant to carry — even one as lauded as the French Laundry.
In the French Laundry reservations Facebook group, questioning whether the experience is worth it amounts to sacrilege — or at least, accusations of sour grapes because of the questioner’s inability to get a reservation. Fortunately for you, I don’t mind committing a bit of sacrilege now and then in the pursuit of honesty.
A pivotal restaurant in the history of American cuisine and a symbol of fine dining’s evolution away from its Europhilic roots, facets of the French Laundry experience seem geared to upend convention, albeit in a very transparently American way. And it’s become even more casual in recent years.
The pandemic has left marks on the restaurant, including new outdoor tables in the green courtyard and a complete abandonment of the dress code, which once famously required men to wear jackets throughout dinner. While the dining room used to be silent before the 2018 renovation, the soundtrack became progressively poppier during my visits, culminating in a “Chef’s workout” playlist of Taylor Swift, the Goo Goo Dolls and the Plain White T’s.
Yet the menus I had on my three visits came off like the kitchen, led by longtime chef de cuisine David Breeden, was playing it safe.
The French Laundry’s quotation-heavy menu is built around the culinary wink: post-modern takes on recognizable American and European dishes that unleashed a wave of copycat ideas.
There are moments when the restaurant’s cleverness hits, like in its simple but charming amuse bouche of “Ritz” cheese sandwich crackers stuffed with a spot-on, semiprocessed mush of Cabot cheddar. Then there was a delightful broccoli parfait from one night’s vegetarian menu, with distinct layers of verdant pureed broccoli, thickened caramelized onion “consommé” and Parmesan cream served in an adorable sundae glass. And a quietly marvelous, ruby-tinted slice of duck breast transformed into a stained glass-like terrine by a firm layer of spinach stuffed under the skin.
A typical meal here opens with Keller’s famous ice cream cone lookalikes, sesame tuiles filled with red onion and crème fraîche and crowned with salmon tartare. The 28-year-old dish was recently updated for the first time in years with a fresh coat of toasted seeds: It’s an everything bagel thing now. Despite the refresh, it felt tired for 2022, when everything bagel ice cream (wd-50, New York), everything pizza (Alta Strada, Washington, D.C.) and everything croissants (Walmart) have long since disappeared from our cultural rearview mirrors. Anyone who’s purchased a shaker of everything bagel spice from Trader Joe’s is already well-versed in the art of bagelfication.
It may just be one dish, but that lack of surprise is important: The average diner has to work incredibly hard — on a material level, to accumulate the wealth necessary to dine here, and on a social capital level, to actually make the reservation — to eat at the French Laundry. In return, the restaurant provides you with a sense that you, and the experience you’re having, are special.
On my first visit, Keller recognized me despite my use of a pseudonym. He shaved truffles over my pasta by hand, walked me through the wine cellar, sent out a glass bong filled with a superb mushroom consommé, and in the end, tried to push free cigars onto me and my dining companion. (We declined.) I was in the club.
Once you’re in the club, you want to stay in it, which is why it’s hard to admit when something doesn’t work.
There were dishes that were so disappointing that I was worried that I did something wrong: a $125 truffle macaroni and cheese supplement where hard, hand-cut noodles swam in a watery Parmesan “mousseline”; a Norwegian king crab “galette” with the pasty hybrid texture of a cheap fish ball and a Starbucks egg bite; and salads, like a pinch of bitter greens dressed with a pureed sunchoke vinaigrette, that were unremarkable and bland.
Even the dessert course, served as a bonanza of small, plated confections and pastries, seemed to lack a spark in my later visits. Desserts can and should be over-the-top at a place like this. On my second visit, I was sent into a laughing fit by a pastry take on the Almond Joy candy bar that included “Almond Joy” written on the plate in impeccable chocolate calligraphy. There was an overwhelming abundance of treats on the table: Keller’s famous “coffee and doughnuts,” a deconstructed key lime pie, chocolate mousse and more. On my third, I was struck mostly by how beige, repetitive and one-note everything was.
What three Michelin stars promise is that a restaurant is worth going out of one’s way for — more specifically, the guide (originally thought up as a way to encourage more road trips) writes, “Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey!” But the stars also carry something more holistic.
When my mom visited the Bay Area a few months ago, she wanted to see the French Laundry. We didn’t dine there, but I dutifully drove her up so we could observe its fringes. Not only did she admire the building, but she was awestruck by the restaurant’s garden across the street. We walked among the rows of peas and heirloom tomatoes, passing other people who were also there to get within a fingertip’s distance of the produce that would make its way to the $350 tasting menu. Even the chickens obliviously, blissfully prancing in their coop seemed like celebrities.
The gardens across the street from the French Laundry is a destination on its own.
At the French Laundry’s price point, you are paying for a moment the same way basketball fans pay $1,400 for courtside seats in the hope of seeing Steph Curry sink a three-point shot right in front of their noses. The higher the price, the closer you are to witnessing the sublime: proof that we can indeed exceed the limitations of the human body.
This is highly subjective, but to me, the reason why you might save up for these Michelin-starred meals is precisely for that Peter Pan “Do you believe?” moment. You want to enter a state of extreme sincerity: to clap your hands and convince yourself that you had something to do with Tinker Bell’s resurrection.
That is the weight behind the crass question of whether or not the splurge was worth it. And at the French Laundry, I rarely felt like the answer was “yes.”
6640 Washington St., Yountville. 707-944-2380 or thomaskeller.com/tfl Hours: 4-8 p.m. daily. Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible on lower level. Gender neutral restrooms. Noise level: Moderate. Meal for two, without drinks: $700 What to order: Two choices include the chef's tasting menu and its vegetarian version. Meat-free options: Full vegetarian menu available. Drinks: Beer and wine. Transportation: Street and private lot parking. Best practices: Reservations are released on Tock at 10 a.m. on the first of every month. Otherwise, look to Facebook and Reddit to find open seats.
Soleil Ho is The San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic. Email: soleil@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hooleil
Since 2019, Soleil Ho has been The Chronicle's Restaurant Critic, spearheading Bay Area restaurant recommendations through the flagship Top Restaurants series. In 2022, they won a Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award from the James Beard Foundation.
Ho also writes features and cultural commentary, specializing in the ways that our food reflects the way we live. Their essay on pandemic fine dining domes was featured in the 2021 Best American Food Writing anthology. Ho also hosts The Chronicle's food podcast, Extra Spicy, and has a weekly newsletter called Bite Curious.
Previously, Ho worked as a freelance food and pop culture writer, as a podcast producer on the Racist Sandwich, and as a restaurant chef. Illustration courtesy of Wendy Xu.