Meadowood Grill

Meadowood Grill

For Valentine’s Day, we ate at the Meadowood Grill near St. Helena. It’s in the Meadowood Resort. The Meadowood Resort is the peak of what one could create if one were trying to create the most wonderful rustic(?) setting possible. The Meadowood Resort is spread out over some winding hills on the edge of Napa Valley.

We made reservations in advance for breakfast. When we went in, the place was not particularly fancy, but everything was clean and everything was perfect. You look out over the golf course and the croquet garden. The food we got was magnificent. My wife got the omelets. You get to pick the ingredients of the omelets and in fact, she ordered the ham and the bacon on the side so I could have it. I got the corned beef hash, which was quite good, but probably not quite as good as what she got. They gave us some unbelievably toasted French bread with jam and butter. One of the jams was strawberry and the other was an orange marmalade. With my meal, they also gave me a bran English muffin. We got fresh squeezed juice. I had fresh squeezed pineapple juice, which I haven’t had in over 20 years, and my wife got fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. She also got a latte, which she said was wonderful and actually looked incredibly beautiful with the way they swirled the foam. I also got a hot black tea with it.

Breakfast for the two of us came to around $72. We realized that about $25 of it were drinks so if we had avoided the drinks, and included the tip on it, it would’ve dropped it down to about $40. We can’t afford to stay in the hotel, which I think is between $500-$1000/night, but with $70 we were able to enjoy the hotel just as if we’d stayed there ourselves.

After breakfast, we went on a hike, one that I thought was going to be a leisurely walk around the grounds. They have over 4 miles of trails that circle around the hotel. Once we got started, it went almost immediately uphill, and I was huffing and puffing and barely able to keep up with my wife, who, in these days, was in a much better shape than I am. They made it more adventurous because they had signs at the base warning you about mountain lions and about rattlesnakes, and what to do in the unlikely case of a rattlesnake bite. We also noticed that we were the only ones on the trail, and we didn’t pass anyone else. So, I have a sneaking suspicion that the type of people who stayed at the hotel that was $500-$1000/night aren’t the kind of people that normally do steep hiking trails like this. The place was magnificent, and if you had the money to stay there it would have really been wonderful, but if you can’t, for $40-$70, you can definitely enjoy a very, very memorable breakfast.