Yountville

Yountville is the most adorable little community, north of napa and south of St. Helena. With 4 stop signs and no stop lights, this town was built to enjoy walking. If the homes aren't cute enough for you, you can walk a few feet to the top restaurants in the WORLD; French Landry, Bouchon, Bottega, Redd and so much more.

There aren't any stores, there is a place called The Ranch Market where you can find a few items but really its just there to hold over the tourists. This is a huge tourist town, at any given time during the summer, the tourist out number the residence 5 to 1. Around Nov things start to slow down and the town becomes very quiet, with festival of lights (they whole town comes together and they turn on the Christmas tree and drink cider.) They have so many fun holiday celebrations like yountville days, bocce parties, Bastille Day, and more. There is a large veterans home above the yountville golf course where you can swim in the public pool or play baseball at the amazing baseball fields (amazing hotdogs and beer.)

Overall I really love Yountville, there are places to eat in this area that arent outrageously expensive, there are parks where you can play with your kids and there are always great neighbors nextdoor.

You might be excused for not having heard of tiny Yountville given that it’s overshadowed by neighboring Napa which gives its name to the whole valley. Yountville, however, is not just some tiny little one horse town. In fact, Yountville may have more Michelin rated restaurants per capita than Paris does--and I don’t mean Paris, Texas.

I recently came here to dine at Redd, one of Yountville’s lesser acclaimed restaurants (though it was still good enough to be listed in the Top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area by SF Gate). Redd--and basically all of Yountville--is a foodie wet dream, apologies for being crude. But this is basically the sort of place you go and just savor everything. Get the 5-course tasting menu; don’t even bother looking at what they are offering. Taste each others food and enjoy. A great place to go with a date.

But, as I mentioned this is only one of the acclaimed restaurants in Yountville. Yountville’s most famous eatery is French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s 3-Star French country-style kitchen. Although it won’t cost you as much as going to France, it will come close, so only come when you are ready to break the budget or go into hock.

French Laundry is only one of several French restaurants in Yountville, however. You also have Etoile, Bouchon and Bistro Jeanty. And if you prefer American and couldn’t get into Redd, be sure to give Ad Hoc a try.

What is it like to live in Yountville?

Though I haven’t lived there I took a look around and found out a bit about it. The homes look like they date from the 80’s and 90’s--they are newer Contemporary style homes. These are nice suburban streets that make you feel as if you are at the edge of a valley even though you are actually pretty far from heavily populated areas.

The average home here costs more than $500K though rarely does a home reach a million dollars. My understanding is that a third of residents are veterans who live in the Veterans Home of California.

Overall, Yountville is a pretty nice place to live, although a bit out of the way if you don’t happen to be involved in the wine, restaurant or other local businesses. You would probably not want to brave the commute into SF on the daily if you can avoid it.