🍽️ Food And Wine 3/30/25

Hi Everyone!

I’m in a bit of a predicament currently. Over the week, I found out that the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris is raffling off 50 stones from the building that were too damaged in the fire to be used to rebuild. I want to enter the raffle, but the cost is 40 Euros. It’s hard to justify paying that much for just a chance at this piece of history when I know it will probably only act as paperweight on my desk. This feels like one of the old MasterCard commercials.

Entering the raffle: $43.30

Winning a Notre-Dame Brick: Priceless

Anyway, without further ado, Let’s find out what’s up with Will…

Food and wine ruled this week, and for good reason.

This week was Oakland Restaurant Week (March 20-30), so a lot of restaurants had good deals on food to celebrate, as well as special menu items. Some of yall might know this already, but Oakland was voted the #1 Best Food City in the US in 2024 by Condé Nast Traveler. Whenever I talk about Oakland, I like to bring up this fact, as it’s a nice flex for the city. It just so happened that Berkeley Restaurant Weekend (March 21-31) happened at the same time.

Somehow, with all the restaurant options, the two places I did go to for food, ended up both being pizza places. The first spot was a small place called Pizza Ponte, which specializes in New York Style Pizza. I got a slice of the Restaurant Week exclusive Augustus Pizza which consisted of White sauce topped with beef gyro meat, onions, tomatoes, garlic and cilantro. Very unique and tasty, and stacks up quite favorably to an actual slice of New York Style Pizza.

Then for a date night with Rylee, we went to an amazing spot called Lucia’s, which featured fried dough balls, cacio e pepe pizza, and a chocolate brownie. If you are like me, I was a little concerned about how a cacio e pepe pizza would turn out, but let me tell you, it was one of the best pizzas I have had in a while. The romano cheese and black pepper work so well as a topping for a slice. I’m so sad that this item was a Restaurant Week exclusive. I need more, but I guess normal cacio e pepe will have to do in the meantime.

When we moved here, Rylee and I decided that we would like to learn more about wine. So we bought a book or two, joined a wine club, and started making occasional visits up to Napa. We don’t know how long we are going to live in Northern California, but we figured we might as well make the most of it. As such, some of our friends have begun to know us as wine connoisseurs. Two of these friends, Avery and Taylor, have been trying to get us to take them to Napa for a long time, and this Saturday, we finally made the trip happen.

We laughed. Avery almost cried (from joy, I might add, despite specifically swearing that he wouldn’t). It was a great time!

What was cool was that we got to show them a wide variety of the different experiences you could have in Napa. We got to wine taste at the entire range of wineries from family-owned to high-end.

Pope Valley Winery was a family winery dating back to 1897. They were super chill and even brought out cornhole for us to play while we sipped on wine.

Rutherford Ranch was a more traditional sit-down tasting experience. We drank wine as we learned about the geography of Napa Valley, And even got to see a tree that is used for wine corks.

The third spot, JCB St. Helena, was the very hoity-toity Napa tasting experience that you might expect. Everything was ornately decorated, and as I got my glass of bubbly and a bump of caviar, I was so scared to break the $300 glass that they poured wine into.

However, the highlight of the day was a small boutique winery called Brasswood. The winemaker here is one of the few female winemakers. She also happens to be part of the Mondavi Family, one of the families that helped Napa become the wine destination that it is today.

We had the honor of having Seven as our wine pourer, who is hands down the funniest and most interesting wine pourer in Napa Valley. We were the last people for his shift, so we all had a “Baddy Baddy Shot-O-Clock” of wine to finish the day.

Pro tip: If you are ever planning on doing a Napa trip, you can save a lot of money by purchasing a wine passport! You pay a one-time, flat fee, and you get access to free tastings at wineries for free. Depending on the place, you might only have to go to two to break even.

Wine has a tendency to be pretentious, but it doesn’t have. This is one of my favorite online sommeliers. His approach to wine is very laid-back and focused on your personal experience. You can pair wine with a steak, but this video goes to show that you can also pair it with your favorite fast food meal, and still have it be amazing.