Angele, the determinedly French restaurant at the foot of Main Street in Napa, took no structural damage from the recent earthquake that cracked many a masonry building downtown. But about 70 percent of its wine cellar was destroyed as bottles toppled and the bar’s glassware crashed to the floor.
“We’ll get through this,” said the waiter. And surely the business will, because under executive chef Rogelio Garcia, who’s now in his seventh month of running the kitchen, Angele’s culinary quality remains unshakable.
Indoors, surrounded by the rusticity of unpainted wood, or outside on the patio overlooking the Napa River, Angele is a delightful place to relax. You could easily daydream that you’re in the French countryside, maybe the Dordogne region.
At Angele, French pop music plays on the sound system. A crusty baguette arrives with a pot of sweet butter. From the cocktail list, you might choose a Hemingway Daiquiri of silver rum mixed with lime and grapefruit juices and served up, or one of the nine other house specialty drinks from the full bar.
The extensive wine list is full of Napa Valley and French wines at a wide range of prices. For instance, a 2011 old-vines Cotes du Rhone, “Le Clos du Caillou,” is $36. Or the unique and intense 2011 Bandol from Domaine Tempier is $75. Corkage is $25, waived if you buy a bottle from the list.
Chef Garcia proves that you don’t have to be French to be a good French cook. What’s required is to have a knack for doing simple things in a wonderfully pleasing way. His Ricotta Maison ($14 ???? ), for instance, arrives as a ceramic pot on a plate with toasted country bread.
In the pot is a marmalade made from French plums and a portion of smooth, white ricotta. As you scoop out some ricotta to spread on the bread, you notice that it’s sitting in a spoonful of green oil. This oil is colored and flavored with chervil, a dainty herb with a light anise flavor, and chives.
By alternating bites of bread smeared with plum marmalade and another piece of bread covered with ricotta, the flavors are separated and more keenly appreciated.
A Summer Salad, or Salade d’Ete ($12 ??? ½), offers bites of fresh orange cantaloupe, chunks of garden-fresh cucumber, and slices of translucent, seed-studded dragon fruit in a pool of yuzu and melon puree. For something savory to go with these sweets, the salad also has padron peppers stuffed with cows’ milk cheese, battered, and deep-fried.
When one thinks of potato gratin, something like scalloped potatoes comes to mind. But at Angele, Gratin de Pomme de Terre ($14 ???? ) is far different. Baby potatoes are halved and a spoonful of potato is scooped out of each half.
This depression is filled with the yummiest beef-belly ragout, given a sprinkling of red onion and a Parmesan crust, and then decorated with one tiny arugula leaf.
It’s just meat and potatoes, yet transfigured into something wonderfully pleasing.
The roast duck breast, Canard Roti ($35 ??? ), was the priciest and least extraordinary dish of the evening, although at three stars, it’s still a very good plate of food.
The duck was served French style, meaning that it was very rare. Not quite raw, but slippery-bloody with a cooked crust. It’s served with a rare treat, a roulade of guanciale, which is a spiced, smoked, aged pork cheek rolled with a chard leaf, just teeming with flavor.
Both duck and roulade sit in a swirl of duck jus reduction, and are accompanied by a medley of zucchini, black beans, baby yellow squash, fried eggplant, almonds, and herbs.
A house-made fennel cracker serves as an exclamation point to this feisty dish.
Ris de Veau ($19 ??? ½) is French for veal sweetbreads, and four crispy pieces were marvelously fresh-tasting. With them came a “mortadella” of sweetbreads, glazed figs, plums, and a house-made pistachio cracker.
The Tarte d’Ete ($10 ???? ) finished dinner and finished me, too. It was a delicious tart made with almond flour holding sweet slices of warm peaches topped with lemon-flavored whipped cream.
To sum up: When people ask, “What’s your favorite restaurant?,” why shouldn’t I say, “Angele?”
Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review for the Sonoma Living section. He can be reached at jeffcox@sonic.net.
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