Zinsvalley restaurant relocates from suburbs to downtown Napa

When Zinsvalley Restaurant was located out on Browns Valley Road in Napa, it was one of those amazing "finds" that thrills lovers of good food. Who would have suspected that this unassuming roadside eatery buried in the suburbs west of town would have such great American-style food?

But now Zinsvalley Restaurant has moved to the primo spot in Napa - in the big, high-tech-looking, blocky building set back off First Street where NV used to be, right in the heart of downtown. NV had excellent fare, too, and its name was variously translated as "Napa Valley, "envy," "non-vintage," and "Not Vallejo," depending on which wag was talking.

When Zinsvalley was out in the 'burbs, it carried Aldo Biali's "Black Chicken" Zinfandel on its wine list. This full-throttle zin, obviously the product of the kind of long-settled Italian family one finds in Wine Country (more inclined for nonna to make from-scratch manicotti than the scungilli favored back in Jersey City), defines North Bay zinfandel. It gets its name from the days when the Bialis sold bottles of the wine under the table to neighbors. Rather than have them order illicit zinfandel over the phone, they were instructed to ask for so many "black chickens." And the name stuck. The wine was a torrent of zinfandel's spicy fruit.

So it was with a sense of anticipation that I steered our party to the new Zinsvalley Restaurant downtown, looking forward to a bottle of "Black Chicken" - but alas, it's no longer on the wine list. The list is stocked with fine zinfandel, though, including a raft of zins from the Napa Valley as well as Dry Creek and Sonoma valleys. Here's a 2007 Brown Estate zin from Napa for $58 - steep for a zinfandel until you taste its blueberries, tobacco and cinnamon spiciness and smell its flowery nose and experience its long finish. From the Sonoma side, it's hard to beat the 2006 Ravenswood "Old Hill Ranch" Zinfandel, but for $70, it had better be unbeatable. The vines are 125 years old and wine comes from them by dribs and drabs, but what beautiful wine it is. But fear not, since corkage is $10, you can be parsimonious and bring a bottle from home. And, for every bottle you buy off the list, you get one corkage fee waived.

The d?or hasn't changed that much in the few months that Zinsvalley has relocated to downtown Napa, except that the walls are painted a dark brick red, which warms up the place. The fine full bar and lounge is separate from the dining areas, and a happy hour runs from 2 to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Tuesday nights are burger nights in the bar only, so you can nab a quick free-range, grass-fed, ground chuck cheeseburger with caramelized onions and house made fries for $14 and a glass of Francis Coppola's house red zin for $5, leave a $3 tip and get out for $22. Not too bad for the rather luxe experience of the bar.

Thursday nights, all martinis are $6, in the bar only.

In the dining room, a mirror runs like a frieze around two walls of the room and above it, on a small shelf, are dozens of tea lights about 18 inches apart, throwing a soft, flickering light on the tables below. The other two walls are floor to ceiling glass.

Dinner started with a hit. Corn Chowder ($4.50 ***?) was spicy and creamy and best of all, tasted of summery fresh corn - not a bad trick in the middle of December. Dinner continued with a miss. The menu promises "Classic Caesar Salad" ($8 **), but what arrived was about as far from a classic Caesar as you can get. Instead of whole leaves of hearts of romaine, the romaine was chopped and mixed with red lettuces. The dressing was thick and gloppy, but the croutons were good. But here's the thing: although it's no classic, it's not a bad salad. The sweet lettuces and cheesy dressing whet the appetite.

Sweet Onion Rings ($8 **?) could have been called fat onion rings, because the rings were a good half-inch thick, nicely crusty, not too salty, and not greasy. They came with a creamy blue cheese dip. Chef Greg Johnson (he's worked at Auberge du Soleil, Bistro Don Giovanni and Mustards) and his sous chef Julio Garcia make several kinds of flatbreads and pizzas. We tried the Tomato and Mozzarella Pizza ($12 ***. The crust was thin and spread with a minimum of tomato sauce but a generous amount of mozzarella, and to perk up the pie, the top was strewn with a basil chiffonade. One could easily make a meal out of the appetizers, soups and salads on the menu.

But the entrees beckoned. Pan-Roasted Breast of Chicken ($18 **?) was just OK. It was upstaged by the multicolored roasted baby carrots and a wonderfully cheesy and earthy porcini mushroom potato gratin. House-made Tagliolini with Manila Clams ($19 **?) was a sure-fire pasta dish with a creamy sauce enhanced with parsley and oregano and given seven clams in their shells. Fewer shells and more clams might have made this dish more pleasurable. Tagliolini are thinner versions of tagliatelle, the pasta for which Bolognese is the sauce of choice. As such they are not much different than linguini and so here we have "linguini and clams" made very well from scratch by hand, rather than simply boiled-up commercial linguini with littlenecks.

There was a special Filet Mignon ($35 **) on the menu, but there was nothing particularly special about it. It was an eight-ounce filet, soft to the point of nearly mushy, served medium rare as ordered, with nice sides of just-done snap beans and good 'n' cheesy scalloped potatoes.

That Grass-Fed, Free-Range, Ground Chuck Burger ($14 **) is on the dining room menu, too. Hand-cut fries that come with the burger are too salty. The burger itself was big and thick, but overdone for a burger ordered medium, so if you like your burgers medium well, you'll be pleased. Also on the plate: pickles, red onion, tomato and sweet and spicy jalape? jam.

For dessert, the Warm Chocolate Ooooz Cake ($7 ***) was a treat. The center oozed runny chocolate when stabbed with a fork, and there was a welcome scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. Fresh Green Apple Crisp ($7 ***) had a crunchy top, a cinnamon-apple interior, and came arrayed with three small scoops of vanilla bean ice cream.

To sum up: A good restaurant, but not quite the place it was when it was on Browns Valley Road. The food seems to have lost the spirited quality it had before.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for the Sonoma Living section. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.