Dear Alan,

My wife and I are going to Napa and San Francisco for a week. Could you recommend some places to eat?

Thanks,
John Vazquez
Loyal GQ reader for over 20 years

Local Kitchen & Wine Merchant
330 First Street, San Francisco
415-777-4200 (restaurant); 415-777-4212 (wine store)

This place opened this past December. I haven't been there, but I'm not surprised to hear raves. Here's why: People who care intensely about wine tend to feel the same about food—they are usually picky and demanding and relentless, the same qualities needed to source great growers and wineries.

A16
2355 Chestnut Street. San Francisco
415-771-2216

This is the kind of restaurant that Mario Batali-style dining begat—small, crowded, chic, informal, noisy, and absolutely appealing. Great wines. Good pizza. Pork and cured meats all over the place. It's supposedly the cuisine of Campagna, but it's really the food of Nate Appleman, who sure doesn't sound Italian but cooks as though he were.

Terra
1345 Railroad Avenue
St. Helena
707-963-8931

Chef Hiro Sone was doing Asian fusion cuisine before most people knew fusion was a culinary term. Elegant, refined, relaxed, and wonderfully satisfying. Terra is now in its 20th year, the longest-running great restaurant in America's wine country.

Bistro Don Giovanni
4110 Howard Lane
Napa
707-224-3300

No offense to the restaurant, I hope, but you might be suspicious of the appearance: generically cute, upper-middle-class Italian. You might also expect the food to be not much different from the routine fare dished out at tens of thousands of identical-looking Italian-American spots, but you'll be shocked at how good it is. Don't miss the Bistro Burger, one of the best hamburgers in America, exquisitely charcoal-grilled.

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If they were good enough for Tony Soprano, I figured they'd be good enough for me.

Turns out I was wrong. I wasn't so pleased with the onion rings at Holsten's, in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

That's where the Soprano family ate their last meal, the pièce de résistance—that's Italian, isn't it?—being onion rings.

I went there for the same reason they did. To disappear quietly. And to eat onion rings.

Couldn't beat the price: $2.50.

The onion rings are beatable. They're a flawlessly round commercial product made with chopped onions mixed into the breading. I believe the term for the factory process that makes such rings possible is "extruded," which sounds like a messy mob hit.

They were crunchy, though. And they had an oddly appealing oniony flavor. So I enjoyed them. But no matter what excuses I make for them, the truth is that they weren't particularly good.

Holsten's is terrific, by the way. But so you won't be disappointed when you visit, you should know that you can't play Journey's "Don't Stop Believin' " on the jukebox. There is no jukebox. Holsten's does have a candy counter, stuffed animals, bucolic farm scenes painted on wood, and superb ice cream.

The only thing menacing about the place was my menu. I got a momentary thrill when I thought it was spattered with blood stains. On second thought, I decided they were hot fudge drippings.

Just about everybody has something to say about the final episode of The Sopranos, which was basically brilliant. I caught one wrong note, when Carmella slid into the booth and said to Tony, "What looks good tonight?" She wouldn't have said that. Holsten's has been serving pretty much the same dishes for almost 70 years. Everything looks the same every night.

The Sopranos had the right idea, having their farewell at Holsten's. I'm glad I did the same. We both picked the perfect place to say goodbye.

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A Relaxing Glass of Wine

The wine critic for the Las Vegas Review-Journal has found an under-$10 Pinot Grigio called Kris that he highly recommends.

Good for him.

When I find such a wine, this is what I tell consumers: Chill. Drink.

Not him.

This is what he says it looks like: "…star-bright core going out into a faint glass-clear rim definition with almost unreal high viscosity…"

This is what he says it smells like: "…fresh notes of crushed white fruit from pomelo, white cranberries, stone rose, white flowers, Asian pear, and subtle hints of rose and white corn…"

This is what he says it tastes like: "…ultrasuave with a sweetish pear and white currant entry followed by citrus rind, dried apricots, buttery anise components…"

This is how to serve it: "…at 53 degrees Fahrenheit…"

In a way, I kind of love this guy. I mean, how many wine critics care so much that they want their beverages served with a thermometer instead of a swizzle stick?

Unfortunately, this kind of pedantry makes people hate wine. It's time to do something about him. I suggest a couple of mob guys take his palate out to the desert and bury it.

Got a beef with Alan Richman?
In need of food-and-wine advice? E-mail him at AlanRichman@GQ.com. He’ll respond each week right here on ‘Forked’

My Austrian neighbor, a psychiatrist, came back from her vacation in Vienna with a half-carton of eggs in her luggage and a look of relief on her face.

"Finally, I can have an omelet again," she told me. "I stopped eating them over here. I never had one I liked."

She didn't blame the cooks, although omelets are without question prepared more ineptly than any other item in an American restaurant. She blamed our eggs. I was curious why she had such strong feelings about eggs, but I decided not to probe. With her training, she should be able to figure that out for herself.

She doesn't eat American eggs. At first I thought it was more European elitism. I made fun of her pretentiousness. For once I would have been pleased to see the baggage handlers at JFK airport heave her suitcase around the way they always do mine.

Her eggs, however, came through the passage in perfect condition. Those Europeans do know how to pack.

"Here, take one," she said, relinquishing one of her precious brood of six. "Cook it. Tell me what you think."

Her egg came from Toni's Freilandeier, an acclaimed major Austrian egg producer. It was brown, the product of organic, free-range hens fed vegetarian food. I decided to put her egg up against one from Eggland's Best, an acclaimed major American egg producer. It was white, the product of vegetarian food. Not organic. Not free-range. The cost of the eggs wasn't much different—hers were slightly more expensive, which could have been attributable to the difference between the dollar and the euro.

I cracked both, carefully placing each one in a separate bowl. I had to be careful. I had one chance. I felt like an Iron Chef.

The yolk of the Eggland's Best was pale yellow. The yolk of the Toni's Freilandeier was true orange.

I fried each one, sunnyside-up, in a judicious quantity of butter. (Perhaps I should have poached them for a purer taste, but I'm not much of a cook and this was the best I could do.)

I did a fine job under pressure. The whites were slightly crisp, the yolks just warm enough.

The color of the Austrian yolk deepened with cooking. The American yolk looked about the same, nice and bright yellow—that's why we call them sunnyside-up. In Austria, by the way, they are called spiegelei, mirror egg.

The flavor of the two eggs wasn't appreciably different. Both were eggy. The mouth-feel of the yolks was enormously different. The orange Austrian egg was creamier and richer. It had a longer, smoother finish.

Sadly, she had turned out to be right.

"What do you do different to your eggs?" I asked her.

"I don't know."

"Why do they call them spiegelei?" I wondered.

"I don't know."

I told her I was disappointed because psychiatrists from Vienna were supposed to know everything.

"Listen," she said. "I always have the urge to ask questions. I'm a psychiatrist. But with spiegelei, I don't ask."

Got a beef with Alan Richman?
In need of food-and-wine advice? E-mail him at AlanRichman@GQ.com. He’ll respond each week right here on ‘Forked’