The wife and I will be in the Valley beginning Sunday, April 18th. We're staying in Calistoga for a few days so I can recoup following our Easter production at work. We're trying to round up some folks for an evening of fun. I'm open to suggestions as far as restaurant and theme.
It looks like Cindy's will be the venue of choice. Anyone else care to join in the festivities? pyang? babnick? DJHombre?Eric White? CaveGirl? Anyone? Anyone?
I e-mailed Brent the Cliffs Notes version yesterday, here is the full story.
The went back to March 2003. I was entertaining the wine writer from Taiwan on a day when DRAB joined us for some tastings. Went to Cindy's Kitchen for lunch as I've not been there before and also wanting to see if this could be one of the possible venue for the Trouble Causing Forumite Dinners.
At the end of the meal, I decided this would be a good place to held the April dinner while Sir Willy was visiting. Spoke with the restaurant manager to book the date for upstairs for 20+ people, and we also talked briefly about a short menu for the dinner.
Received the menu via fax couple of days later, not quite what we had discussed. Tried calling the manager back at least three different times and was always told he was busy, please leave a message.
I finally gave up and used Meadowood as the choice for that dinner in April.
At last, the Wednesday before the dinner, I received a phone call from Cindy herself to confirm my reservation. I told her that the event has been moved to a different location because I couldn't get a hold of her restaurant managers after many phone calls. All she said was okay then hung up without even wanting to find out what went wrong or apologizing for lack of communication.
Not a big deal, as the April dinner turned out great. Just amazes me that they would drop the ball on a big party with likely return businesses. Their lost, not mine.
Just got off the phone with Cindy's. They will accomodate us. Corkage is $12.00 and they won't give us a break on that. However, they will do a trade: buy a bottle off their wine list and get a cork fee waived. If we get up to 15 people, we can do a Prix Fixe menu for between $45-55 per person. Right now we are at 6:
Brent Null - 2 Bressler - 2 WineBrat - 2
I think we can get up to 15 if we get some participation from the Napa contingent.
Come on, pyang. We can hold the Trouble Causing Dinner here that night!
Sounds like a great time, too bad I am flying out that afternoon.
Oh well, I am sure that I will be down again some time. Maybe I will run into some of you around town, as I will be doing some touring on Thursday and Friday (maybe even Sat!?).
