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If you guessed we were giving this award to the Oakville Grocery,
you’re wrong.
Yes, it has long served the community and the hordes of weekend
visitors who can be so numerous that one expects the grocery
walls to bulge out as they might, portrayed in an old-fashioned,
black-and-white cartoon.
But over time, this established take-out haunt has gotten lazy
and expensive. The price of sandwiches at Oakville Grocery went
up last year, while the quality of ingredients went down.
As ilovenapa.com is a celebration of the Best of Napa Valley,
we must alert visitors to a new take-out spot where everything
is homemade, tasty, and the offerings are bounteous.
We are speaking about Nest, a tiny, hole-in-the-wall eatery
on the corner of Highway 29 and the Oakville Grade, a country
block south of Oakville Grocery.
No, they don’t have the eclectic mix of pancake syrups
and expensive wines that the Oakville Grocery has, but if you’re
shopping for tasty breakfast or luncheon fare and not razzmatazz,
Nest is The Best.
This seven-month-old enterprise is run by a mom-and-daughter
team, Mardi and Katie Schma. Despite the way it’s spelled,
it’s pronounced Schma as in “hold-the-Schmay-o”
on that tuna salad sandwich.
Mardi, which means Tuesday in French, operated a 120-seat restaurant
in Dallas, Texas and Katie comes to her perch here as a caterer
and former executive chef.
Their food is fabulous, their one-dozen different take-out sandwiches
tasty and fairly priced.
We had the No. 1 Sandwich and loved it – house-smoked
chicken with red onion, mozzarella, tomato, a veneer of pesto
and chipotle mayo (yum), served on herbed focaccia.
We also loved, and would reorder, the No. 12, roasted turkey
club, a juicy concoction with tomato, avocado, smoked bacon,
onion, Dijon mustard and some of that delicious chipotle mayo.
In tomato season, Katie makes three or four different tomato
salads for take out and there is always a selection of chilled
pasta salads to consider, too.
I was bowled over by the wide selection of desserts, pastries
and sweets, every one of them made on premises. Katie says she’s
so tired of hearing how everyone loves the Bubba Cake, that
for her own creative juices, she suggests that new visitors
try one of her other novel confections.
We tried her large, round, oatmeal cookie; about the size of
a CD, it is more complex than the lyrics of a Madonna song (but
then again, what isn’t?)… and we couldn’t
stop eating it. Buy two, one isn’t enough.
Trying to be different than Dean & DeLuca or the Oakville
Grocer, the Schmas have gone out of their way to find unusual
beverages to accompany their tasty take-out fare; the beverage
cooler offers more than 30 different chilled sodas and fruit
drinks, including off-beat brands from the mid-west like Faygo.
All the chickens roasted on premise are Fulton Farms Free-Range
birds and the breads are some of my favorites from Acme in Berkeley.
These are statements about quality as much as they are about
taste.
Nest serves breakfasts in a long, narrow dining room, things
like fresh fruit, pancakes, sausage, omelets, corned beef hash
– all the things you remember eating and loving at the
Yountville Diner.
And while you can eat lunch items here, too, nothing beats taking
your sandwiches and salads out into the vineyards to be enjoyed
at winery properties where picnics are encouraged.
In our view, that’s the Best Way to have a Schma Day!
Nest,
7787 St. Helena Highway (Hwy 29) at the intersection of the
Oakville Grade. Open Monday through Saturday 7 am to 6 pm, open
Sundays 8 am to 4 pm. 707-944-0206. |
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