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FOOD & DRINK WRITERS PICKS
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A step inside Butter Cream Bakery & Diner is a step back in time, to the 1950s, when soda fountains and lunch counters reigned. But there’s no need to conjure images of yesteryear, because the real deal lives on at Butter Cream, founded in 1948. The pink-and-white striped exterior is smack-in-the-face retro, with an interior that keeps the old-time feel rolling right along with the dough. Ingredients are fresh, many grown and sourced locally, and the stats are staggering. On an average day, Butter Cream serves 300 eggs, produces 230 doughnuts, uses 150 pounds of sugar and on weekends serves as many as 480 people. No wonder baking starts at 11:30pm the night before.
Maria Tzouvelekis
Best Dish of Sugar Pie Honey Bunch Love
The shop’s tagline, “Being sweet to you is our business,” is fitting. Whether it’s doughnuts and pies or crullers and cupcakes, nothing disappoints. But it’s the birthday cakes that have been silencing screaming children and satiating adults for decades. The liberal doses of butter-cream frosting do the joint’s namesake right—heady yet light, down to the very last bite. In 2001, original owners David and Bobbi Closs, along with son Gerry, gave the shop a complete restoration, keeping the signature pink-and-white stripes intact. What’s the icing on top of this very succulent cake? Pricing is a sweet deal if ever there was one. More noteworthy is the bakery’s donations of food and funds to organizations like the Napa Food Bank, Hospice of Napa Valley and the homeless shelter. Giving back never tasted so sweet. 2297 Jefferson St., Napa. 707.255.6700.—C.J.
Best Provincial Pound of Prime Rib
well-stuffed. 6650 Bloomfield Road, Bloomfield. 707.795.0127.—B.R.
Call it “the Menu That Time Forgot.” Stormy’s, the venerable roadhouse established in 1854 in the tiny west Sonoma County outpost of Bloomfield, is a proud throwback to the time when red meat, baked potatoes and a full bar (not necessarily in that order) defined a quality night out. A family-run steakhouse since the early 1970s, Stormy’s remains renowned for its platter-sized prime rib, a carnivoredelighting 16- to 18-ounce slab of beef proudly out of step with contemporary culinary trends. But come early for that entrée; it regularly sells out, which leaves a choice of steaks and other basics (chicken, seafood, mostly fried). “Nothing here is portion-controlled,” a hostess advises cheerily. Not a destination for the faint of heart (or appetite), this is a place to settle in, chow down, and stagger out
Best Civil War Reenactment at a Place That’s Been Around Since the Civil War If I were ever to dabble in Civil War reenactments, I’d definitely recreate the great 1865 Sonoma County Battle-That-Never-Was. In those days, Petaluma was a Union town, while Santa Rosa was (gulp!) rife with Confederacy lovers. After the Petaluma Volunteer Firemen’s Brigade got all riled up to fight those rascally Southern sympathizers, they piled on their horses, making it only as far as the Washoe House, where they stopped to do some frontloading. By sunrise, still drinking hard, the battle had been lost to a haze of stiff whiskey draughts. ) 49
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