Let me be upfront about this post: It will be obnoxious, a veritable paean to food snob bloviation. But considering I’ll probably never have another opportunity to dine at the French Laundry, I figured I might as well go all in, giving you the good, the bad and the oddly disappointing. This isn’t a review so much as a sneak peak behind the kitchen door of what is often considered one of the best, if not the best, restaurants in the United States.  So here you go: a simple run down of the dishes, the atmosphere and some tips if you happen to find yourself in Yountville.

Almost as soon as we sat down at a second-floor table — right next to a window with a gorgeous view of the restaurant gardens and the Napa mountain ridges beyond — the servers presented us with two amuse bouches: a marble-sized dollop of fried gruyere and then the restaurant’s classic tuna tartare on “ice cream cones.” I had barely eaten anything all morning in preparation of the experience, having heard tales of gluttony rivaling the ancients. But as soon as I tasted these tiny bites, my stomach opened, as if to say, “More. More right now.”

Our first official menu item was the cauliflower panna cotta with a dollop of sturgeon caviar.

For the second course, we had our choice between foie gras and endive. This was a no-brainer. We went with two great friends — one of whom spent months trying to get a reservation — and in the end three of us chose the foie gras. (Just to try it, our fourth was good enough to order the endive.) The foie gras came with a white honey glaze on top of the torchon, accompanied by compressed apples (we never asked what the hell that meant), pickled onions and cornichon with dijon mustard. Here is where the food snobbery begins. I’ve had better. Way better. I’d never had foie gras with dijon or cornichon relish, so it was interesting to try, but the honey glaze became too cloying in the end. The dish came with three kinds of salt, including a 65 million year old “Jurassic” variety. That was fun to try.

Our friend’s endive came caramelized with asian pear, radish and a black truffle … smear.

For our third course, we had another choice. I went with the frog’s legs accompanied by a relish of green beans and piquillo peppers with potatoes. The most delicious frog’s legs I’d ever had. Yum. I could have eaten those all day long.

Dana went with the sauteed sturgeon under a fan of fried potatoes and joined by beets, cucumbers and horse radish creme fraiche. I could actually hear her saying, “mmmm” a number of times to herself. As much as I loved my frog’s legs, I liked this one even more.

Everyone had the sea scallop for the fourth course. I’d never had a scallop that wasn’t seared, so it was a treat to really feel the full texture of the shellfish. Combined with the hen-of-the-woods mushroom, a velvety carrot puree, baby bok choy, ginger and toasted cashews, the taste was otherworldly.

If it has brain, liver, heart, sweetbreads or any other internal organ, I’ll go for it 10 times out of 10. When I was a kid, I loved to nibble on the hearts and giblets of Thanksgiving turkeys and my appetite for the internal has only increased. Maybe I have an iron deficiency, who knows? Who cares? I love it. So I was delighted by the “Tete de Cochon” or head of the pig — a fried ode to everything found in the pig’s head. The first bite was my second favorite part of the entire meal. By the final bite, I was stuffed and exhausted.

For this course, Dana went with the chicken rolled over a chicken mousse, all of which was pretty good … for chicken. It came with almonds, figs and cipollini onions, and while it probably spoke most of the French countryside, I found the mousse almost spongy and the flavor rather tired. But I had just died and gone to heaven with my pig-head tater tot, so I was biased at that point.

At this point, everyone at the table had a medallion of chateaubriand with artichokes, spinach, caper jus and a veal heart agnolotti — no baby animal or internal organ was spared apparently. Dana and I definitely have opinions on agnolotti and order it whenever we see it. In fact, when Dana was in labor with Emmeline, she kept screaming “agnolotti!” as motivation: I had promised to take her back to a restaurant, Quince, that served the best agnolotti in the world as our first post-baby date night. So we were pretty excited to find agnolotti at the French Laundry — it would be perfect, right? The veal heart stuffing was boozy with some fall spice — cinnamon? Clove? I don’t know — but the pasta itself was dry and stiff. Quince is still the agnolotti champion of the world.

It was after this that our friend, Joanne, asked the server for a break. Literally, she said we needed to rest a bit. And they let us. All four of us went across the street to the French Laundry gardens and milled around for twenty minutes or so, checking out the fruits and vegetables. (Our server said select dishes feature the garden produce but not everything — the garden is just not big enough to serve the restaurant day in and night out.) Still, it was a treat to see the links between the hard work in the soil and the finished products on the plate. If you ever happen to dine here, I would definitely recommend taking a break if possible and wandering the gardens. It’s almost literally a pain in the ass to sit through a four-hour dinner, so a break was worth it

Dana and me, wandering. (Please note: as a stay-at-home dad, I haven’t had to wear  a suit in years. So when I tried on my old wedding ensemble, it really hit home that I’d lost 30 pounds in the past six years. The suit fit like clown pajamas and I had to rush around to find something acceptable, so I hit up the Salvation Army and found the jacket for $7 and the slacks for $3.50. This was almost as exciting to me as the meal itself.)

Almost as soon as we sat town at the table again, a phalanx of servers arrived. For our cheese course, they gave us a “quiche” of cavatina goat cheese presented with garden tomatoes, arugula, roasted fennel and olives. The first bite of cheese and tomato was my favorite part of the entire meal. Perfect cheese. Fresh tomato. That’s it. The match was heavenly and melancholy at the same time. Because after all the hard work involved in the dishes and the steep prices, my favorite thing turned out to be the simplest — something you can make at home with farmers market produce. (This all made my wonder whether the French Laundry has lost its luster amid the boom of CSA boxes, farmers markets and organic produce. When it opened 15 plus years ago, the restaurant was a trend-setter in quality ingredients, just as Chez Panisse was before it. But I know from experience that Dana can come up with better dishes than some of the ones we had — and I liked most of what we had. Hmm, maybe that just means Dana is a rockstar and I am a spoiled food whore.) But I digress. The cheese course was delightful, the best dish of the night for me.

OK, so after all that, the simple palate cleansing sorbet dish before dessert was the best dessert I’d ever had in my life. Honeydew sorbet accompanied by summer melon slices, moscato d’asti and garden mint — a combination made in some special place in heaven. The meal could have ended there and I would have been happy. And then dessert came.

I had the garden strawberries with pistachio and white chocolate sorbet.

Dana had the “peaches and cream” with plums, honey mascarpone and vanilla bean-basil ice cream. Although we were both sharing bites throughout the entire meal, we almost forgot on this course because we just plowed in and couldn’t stop.

So this is me, pigging out in the garden after dinner. They gave us a third dessert — I forget actually what it was — as well as house made chocolates and coffee. Our friend asked if we could have our coffee course outside, and they happily agreed, setting up a table and chairs outside. We had spied other parties doing something similar, so we asked and there you go. I had a feeling that if we asked for a cot and a comfortable pillow, they probably would have pointed us toward a nap room.

All in all, we were there for a 1 p.m. lunch and we ended up leaving the restaurant close to 6 p.m. The garden break and the outside desserts made the whole experience almost dream like. It was a perfect day as far as atmosphere goes (even the lamps were detailed to match a laundry theme), although I have to say that out of our bazillion dishes, I was blown away by only two, whereas I remember being absolutely blown away by every dish at Healdsburg’s Cyrus or New York’s Masa. Maybe my expectations were set too high, but I was mildly disappointed to find dishes like the foie gras only OK. (See note above about obnoxious food snobbery — I warned you.)

After the entire event, and that’s really what it was like — a big event — our friend again asked for something and we soon found ourselves in the kitchen, getting a glimpse of the chefs as they prepared for the dinner service.

There was an air of military precision to the kitchen, with the executive chef barking out some call and answer questions that were responded to in unison by the staff. There was also a live uplink to Thomas Keller’s New York restaurant, Per Se, presumably so he can keep tabs on both kitchens at once. It speaks to the attention to detail you’ll see throughout the meal, I think — everything is ordered and perfect.

So there you go, a behind-the-scenes glimpse of our French Laundry meal. I normally hate to see people clicking away at their cell phones during meals, but I am nothing if not a hypocrite, and I really wanted to capture some of the dishes for this blog and to show our daughter. (She was in awe that we went to a restaurant that served ice cream cones for the meal.) Plus, I figured we’d never have a chance to go back, considering how ungodly expensive it is and how difficult it is to get a reservation.

In the end, I wish every dish had blown us away — those two other restaurants showed us it’s possible to wow even the worst food snobs — but again, maybe my expectations were off the charts considering what the French Laundry seems to evoke by mere mention. Overall, though, the entire experience of the garden walk and the garden coffees and the kitchen tour will probably make this one of our top three most memorable meals ever.