Santi: A mouthful of Mussels

Restaurant: Santi

Location: Geyserville, CA

Last night I took my husband to Santi, a restaurant that we have frequented since it opened it doors, in the small ghostlike town of Geyserville.

This town is a gem, wedged between Healdsburg and Cloverdale, and about one block long.

You can take the long road back to Healdsburg (Hwy 128) and it is the sweetest drive dotted with old country homes, Victorians and cottages and a bridge that brings you back across the valley in to Healdsburg.

Geyserville is what brought us to Santi in the first place. It was a perfect excuse to visit this tiny town after hours. (After house in wine country = after 4pm when all the tasting rooms close down.)

We fell in love, hard and fast, with Santi. It was undiscovered, local and hidden.

Last night we were excited to revisit one of our old familiars; it’s been over a year since our last visit with our sudden departure back to San Francisco.

I’m sad to say that while we've been away some things have changed about a place we’ve loved so much from its inception.

We were well received at reception and taken right to our table.

A few small things revealed themselves right away - my missing bread plate, the candle in the center of our table that lost its flame only to regain it towards the end of a bittersweet meal.

Service is one of the standards that set Santi aside for so long.

We ordered wine and Cozze Marinara – steamed mussels, tomato, oregano, garlic, white wine and a (yes, singular) crostini drenched in olive oil.

Have you even had a mouthful of mussels?

Upon first bite the oregano came into focus, immediately. It was overpowering and inappropriate.

The size of the mussels sent my husband off on an inappropriate rant about topic I will not regress into out of respect for my fellow female comrades.

The sauce left much to be desired, what that was to desire I don’t know because there was only ONE crostini.

Who serves a bowl of mussels with one crostini?

Dipping crostini in steamed mussel sauce is like a cigarette after sex, if you smoke – I don’t and frankly smoking disgusts me but I get the nuance and feel that it’s most appropriate in this context.

You and your date devour a delish pot of sinuous mussels and then dredge crusty crostini back through the sauce revisiting the slow creep of melding flavors.

Unfortunately, we were unable to have this experience last night. But, those big, fleshy mussels that looked like they’d been raised on steroids in a bucket back in the kitchen were delicious.

Perhaps the one crostini, sitting precariously on the edge of the bowl like an afterthought, was a blessing in disguise because I was not in love with the combination of flavors melding beneath my mussels.

From the “antipasti” assortments we ordered two salads – we weren’t playing. Santi used to make the most incredible Caesar salad. I distinctly remember suffering through dinner at Santi in 2004, 8 months pregnant, and unable to eat this Caesar due to the raw egg.

It was not on the menu, so we ordered two salads: Insalata di Mele – greens, apple, medjool dates, Gorgonzola, sherry shallot vinaigrette and Insalata di Funghi: local, roasted wind mushrooms, prosciutto, radicchio, frisee and an J&O egg.

The di Mele was delicious – the Gorgonzola and vinaigrette were wonderful in symphony. Everything included in this salad was just enough.

The di Funghi, clearly the more glamorous looking of the two, left so much to be desired I am still mad that I wasted my precious taste buds, calorie budget and gastric span on such a pile of tasteless morsels.

That said, the presentation was impressive.

On top of a stack of radicchio and frisee sat a pyle of mushrooms, crowned with a fried egg. The mushrooms were tough and cold and they were not woody, as one would expect. Chewing through this salad felt like a marathon effort.

The dressing was boring; I kept stealing Gorgonzola from the di mele to flavor each bite.

The egg was cold, just like its friends the mushrooms.

For dinner we ordered the Galletto sotto Mattone con Zucca and Tagliatelle con Funghi Selvatica.

The first “secondi” the Galletto sotto Mattone con Zucca – known at my house as chicken under a brick wrapped in foil – was wonderful. It always has been, as we’ve ordered this on almost every visit. The chicken was cooked to perfection, crispy skin, delish. Perfect. Don’t mess with perfection.

The problem was the squash puree pooling underneath the crisp, golden chicken.

Why are you serving this perfect specimen of culinary excellence on squash puree that belongs in a soup bowl or a nursing home cafeteria? Whatever happened to potatoes? That’s how it used to be back in the day.

Moving on, the shaved Brussels sprouts with crispy pancetta was wonderful. It was almost akin to a Brussels sprout hash, seasoned perfectly – wonderful, almost competing with the star, the chicken.

The Tagliatelle con Funghi Selvatica was essentially house made pasta, wild mushrooms (yes, it was like a curse – I thought I was screwed as I sat and ate the salad anticipating the pasta) herbs and parmigiano.

The house made pasta was ok. I’ve had better at Big Johns.

I think it was a little too al denti – and I like my pasta firm.

The sauce was ok – it was buttery but not white but with a nice consistency. The mushrooms were MUCH better in the pasta because they were warm as opposed to roasted and then left out in the cold to fend for themselves under an even colder egg – I digress, I am still upset about the salad.

I requested salt, two bites in, from the kitchen and was presented with a black Hawaiian salt and sea salt. This helped but it was still sad and not as satisfying as I had hoped.

Again, I found myself stealing from my husband’s plate (the crispy pancetta this time) to add that little bit, little bite of complexity, that I so wanted to experience in my dish.

And that, my friends, sums up my experience at Santi last night – it was off; that little bit of extra that makes a dish a home run, an experience, a mouthful of pure pleasure, was out of reach.

I won’t go into coffee and dessert – they were both ok.

The best part of the meal was the company.

All this said, I would try again, sometime in the future.