Saratoga News

Dining

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Sent Sovi owner and chef Josiah Slone will host one of the restaurant's popular winemaker dinners on June 29. The event will feature the Portola Valley Chardonnay wines of Bob and Jim Varner.

Wining and dining will go well together at Sent Sovi

By Suzanne Cristallo

Josiah Slone is both chef and owner of Sent Sovi restaurant in Saratoga, but the titles do little to convey how much his heart rules his work. Diners, however, will be able to judge for themselves on June 29 when another of Slone's popular winemaker dinners is held.

Slone is featuring the Portola Valley chardonnay wines of Bob and Jim Varner for the fourth time in the three years he has owned the restaurant. "I was not a chardonnay fan until I met these guys," Slone says. "I'm really excited about their wine."

Slone, a self-described aficionado, does all of his own wine buying. He has spent hours with the Varner brothers going over the best pairing, tasting the wines and scribbling notes. Out of that process came the menu. "The menu has to have a kind of progression and texture to it, and the wines must progress as well," he says.

For the dinner on June 29, Slone will be using three "single block" chardonnays--that is, wines produced from grapes grown on three sections of the Varners' 13-acre vineyard. Each section has its own mini environment created by influences such as its position on the hillside and the soil. The resulting wines have distinctive, individual flavors. "The result is exquisite," Slone says. "The Varners are modest, but they've gotten big press. And they're right in our own back yard." He says Sent Sovi consumes over 1 percent of the Varner production that totals just 1,000 cases a year. "There's like a cult of Varner chardonnay fans," he grins. He jokes about being torn between wanting to promote the wines and fearing not having enough of the wines for himself.

Each of the chardonnays will be featured during the four-course menu. In addition, there will be a Varner pinot noir from Paso Robles. To start the evening, Slone plans a reception with a pouring of the pinot noir, accompanied by appetizers of poached prawns and various light cheeses. The first course is white corn soup with English pea puree with white truffelo. The second course is sole sauteed in brown butter and pickled shallots. To achieve the brown butter, a classic French technique is used where the butter is retrieved as soon as it begins turning brown over fire and just before burning, resulting in a nutty flavor. Third course is a crepinette--a small sausage patty--sauteed with pine nuts and the season's "stonefruit," such as apricot or peach. Fourth course is quail stuffed with red rice in a currant demi-glace. Dessert is a spiced peach and caramel tart.

Slone, 28, cooked in Jamaica and in several American locations before settling in Campbell. He emphasizes that the two components of his menu are flavors and techniques: flavors are drawn from seasonal ingredients, and techniques--such as the making of sauces--are French.

Are all of his dishes original creations? "None of these are standard dishes," Slone says, asking rhetorically, "Is there really such a thing as a new idea?" He says somewhere the combination of ingredients may have existed in someone else's mind and menu, but he is always trying to find a new way to put them together and to apply cooking techniques to them. "With wine, flavors need to be complemented or contrasted. You have to be able to imagine taste before trying to cook it," he says.

Reservations for the dinner and a prepayment of $100 plus tax and gratuity per person are required. Seating is intimate and limited.

Slone says he recommends seating a minimum of 10 people at each table to ensure the making of new friends and the sharing of the whole experience. "Everybody gets to talk about the wine and the food," he says. "It's a shared exploration instead of an individual experience." Sometimes it's even a match-making experience, he adds with a smile.

Sent Sovi, 14583 Big Basin Way in Saratoga, is open for dinner Tuesday to Sunday, 5­10 p.m. The Varner winemaker dinner on June 29 is at 7 p.m. Call 408.867.3110.