#We got in a few hours ago -- 18 hours driving over two days. The weather was a bit dicey in Northern CA but great everywhere else.
We stopped for dinner at a Basque restaurant in Los Banos -- about an hour from Jen's parents. OMFG! Good!
The place was called The Wool Growers and when I heard the name in the car, I thought of Thomas Keller's place The French Laundry. Amazing food but you are out $200/person for a full meal and you are spending a couple hours there.
Jen assured me that this was not the case. We find the place -- it's in a kind-of dingy ex hotel, we walk past the bar at the front and I am thinking great: Bar Food...
We keep walking past the bar room, past the bathrooms and through a single wooden door.
And into this big hall with six loong sets of tables -- family style seating and the aroma that hit me was amazing. Someone at the other end of the room flags us and holds up two fingers -- we hold up two; yes, we are a party of two. She motions us to two seats at the end of a long table and we sit down.
No menus. Our waitress comes over and says that we have lamb, prime rib, tri-tip and a few other things. Jen orders the lamb and since the prime rib is only medium rare, I go for the tri-tip. Bread is set out and a small bottle of a decent red table wine. Soup comes out. Homemade beans come out. Salad comes out. Potato salad comes out. A lamb stew comes out. Then, plates of lamb and tri-tip come out. We have a second bottle of wine (these are 375ml) and then some ice cream.
Then the bill comes out. On it is written "2X dinners - $40"
We are stuffed with hearty home cooking (plus wine) and the tab is only $20 each.
When I lived in Boston back in the late 1970's, I used to work for a local public Aquarium and went to Durgin-Park restaurant several times/week for lunch. That place had been there forever and had family style seating and was very informal. The Wool Growers struck me as being a lot like Durgin-Park was back then. I revisited a few years ago and it had gentrified a lot.
More on The Wool Growers here, here and more on Basque cuisine and tradition here and here.
Wonderful stuff -- my only regret is that Googling Whatcom County Basque doesn't really turn up any usable restaurant hits...
