The French Laundry Launches Culinary Garden Tours

For the first time in nearly 50 years, The French Laundry will be offering 75-minute guided tours of its private culinary garden that spans multiple acres. Across the road from the famed restaurant in Yountville and through the garden gate, a docent will walk visitors through rows of fruits and vegetables, offering a whiff of herbs and flowers, and chance to meet a few chickens and honey bees. Guests of The French Laundry have always been welcome to take a casual stroll before dinner, but these newly launched seasonal tours are open to anyone who books a reservation.

Long before Thomas Keller became a F&W Best New Chef in 1988, The French Laundry received three Michelin stars in 2007, and it all became a slice of American food history, there’s always been a little kitchen garden. Remember, Sally and Don Schmitt opened The French Laundry in 1978, and ran it for 16 years until Keller bought it in 1994. So it either just celebrated a 30th anniversary, or is about to hit a 50th, depending how you tell time. Original chef and owner Sally Schmitt grew a handful of herbs just outside the back door, Keller describes. By the time he arrived, they had six raised beds in the backyard, as well as scattered rosemary bushes and fennel plants. 

The garden grew somewhat organically across the decades, and Keller eventually bought a few additional acres across the street. There have been several gardeners, first chef de partie Scott Boggs, then wine country star Tucker Taylor, and Aaron Keefer, who subsequently switched to cannabis. It’s now tended by James Costello and Teresa Kao, and Costello was a notable choice, given his formal landscaping background, coming from the historic Filoli estate in Woodside. A couple of years ago, Costello was gazing at the garden, and Keller declared he wanted to level it. “The French Laundry is a very manicured place,” Keller says. After all those sprawling years, “I wanted to bring it up to the level of the experience that The French Laundry has. I felt it wasn’t at the aesthetic level.” 

Today the garden unfurls across 3.5 acres, arranged in a rectangle with tidy rows. It’s home to more than 150 different varieties of fruits and vegetables, microherbs and flowers, as well as about 30 chickens and thousands of honey bees. It supplies not only The French Laundry, but also Bouchon, Ad Hoc, and the other local restaurants. Previously, the garden was wide open to the public, but after a few unfortunate incidents with people pilfering plants, a front gate and perimeter hedges were added to make it a little more secluded. 

The guided tour must be reserved in advance, and it runs seasonally, spring through fall, for $100 per person. Arriving at the garden gate, you’ll meet a docent, and wait for a small group to gather. Walking through rows of fruits and vegetables, you might pause to pull a purple plum radish from the ground or pop a Mara des Bois strawberry off the vine. Stepping through the hoop house, brush flats of teeny tiny microherbs, and taste a scissor snip of mint, basil, or salad burnet. Around the corner, in their midcentury-styled coop, hens lay brown and blue eggs. Just beyond, a gnarled eucalyptus trunk buzzes with honey bees. Stroll back through edible and decorative flowers, and stop to sniff the sweet peas. In fine dining style, there might be a few surprises, like a scoop of sorbet, glass of bubbles, or rustic tote to take home. 

If you come back for dinner that evening, you can fully digest what you’ve seen. There were bygone days when cooks scurried across the street in clogs to fill up a pint deli of microgreens, but Keller insists they’re more organized now. The gardeners carry flats of produce in precise quantities across the street every day in the early afternoon. That means that cherry tomato was picked only a few hours ago and never suffered in transit. Keller estimates 70 percent of the dishes feature something from the garden, in iconic preparations like the cover crop salad, black truffled custard, and honey ice cream, as well as herbs scattered over everything.  

Of course, The French Laundry has access to the best farms in California. “I would correct that,” Keller interjects. “Some of the best farms in the world.” So why bother with gardening only a few acres? He believes the garden offers an education for cooks. “Certainly, it elevates the level of respect the team has for food, and where it comes from, how it’s grown, who grows it.” It also enriches the experience for diners, and especially since the pandemic, farm-to-table tours have become more popular, from SingleThread in Sonoma to Blackberry Farm in Tennessee. The French Laundry has been doing this for a long time, right in their own backyard and across the road, although on a much smaller — dare we say precious — garden scale. But at the end of the day, it’s a similar experience, offering a simple pleasure. 

Keller loves to spend time walking through the garden. He’ll have a couple of eggs for breakfast, and sip a cup of coffee, while contemplating the rows. “It’s very peaceful. It connects you to nature. Just watching how rapidly things grow.” By the time he crosses the street and ducks through the blue door at 7:30 a.m., the team has already been busy for a couple of hours, firing up prep before dawn to get your dinner on the table that night.