Brix — Restaurant in Yountville

We travelled all the way from San Jose to experience fine dining at Brix, following remarkable reviews of the restaurant and having the option of a vegetarian menu.

Ambience: The ambience of the restaurant is nice and reminds of culinary experience in France amidst vineyards.

Food: Vegetarian Menu was highly disappointing. We checked the menu before we made a booking at the restaurant and were happy with the dishes offered. At arrival, we learnt that one of the dishes was replaced which did not bother us and we were still happy to try it.

For starters we ordered beans Tempura with Mustard sauce and butter lettuce salad with burrata. The Tempura was average and was not evenly coated in batter. The highlight of the dish was only the mustard sauce.

The butter lettuce with burrata had a description that it would contain seared tangerines and have a zesty citrus vinaigrette. The salad leaves were crispy and fresh, burrata tasted really good as well. However, there were only 6 or 7 leaves of lettuce, 3 small pieces of tangerines, few drops of hazelnut and barely any dressing. To us, the salad did not justify the description, as the hero of the dish were supposed to be tangerines and there was no taste of tangerine. Few shavings of horseradish, which did not have any taste as they were too thinly sliced. Apart from understanding that used ingredients had premium quality, I don't know what I ate. Moreover we learnt that not all used vegetables were from their farm, which was one of the highlights for us to visit Brix. To us pricing of the dish was overly exaggerated for what was offered.

For main course we ordered the newly introduced Spimach Gnocci with Goats Cheese and Mushroom Risotto.

Gnocchi with Goats cheese was covered with a thick layer of Cream Sauce. We digged in the sauce and struggled to find Gnocci pieces. The Gnocci was overcooked and melted with the sauce. We were confused whether we were eating vegetables or Gnocci. The bechamel sauce was entirely curdled, possibly due to wrong timing of cheese and lemon while cooking. By the end of the day, the dish was a mere lump of curdled sauce with few pieces of vegetables thrown in with lemon flavour, just nicely presented. At any restaurant, I have never been disappointed with Gnocci more.

The Mushroom risotto with a touch of truffle was decent, but not over the top. Someone who may not like truffle flavour, Brix may not have a single main course vegetarian dish that may please vegetarian taste buds.

From the main course experience we were highly disappointed with the experience and shared it with the staff. We even received a wrong table bill. We politely asked for our bill. The bill was in $$$ and we did not feel it was worth it. So overall, we may not visit Brix again for...

I don’t write reviews often, and rarely a negative one, so it really pains me to write this negative review of a place we have loved since our first anniversary. We have been going to Brix for over 15 years. We have loved it. We have recommended it to our colleagues, friends, and family. Until this past weekend, we have never had a negative experience before and the customer service has been excellent and on-point.

This past weekend we wanted to bring some family to a place we have loved for so long and they had what they described as one of their worst dining experiences in a long time — it really made us sad and marred an otherwise nice weekend for them. It started at the front desk. We had a previous reservation but decided to stop by in person to see if they had any earlier. The hostess told my wife they were booked all day. When we checked our phone, there were time slots open immediately and all afternoon so we just booked one online on the spot. When we showed the hostess our immediate reservation, she welcomed us and asked if we wanted to cancel our later reservation. That seemed really odd after she told us there were no reservations all day and we were able to book one online as she was telling us that. It probably should have been a sign but we continued on.

The scenery at Brix is beautiful and we tried to put the incident behind us. We didn’t want to ruin the lunch. Maybe there was some sort of electronic error. My wife was really bothered by the attitude though that was used to convey the information. I tried to tell her maybe it was just an isolated incident and the person was having a bad day. Our server started out well and I told her to try and put the front desk behind her. Let’s enjoy the scenery.

Things seemed like they would turn but then the food caused a whole new problem. I couldn’t believe it because this has never happened to us before. We had to actually send the hot dishes back because they were cold. This continued on with drinks. I don’t want to pile on but everybody was just anxious to leave as soon as possible and I gave in after trying over and over in hopes maybe the service would turn around. To be honest, I’m now worried about all the recommendations we made for Brix to others. I want to believe we can keep going there as we have for over 15 years and continue to recommend it to others but don’t want to be embarrassed as we were this weekend when we brought visitors. I really hope this was isolated and Brix’s customer service is still solid. We have a lot of great memories there and honestly we’re just really sad how it affected the weekend and worried about...

I regret to give constructive criticism here. I do it as a service to management, hoping they can turn things around. I know it has been dificult since covid for all restaurants. I've been a number of times. The food is high quality at an affordable price, given the area.

We had at least 10 flies around our food and wine, and we were sitting indoors! I've never seen this before at a restaurant.

I complained to the waiter. I wasn't terribly negative, more in disbelief. We asked to be moved to another table. He said the flies would come anywhere we moved within the indoor restaruant area. Outside he explained, there are bees. We stayed at our table, flies definitely landing on our food and wine glasses. He brought over fans, specifically designed to scare away flies. I may not have resisted the fan idea if I knew he was bringing fly fans. They worked mostly, and by and large we enjoyed conversation and food.

What made it worse. At one point, he joked it's my friend's body odor that was attracting the flies. We knew it was a joke; it's just not the professionalism I've come to rely on at Brix over the years. He also used very informal language at times. You don't have to sound like an English butler; just like a professional who is here to be of service. We serve people all week at our day jobs.

What made it much worse. He explained to my friend in Spanish about the bees and flies. My friend said he grew up with flies at meals, growing up in Mexico. From then on, the waiter ignored the rest of us (we had a Colombian at our table too, he ignored her too). The waiter then gave my friend a full glass of wine for free, explaining it's because he is his "Mexican brother" (my friend translated this for us the best he could after receiving the wine) and for the inconvenience. Of course, my friend shared the wine with us and he also seemed a little surprised by the waiter's behavior.

The 5 of us were all equally impacted. Obviously the best etiquette, on the waiter's part, in the situation would have been to offer all of us some kind of gesture in apology for the fly inconvenience. Problem solved and I'd be doing my day job instead of writing this review. My friends and I are not terribly offended anything. It just seems uncharacteristic service for this otherwise wonderful restaurant.

I think the waiter is a good person and needs training on how to be a waiter. He seems very new to it, following his passions, instead of being of...