Pawlcyn's Mustards Grill turns 40
By Sasha Paulsen
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — In June Cindy Pawlcyn is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Mustards Grill, her Napa Valley roadhouse diner extraordinaire that has not only endured as other restaurants have come and gone but led the way in defining Wine Country cuisine.
Where were you in 1983?
Ronald Reagan was president of the United States, Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of the United Kingdom and AIDS was the terrifying pandemic ravaging the world. It looked like we would dodge the dire future George Orwell’s “1984” had predicted, and although, Jan. 1, 1983, is “officially considered the birth of the Internet,” according to “A Brief History of the Internet” from the University System of Georgia, today’s social media world of instant hyperconnectedness was unimagined by most of us.
If you were in Napa Valley in the early 1980s, you might recall a slowly changing world. The fame of Napa wines was growing, but it was still on the other side of the explosive growth the 1990s would bring. The first Napa Valley Vintners’ Wine Auction in 1981 was a homey affair. 1983 was the year the AVA (American Viticultural Area) system was introduced. Robert Parker was just beginning to exert his influence.
The culinary scene, however, gave few hints of the mecca it would become. Domaine Chandon had opened an elegant French-influenced restaurant in 1977, and Auberge du Soleil followed in 1981. The French Laundry already existed in Yountville. Opened in a former laundry by Don and Sally Schmidt in 1978, it offered a popular prix-fixe menu, but it would be more than a decade before Thomas Keller would buy the restaurant and transform it into the valley’s first three-Michelin-star destination. Other iconic restaurants — Bistro Don Giovanni, Cole’s Chop House, Angèle — were years away, too.
“Though hard to imagine now, on its first visit to Northern California wine country in the 1970s, Condé Nast labeled the region ‘a culinary desert,’” Trefethen Family Vineyards writes on its website. “This posed a problem for the early winemaking families of Napa Valley, who, having often fallen in love with wine while traveling through Europe, understood wine in the context of food, as a historical accompaniment to a memorable meal with family and friends. Unfortunately, while Napa wines began to distinguish themselves in faraway cities like New York, London and Paris, when people from these places came to visit the Napa Valley, they found that the quality of the local cuisine rarely lived up to the quality of the wines.”
Janet Trefethen was one of the vintners who tackled the challenge in 1973, when she founded Napa Valley cooking classes in 1973 and for 25 years invited great chefs come to Trefethen Winery.
Another attempt to elevate local food — and consumers’ tastes — to match fine wines was the Great Chefs series at the Robert Mondavi Winery.
Cindy Pawlcyn participated in both enterprises.
From the heart of America
Pawlcyn, originally from Minnesota, grew up in a family with deep interest in food and gardens. Her father, an immigrant from Russia, founded a potato chip company; her mother was of German and Norwegian ancestry.
Pawlcyn’s first experiences in the culinary world began early. At 13 she worked in Minneapolis cooking, and in high school she ran her own catering business. She earned a hotel and restaurant management degree from the University of Wisconsin-Stout and studied at Le Cordon Bleu and La Varenne in Paris before working at The Pump Room in Chicago.
In 1980 she moved to California to take a job at MacArthur Park restaurant in San Francisco, but when she came to Napa Valley that year to take part in the Great Chefs program, Pawlcyn said she suddenly found herself out of her job in the city.
“So I stayed,” she said. “I came up not planning to move here but ended up never leaving.”
She became the opening chef at Meadowood in St. Helena and then joined Bruce LeFavour, another pioneer of California cuisine and the farm-to-table movement, who opened Rose et LaFavour restaurant in St. Helena in 1981. (It closed in 1987.)
By 1983, however, Pawlcyn was ready to go out on her own.
“The only thing I ever wanted to do was to own a restaurant,” Pawlcyn said. “This had been my dream from childhood.”
With experience and knowledge of the valley, she opened Mustards Grill, taking its name from the wild mustard flowers that bloom in the vineyards in winter.
“Mustard is an integral part of Napa Valley’s wine-growing diversity,” Pawlcyn said. “It makes for one heck of a condiment, and it doesn’t look too shabby in the springtime, either.”
Visitors to her “deluxe truck stop” on Highway 29 just north of Yountville discovered classic American dishes transformed by technique and ingredients into something special, all in a comfortable setting — and an extraordinary wine list that resembles pages from an old-time telephone book.
“A plate of honest American fare with worldly sophistication, washed down with a glass of the valley’s finest,” is the way one fan described it.
It drew in the locals, winemakers sharing their creations, chefs on their night off, businesspeople entertaining clients and others just relaxing after a hard day of work. And where the locals go, the tourists follow.
“People showed up; that was the biggest honor for me,” Pawlcyn said. ”It has always been about the staff and customers. I have devoted staff, now cherished friends, who have been with me for over 22 years and regular customers who have been with us throughout the 40 years we’ve been here. I’ve realized my dream, thanks to these people.”
In 2004 Pawlcyn brought in restaurant industry veteran Sean Knight as director of operations at Mustards Grill. Now managing partner, he has been integral to the expansion of their culinary enterprises, which now include a Cindy’s Waterfront at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Mustards Grill at the San Francisco airport. They’ve tried other restaurants, including Go Fish and Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, but Mustards Grill remains the steadfast star.
“Over the past 20 years, I’m very proud of what Cindy and I have been able to accomplish with the business of Mustards Grill, but what I’m most proud of is the partnership and friendship we enjoy,” Knight said.
“There have been ups and downs,” Pawlcyn said, “but mostly ups.”
In 2014 Pawlcyn and her husband, John Watanabe, were injured in a head-on collision in the Carneros when a driver crossed the center divide of the highway. In the Glass Fire of 2020 she lost her home and her library of nearly 4,000 cookbooks. Both times friends and fans weighed in with support. In 2020 they donated their own cookbooks to rebuild her collection.
“The people are the best part,” Pawlcyn said.
On the greater stage she has taken part in creating other restaurants, including Fog City Diner in San Francisco and Buckeye Roadhouse,
A three-time finalist for the Outstanding Restaurateur Award from the James Beard Foundation, she is the author of five cookbooks: “Fog City Diner Cookbook,” “Big Small Plates,” “Appetizers,” “Cindy’s Supper Club” and “Mustards Grill Napa Valley Cookbook,“ which won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best American Cookbook.
What’s ahead?
She plans to continue at Mustard’s, where she is in the kitchen three or four days a week.
“And I’m going to take a watercolor class unless Sean gets a new idea,” she said with a chuckle.
“I come and go, thanks to the best staff in the world,” she said. “I just get ideas; they execute them.”
Does she have any favorite dishes on the menu?
“That depends on the season,” she said. “Right now it’s grilled corn. We do it with chive butter. It just sings.”
While much of the menu is inspired daily by the expansive gardens adjacent to the restaurant, Pawlcyn said many of the dishes are enduring items.
“I have very opinionated customers,” she said.” I can’t change the pork chop. I can’t change the onion rings. Or the Jack Daniel’s cake.”
Nor, for that matter, could she ever leave off her famous Lemon-Lime Tart with its mile-high meringue, recently described by fan Suzanne Shiff on Facebook as “still the very best lemon meringue pie in the solar system.”
The celebration
Pawlcyn and Knight marked the 40th anniversary by reviving many past favorites on a special menu and serving wines from 1983 over a festive weekend.
“It had a good feeling, like a party but still being open,” Pawlcyn said. “It couldn’t have been better.”
More importantly, she added, they have created a “40 for 40” online wine auction to help feed the hungry in the valley.
Winery friends have contributed 40 lots that include signed magnums. These include Barbour Vineyards, Cade Estate Winery, Caymus Vineyards, Chappellet, Colgin Cellars, Corra Wines, Diamond Creek Vineyards, EnRoute Vineyards, Favia, Far Niente, Gamble Family Vineyards, Gargiulo Vineyards, Grgich Hills Estate, Groth Vineyards, HALL Wines, Heitz Cellar, Honig Vineyard & Winery, Hundred Acre, Joseph Phelps Vineyard, Kongsgaard Wine, Lail Vineyards, Lang & Reed Napa Valley, Larkin Wines, Melka Estates, Napa Cellars, Nickel & Nickel, Opus One, Paradigm Winery, Peter Michael Winery, Plumpjack Estate Winery, Pride Mountain Vineyards, Rivers-Marie, Scarecrow, Seaver Vineyards, Shafer Vineyards, Silver Oak, Spottswoode Winery, Staglin Family Vineyard, Tamber Bey Vineyards, Trefethen Family Vineyard and Turnbull Wine Cellars.
The auction benefits Community Action Napa Valley (which operates the Napa Valley Food Bank, Meals on Wheels and the Napa Food Pantry, which has seven locations, in American Canyon, Napa, St. Helena (serving Yountville), Calistoga, Angwin, Berryessa and Pope Valley.
In addition, CANV supports many other Napa-based nonprofits by providing access to food for their emergency services. By the numbers, CANV helps nearly 48,000 individuals, families and seniors each year, distributing more than 3,000,000 pounds of food while delivering nearly 500 meals daily, totaling more than 130,000 annually.
“I’ve always believed the secret of running a good restaurant is based on the staff and customers, and I’m overwhelmed at the generosity of our many longtime customers and friends who have contributed so generously to the benefit of safety-net food programs in the Napa Valley,” Pawlcyn said. “I’m so grateful that others will benefit from our 40 years in business.”
The auction closes at 11:59 p.m. PDT on Friday, June 30. To register and bid, visit here.
For more information on Mustards Grill, visit mustardsgrill.com.
Sasha Paulsen is a Napa Valley-based journalist and novelist.