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"  &amp;quot;My house didn&amp;#039;t smell like other kids&amp;#039; houses,&amp;quot; says Michael Chiarello, chef-owner of Bottega, who was raised in northern California. &amp;quot;I grew up making cheese, olive oil, and prosciutto, growing tomatoes, and making our own wine.&amp;quot; In 1987, he opened Tra Vigne in Napa Valley, at the time a refuge for wealthy Californians seeking to reproduce the lifestyle they&amp;#039;d seen in Provence and Tuscany, and he went on to become an entrepreneur \u2014 products, pizzerias, books, Easy Entertaining for six years on the Food Network, Emmys, and a memorable run on last summer&amp;#039;s Top Chef Masters. He left Tra Vigne and stopped cooking professionally for nearly a decade. He&amp;#039;s back. &amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t take it anymore,&amp;quot; he says of not cooking. But he has no regrets about his time on the celebrity-chef bandwagon. &amp;quot;My ideas about food would have stagnated had I not taken those years off. Now I&amp;#039;m at Bottega six nights a week, and I look into my customers&amp;#039; eyes to see what and how they want to eat.&amp;quot; Chiarello returns not only to the kitchen but to his roots, serving a menu including crudo, house-cured salumi, homemade pickled vegetables, polenta cooked in a jar, and a local sweet-sour eggplant-and-goat-cheese lasagnette with red-pepper-tomato sauce. His new food holds you in thrall, and it&amp;#039;s served in a valley as beautiful as any on earth. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/reviews/a6527/bottega-yountville-california/>