How We Picnic

If someone invited me to an effortful, elegant picnic with silverware, tiny salt and pepper shakers, and packed containers of marinating cheeses, roasted game birds, salads, and tarts, I’d be delighted. But my idea of picnicking is different: grab a sandwich, a bottle of wine, let’s hike. Sandwiches are the only perfect, portable picnic food, and to be properly enjoyed, a sandwich should be eaten outdoors. Sandwiches benefit from terroir and from the appetite that accompanies exertion.

The first time I gave sandwiches my full attention, I was ten or twelve years old, a bored and ambitious child living in a rural postal zone. The children’s magazine I subscribed to announced a sandwich recipe competition; the winning child would appear on the cover of the magazine, along with their sandwich. I was captivated. This would have been 1979 or perhaps 1982.

I began a deep and thorough study of my mother’s cookbooks for inspiration, and that is how I came upon the most magnficent sandwich I’d ever seen—the frosted sandwich loaf. Why she had never made this sandwich I didn’t know. This was it; I was sure that I would appear on the glossy magazine cover holding my rendition of this alpha sandwich with its wedding cake white, cream cheese exterior and pastel layers of deviled meat, egg salad, and sliced cucumbers.

Vintage cookbook with a rendition of the sandwich loaf. (Mine, of course, was prettier!)

How I labored on building that sandwich! I decorated its body with sliced black olives, pimentos, and almonds. Did it taste good? I can’t remember. But I remember waiting in alert discomfort for a year after I submitted my recipe, plus photo (the rest of the film roll would have to be used up before my mother would drive to the drug store and drop the film off to be developed. Followed by two week’s wait for the dim, brown-hued glossies to arrive) and essay about why I loved my sandwich.

I expected the call any day—or perhaps it would be a letter—congratulating me on my winning sandwich. What other child would have had the patience to research as I had? Who else would have the technical ambition? When the magazine finally arrived with the winning child and his sandwich on the cover, I was crushed. My mother consoled me by saying that my sandwich was so beautiful, the panel of judges likely thought I hadn’t done all the work myself.

But I grasped in that moment how the boy on the cover differed from me—gap-toothed, freckled and grinning, he held out a sandwich of sprouts, carrots, raisins, and avocado on brown bread—natural, on-trend, cool. Oh, how I had missed the mark! He had captured the essence of a sandwich—its casualness and ease.

On some minor level, I don’t think I’ve ever stopped thinking about sandwiches, what makes them delectable, what separates the mouth-watering from the merely filling. A great sandwich is among the most delicious foods in the world. I aspire to always have the makings of a good sandwich in my kitchen, because a sandwich and a glass of wine is a satisfying dinner. A bad sandwich, an airport sandwich? So depressing.

The best sandwiches have a tension between hot and cold, sweet and savory, or soft and crisp—maybe all three. Consider the bánh mì, for example. Whenever Kristof and I are in Santa Rosa, an hour’s drive from Napa, we go to a cash-only store front called Thuận Phát Vietnamese Sandwich and then take our picnic to a nearby park. If you order the grilled pork, the warm, savory meat contrasts nicely with the cool, sweet, pickled vegetables. If you order the head cheese, the pleasantly snappy consistency of the meat contrasts nicely with the pillowy yet crisp roll.

Homemade bánh mì with crisp yet tender, garlicky meatballs, fresh herbs, and quick-pickled vegetables.

The base of one’s sandwich, bread or roll, is the single most important factor in its overall enjoyability, I think. A bánh mì on a too-thick Dutch Crunch roll or a too-hard baguette that scrapes the roof of the mouth is ruinous. When I make a bánh mì at home, I have the best result with soft bollilos, Mexican dinner rolls. I make all kinds of picnic bánh mì sandwiches at home from shredded rotisserie chicken, pork meatballs, even pâté, but if I’m serious about making a good one, it’s going to include a trip to a Mexican market for bread.

Even Napa’s Mexican markets don’t seem to stock the particular roll I’m dreaming of when it comes to Mexican tortas. I can replicate the shredded chicken with slow-cooked onion and green pepper from our favorite torta spot in the world, Roberto’s in San Diego. But I can’t replicate the sweet, substantial roll, lightly dusted on the outside with flour, slid across the hot grill for a smoky patina. Kristof grew up in a building next door to Roberto’s and across from the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, the smell of Mexican food and sea salt thick in the air.

I love to take a backpack full of tortas to Alston Park in Napa, especially for a Mother’s Day hike. We park in the north parking lot and head up the hill to find a picnic table that overlooks vineyard. The 157-acre park has easy trails and wildflower-carpeted, rolling hills in the springtime.

Or sometimes we take a steeper hike through Napa’s 98-acre Westwood Hills Park, which also has scenic vineyard views and a panoramic view of downtown Napa.

Tourists to Napa line up for Bouchon Bakery’s patisserie and for the famous ham and cheese sandwich, a baguette spread with sweet butter and Dijon mustard and layered with ham and Emmenthaler cheese. How simple is that? Nothing green in sight but tiny cornichon pickles on the side. If I’m going to have a French sandwich, I’m going to make it myself with slices of pâté from Fatted Calf at the Oxbow Public Market. What could be simpler or more satisfying than a country pâté sandwich with mustard and microgreens and a side of cornichons?

Sometimes we’ll pack sandwiches and drive up-valley to the Rector Reservoir Wildlife Area, 433 acres just north of Yountville Cross Road, off the Silverado Trail. The 3.4-mile hike is steep and is considered challenging, and in the spring the footing can be slippery with water runoff, but the views at the top are stunning.

View of the Napa Valley from Rector Reservoir Wildlife Preserve.

I don’t think there’s a more romantic date, really, than a picnic. And if I wanted to pull out all the stops, I’d surprise Kristof with lobster rolls in split-top hot dog buns and pack them with potato chips. The last summer we traveled in Maine, every restaurant, even McDonald’s, had a fantastic lobster roll. But for me, making this sandwich involves significant effort. For starters, I’ve had one too many tough boiled or steamed lobsters, so I’d rather grill or poach my lobster in garlic butter and white wine. Then I’ll fill the buns with buttery meat and sprinkle on a good handful of garden herbs.

In April or May, we’ll drive to the 1,600-acre Moore Creek Park in St. Helena for the spectacular poppy superbloom. Valentine Vista trail is a moderately-challenging 4-mile trail with spots where a picnic blanket (and a bottle of SANNA Sauvignon Blanc) would come in handy.

Frying up a batch of Korean fried chicken also takes effort, so if I find someone who makes a good sandwich, I’m happy to outsource. Kristof and I love to get sandwiches at The Dutch Door in downtown Napa for a casual dinner and picnic on the Oxbow Commons or the Oxbow Preserve. Ditto frying up oysters for an oyster po’ boy, so I’m mightily tempted to pick mine up at Hog Island Oyster Co. at the Oxbow Public Market.  

A sandwich, like a wine, should have freshness and purity and also a quality I call revisitability. Meaning one doesn’t tire of it. A leftover half should be a treat the next day. I once worked for a wine writer who notoriously burned through employees; few lasted longer than a year. Tasting and writing about wine professionally taught me many things, some of them inadvertent. We might taste 100 Napa Valley Cabs without a break, or attend the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux tasting and swish and spit Bordeaux wines for four hours straight. We might taste a lineup of 20 Sauvignon Blancs in our office at the end of the day, when everyone was fatigued, making quick decisions about which (if any) merited a write-up.

During this time, I enthusiastically bought some of the wines we tasted for my personal cellar, only to find, much to my surprise, that when I opened them at home to enjoy at leisure, they were undrinkable! That crushable, chilled Chinon that seemed like such a deal that I bought six bottles? There’s nothing worse than a chilled red lacking fruit that flirts with Brett. That flashy Sauvignon Blanc with great aromatics, tropical and brioche flavors, and a hint of minerality? It might taste winning at first sip, but not if you sat down to a whole glass of it or paired it with food.

The same situation can occur with a sandwich that’s too much. Near my office, at that time, was a once-famous bakery that seemed a bit worn at the edges. One rainy day, I picked up their hot, crisp, fried chicken sandwich for lunch and devoured it. Forward to a year and three months later: I’d picked up a fried chicken sandwich but was distracted by some urgent request, so it was cold when I came back to it. When I zapped it in the microwave, it seemed to bleed oils from every pore, weeping and seeping from the rich brioche bun, the salty fried chicken, the aioli, the vinaigrette and pickles, the limp slaw. Possibly, the sandwich reflected my emotional state at the time (I quit soon after) or simply didn’t reheat well; all I knew is that I would never revisit it. A good sandwich, like a good friend or bottle of wine, should not overwhelm the senses or outlast its welcome but rather draw one back again and again, quietly and honestly.

How much should a sandwich cost? It’s a hot topic in 2024, and I recently got sticker shock buying a delicious shrimp shawarma sandwich for $18 at the Moro Moroccan Street Food counter at Oxbow. Which, since I enjoy cooking, shows how infrequently I dine out. According to Moneygeek.com, the average price of a burger, fries, and drink in San Francisco is $18; prices for that basic fast food meal have risen 24% from 2022 to 2024. So, I’m calling my fresh, juicy sandwich dripping with a mild yet robustly flavorful harissa well worth it. Replicating the handmade flatbread alone would be a feat.

But it also makes the sandwich something of a treat, and if the whole family is hiking, I’ll have to pack the picnic at home. Sandwiches are starting to enter the same pricing territory as a bottle of wine. If you order a Subway Footlong and Doordash it with a tip, it could set you back $35. Interestingly, the general public still balks at spending around $20 on a bottle of wine, which gives you approximately 5 glasses and therefore costs a lot less than a drink at Starbucks when the price per pour is considered. So, that’s weird, isn’t it?

Gott’s Roadside offers a special dungeness crab sandwich this winter of ‘24/’25 to celebrate crabbing season that goes for $30 a sandwich, fries and drink not included. I thought I’d see what a $30 sandwich has to offer. The portion of succulent crab was generous and looked carefully measured by the gram. I don’t doubt that you could take that same portion, put it on ice and serve it in a fine dining restaurant with cocktail sauce for twice the amount.

Was it worth it? It was delicious, if plain, just very fresh, sweet crab, brioche bun, mayo, and romaine lettuce leaf. A little lemon on the side. For me, personally, I prefer the tedious work that goes into cracking a whole crab and dipping the little bites of cold meat into warm butter. And if a sandwich I consumed in 8 minutes can cost $30 and nobody blinks an eye, NO ONE better ever complain about the price of a bottle of our $100 Cabernet Sauvignon made from hand-farmed grapes and aged in new French oak barrels for two years.

Cold deli sandwiches range from $13 to $20 in the Napa Valley, and if I’m going to pay that much, I expect extraordinary quality. I’m not a fan of a certain type of gourmet deli sandwich I see in Napa: I’d describe it as a cold, chubby, lumpen, artisan stack. It has altogether too much bread and probably too much of everything, so that you have to deconstruct the sandwich and move things around before you can even bite into it. Slabs and swathes of turkey, pesto, goat cheese, arugula, and aioli, each of which is a delicious food on its own, yet when combined I find uncompelling, boring even.

Recently I brought sandwiches from Genova Delicatessen to the airport with me when I picked up our daughter, visiting with her boyfriend, and we took them to Fort Point National Historic Site under the Golden Gate Bridge. Genova now has tier 1, 2, and 3 pricing for their sandwiches. I like the pared-down elegance of the specialty sandwiches ($16), which are made without lettuce, tomatoes, sprouts, and all the fixings, so that you can focus on the quality of a few ingredients, in our case Genoa salami, prosciutto, mortadella, provolone, marinated mushrooms, roasted peppers, and oil and vinegar. They were tasty and bolstering as we picnicked in the cool fog before driving to the hot valley.

Until recently, our daughter Pella, a full-time college student, worked the deli slicer and made sandwiches at a shop where the business model seemed to be hiring young women who didn’t “need” health or retirement benefits and working them 30 hours a week. Most of the employees were German Baptist women in long skirts, their hair pulled tight in buns with net caps. It makes me think about the people who make your deli sandwich, the intimacy that goes into arranging the layers.

Our daughter Sanna, who just graduated from high school, works in a juice, smoothie, and açai bowl shop. I don’t think the well-heeled customers who become impatient waiting for their shot of wheat grass understand that there are only two teenagers at work, not an adult in sight, grinding through their shifts, filling online orders, and harnessing the energy of youth because, as Sanna puts it, she’s “making bank.”

How delicious are breakfast sandwiches? The first time I visited Kristof’s parents in San Diego, we picked up Breakfast Jack sandwiches from Jack in the Box one afternoon and took them to the beach. My point here is that you can never go wrong with an egg sandwich, lightly dotted with hot sauce, the lacy edges of the fried egg crisp, especially when eaten outdoors. Unless you develop an egg allergy, as Kristof has after getting COVID-19. A coincidence? I’m not sure. For many years we had a backyard flock of chickens, and my motto may as well have been “put an egg on it,” because I added a fried egg to just about everything. One of my favorite desserts to make was a chocolate mousse sabayon that incorporated ten raw eggs, separated.

Breakfast sandwiches sans egg seem lame, so we’ve taken a different approach: lox and bagels. Kristof can eat smoked salmon like no other person I’ve met, except maybe our daughter Pella. Swedes must have a seafood gene, because those two can wake up first thing in the morning and snack on anchovies out of a tin, while I have to ease my way towards brunching hours before lox looks good to me. One of our favorite bagel sandwiches comes from the Toasted stand at Napa Farmer’s Market.

Bagel from Toasted at Napa Farmer’s Market.

No list of delectable picnic sandwiches would be complete without Barbeque. I think it’s a safe bet that if a parking lot is crammed with white work trucks, you’ll find yourself a delicious meal. If we’re in Calistoga, we’ll stop at Buster’s Southern BBQ, where a tri-tip or pulled pork sandwich with one side is only $13.50. You could take the sandwich to a park, but the hot meat is so messy and mouthwatering, that we have to eat it on-site.

Whenever we’re driving back to Napa from the Sacramento Airport, we try to stop at Buckhorn BBQ & Grill in Vacaville for the Big Buck Sandwich. Anyone considering owning a restaurant would do well to step inside Buckhorn, because there you will see people overjoyed by the sheer deliciousness of the food and radiating an aura of well-being and satisfaction because of it. Not all restaurant food—or food in general—is scrumptious, and that mystifies me.

These are just a few of our top favorite sandwiches, plus our picks for the best places to take them in the Napa Valley, meant to inspire picnicking in general, picnicking and hiking with wine more particularly, as the most fun way to eat. It’s certainly not an exhaustive list of sandwiches or the places to buy them, but we’ll add more and update from time to time, as picnicking allows.