Oxbow Public Market @ Napa

Someone wise once told me never to start drinking with an empty stomach, so during my wine tour to Napa, I always start my day with breakfast at the Oxbow Public Market just at Downtown Napa.

This little inside market reminds me of a small little town in Italy or something. It’s super homey, with markets displaying fresh meat to fresh cheese, and right next door, there are tables for restaurants.

There are many artisanal crafts and foodstuff sold here, like this family owned and operated Napa Valley Distillery. They make and sell a variety or rare and unique artisanal spirits, bottled cocktails and mocktail ingredients in very limited quantity.  

Ritual Roasters

A San Francisco original since 2005, world famous and a local favourite, Ritual Roasters is a fully independent and woman-owned coffee roasting company. The Oxbow branch opened in 2008, and the coffee joint has remained independent and proudly brew single source coffee purchased under a fair price directly from the growers.

This is by far the best cup of Long Black I had in a while. Whenever I asked for a long black, the barista will make me an Americano. I was surprised that the barista actually double-confirmed with me if what I wanted was a flipped Americano, i.e water with espresso added. What’s the difference you may ask?

Americano always tastes watered down, because the shots of espresso are diluted by hot water. Long black has the hot water amount controlled to around 100ml, and then two shots of espresso added on top, making 160ml of fluid. A typical cup of Americano is 250ml, so there’s almost double the amount of water in that.

El Porteño

Before this, I didn’t think of empanadas would launch an empire of restaurants. El Porteño is one of San Francisco’s best empanada restaurants. Of course besides these puff pastries with Spanish origins, they also do Argentinian catering.

Argentinian empanadas, unlike their Latin cousins, are made from wheat flour dough that are filled with different meats and baked. They are usually moist and make a meal in a neat package.

For breakfast today, Darling picked the traditional chicken (Pollo) filling, and I selected the lamb (Cordero) braised in Malbec and mushrooms (Champinones) with olives.

To be perfectly honest, they tasted like our local curry puffs or meat pies, just without the spices that we grew up with. Great bites for breakfast and a quick snacks between meals.

Hog Island Oyster Co.

Hog Island Oyster Co. was the purpose we came here this morning. We have a separate blog post for this oysters for breakfast experience. Yummilicious!

Stateline Road Smokehouse

This trip to Oxbow, we came across this pop-up stall that served Southern-style BBQ with its own smoker at the back. As we walked towards the market, we couldn’t help but inhaled all the smokey goodness of meat broiling away in the pit.

Pitmaster Darry Bell decided one day to leave his Michelin-star job at the Press to start his own Southern BBQ joint named after the thoroughfare Stateline Road of Kansas, his hometown. Together with his colleague from the esteemed Bouchon Bistro, the new restaurant opened in 2024, delayed by the pandemic. But in the meantime, we were lucky to have a preview of meats that they will be serving there.

Stateline Road Baby Back Ribs

Quarter rack, Original 816 BBQ Sauce, pickles

The meat simply slid off the bones on these properly smoked pork ribs, smooched lovingly with a liberal amount of their own secret BBQ sauce. The pickles with jalapeño were a good relieve from the heavy sauce.

Kansas City-Invented Burnt Ends

3/4 lb double-smoked sweet and tangy brisket bites, pickles

I was expecting the “real” burnt ends of the briskets, but these were actually proper cubes of briskets. I wished they were properly burnt though.

Cherry Wood-Smoked Maitake & Greens

Maitake mushrooms, farm lettuce, crisped purple rice, marinated garbanzo beans, lemon vinaigrette

This was the fifth time maitake mushrooms was featured in our dish for this trip, and I began to wonder who’s planting and selling them in Napa. I liked the puffed purple rice, which gave the crunch in the salad. Finally a salad in US without any cheese in it.

The Oxbow Public Market is a treasure in Napa Valley. Oxbow Public Market has become the local gathering place for great food and wine in downtown Napa and throughout the Napa Valley. It’s a lovely place to visit anytime of day.

Oxbow Public Market
610 1st St, Napa, CA 94559, United States
Tel : +1 707-226-6529

Visited Oct 2023

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