Charlie's Napa Valley
One menu with white truffles at one end and fried chicken with a Coors Light at the other, around a horseshoe bar on Railroad Avenue.
Why go
Elliot Bell spent almost eleven years at The French Laundry and left as executive sous chef, then opened his own room in October in the space St Helena knew as Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen.1 He also works as a St Helena firefighter, which tells you something about how local he intends this to be. He calls the menu a sliding scale and means it literally: people can really come and have this great experience and have white truffles if they want to or try caviar for the first time,
and at the same time people feel comfortable to have Coors Light and fried chicken at the bar and hang out.
1 Cindy Pawlcyn lives in town now and still stops in.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever is running as the special. Bell tests dishes there for a week before they join the menu, so it is the newest thing the kitchen is proud of.1
- Order: at the horseshoe bar if there are two of you. He built it for exactly that.
- Avoid: saving it for an anniversary. Lunch runs seven days and happy hour starts at two.2
What locals & experts say
- Elliot Bell, chef and owner, to the Napa Valley Register (February 2025):
We want to be a restaurant where the locals feel comfortable coming in two or three times a week. But also somewhere where somebody can really come in for those special occasions to celebrate.
1 - Bell on who turned up first:
The opening from harvest time into the holidays, when it is not the tourist season up here, we've really been able to open our doors to the community and have great support and that's really helped us in January, which is typically a slower month out here, to be really busy.
1
That is the chef talking about his own room. I found no critic writing about the cooking here, so I have no outside call to give you.
Good to know
- Hours: brunch 10:30am to 2pm Saturday and Sunday, lunch 11:30am to 2pm daily, happy hour 2pm to 5pm, dinner 5pm to 9pm, late night 9pm to 11pm Thursday to Saturday.2
- The room: they kept the original wallpaper and pieces of the old building, and rebuilt the bar.1
- Hygiene: not established. No inspection instrument for this county is on file here.
Verdict
should-visit — Eleven years as executive sous chef at The French Laundry, and what Elliot Bell built with it is a horseshoe bar where you can order caviar or fried chicken and a Coors Light off the same menu. He says that balance out loud in the Register and the service times back him: lunch every day, happy hour at two, late night Thursday through Saturday, which is a restaurant built for people who live here. It sits in Cindy Pawlcyn's old Backstreet Kitchen room and she still comes by. No critic's verdict on the cooking has been read, so this rung rests on the pedigree, the hours and the chef's own stated aim rather than on a tasted plate.