Michelin-starred Wine Country restaurant opens new café in unexpected location

San Francisco Chronicle​

16-05-2025

A new museum opened last month in St. Helena with an interactive exhibition on the life of famed chef Julia Child — yet the museum's café may be an even bigger draw.
Under-study, the highly-anticipated bakery and tapas spot from the Michelin-starred team at Press Restaurant, opens May 26. It's attached to the Napa Valley Museum of Arts & Culture, or the MAC, an expansion of the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville. Intended as the antithesis to the stereotypically underwhelming museum café, Under-study will bring a fine dining approach to the grab-and-go experience, without the tasting menu price tag, owners said.
'It's some of the most highly-trained cooks in America in a café setting,' said Philip Tessier, chef-partner of Press and Under-study.
Located next door to Press, Under-study and the museum have taken over the former home of Dean & Deluca, which, more recently was Gary's Wine & Marketplace. Yet Under-study (607 St. Helena Hwy., St. Helena) is a major departure from its predecessors. Tessier described the interior, designed by Studio Terpeluk, the team behind San Francisco's buzzy new French bistro Bon Délire, as 'Willy Wonka meets Hermes.' It's a mix of sophisticated and playful: Sleek marble and Douglas fir finishes merge with bold pink, yellow and teal walls and accents. Instead of deli sandwiches and pre-made salads, the café will serve fancy tapas like Wagyu steak tartare ($18), hamachi crudo ($14) and a caviar-topped lobster corn dog ($32) on luxe Heston cafeteria trays. Customers can dine inside at translucent, yellow resin tabletops that flip up from the wall and people-watch through a window that peers into the museum, but most of the seating is on the patio around a fountain.
In the morning, the bakery counter will offer coffee and pastries — to be artfully displayed like museum pieces themselves— including incredibly-flaky croissants ($5.50), carrot and lemon tea cakes ($6) and an adorable mandarin mousse parfait ($12) that imitates a real-life mandarin. There's a daily bread selection featuring sourdough miso baguettes and sesame wheat loaves, and Under-study will serve heartier breakfast items such as a bacon-maple-glazed French toast stick ($12), beef fat hashbrowns ($10) and a Dungeness crab omelette ($24, weekends only).
Longtime Press fans will recognize some of the restaurant's 'greatest hits from back in the day,' said Tessier, like the sweet and sour pig ears ($14), grilled octopus served in a black truffle mole ($18) and salsa verde beef reimagined as Wagyu skewers ($18). One of the most notable comebacks is the bacon sampler ($12), a beloved, Instagrammable starter where several cuts of bacon hung from a metal rack by clothespins. (It even came with meat-cutting scissors.) At Under-study, it'll be served at breakfast, albeit with a much simpler presentation.
A special 'Julia's Menu' caters to museum guests. The three-course meal ($40) represents Under-study's take on some of Child's classic dishes: asparagus vol-au-vent, roast chicken and her favorite dessert, île flottante, a floating island of meringue in a sea of cream.
Hams, charcuterie and herbs hang over a butcher counter, where premium aged meats and cured fish, including whole ducks and swordfish, can be ordered to-go, in addition to prepared dinners, like Press' popular truffle-glazed chicken, lobster tails and miso-cured black cod. These ready-to-make dinners will eventually come with a QR code, which will link to a video of an Under-study chef demonstrating how to finish the dish. The marbled case will also be stocked with delicacies like truffles, rare cheeses and caviar — 'all the fun stuff,' said Tessier.
'The goal is to give people access to what we get in restaurants,' he continued. 'You can't buy 90% of what we get at the restaurant, but the cushion for us is if we don't sell it, it goes next door. Most places you can't find this stuff because it just sits there.'
Press is known for having the largest collection of Napa Valley wines in the world. But Tessier said Under-study's wine shop will cater more to locals by highlighting international producers and 'unique and esoteric' grapes from California and beyond, like a Picpoul from Napa Valley's Tres Sabores and a Gruner Veltliner from Austria. Wine will be available by the glass and bottle, but Under-study will have a few beers and a spritz on draft as well. 'It's a place where locals can come and not have to drink their neighbor's Cabernet,' he said.
Later this summer, a teaching kitchen will open in the back section of the café. Here, Under-study will host educational classes and events centered on food, wine and local artisans, and also film digital content like recipe videos.
Under-study. Opens May 26. 607 St. Helena Hwy., St. Helena.