Chef Rogelio Garcia Helms Napa’s Newest Destination Restaurant, Auro

Four Seasons Napa, on the Silverado Trail in Calistoga, is a luxury hotel that was long in the making. It opened a little more than a year ago after a decade-plus lead-up. And when it did, its fine-dining restaurant was delayed because of staffing changes, so devotees of the brand were left in limbo. The wait was not for naught. Chef Rogelio Garcia, a Mexico City native who grew up in Napa, came on board last Fall, and the restaurant, Auro, is a magical place that highlights Garcia’s creative, harmonious cooking.

The property was waiting for the right chef to open its prix-fixe restaurant designed around a five-course tasting menu ($175 per person; $105 wine pairings) that changes as often as it needs to. And while Garcia’s resume includes The French Laundry, Spruce, and Bravo Top Chef, he’s a humble, joyful, entirely unpretentious man with wicked talent.

The menu I had last month is a poster child for what fine dining in the 21st century should be: laser-focused on presenting meticulously sourced, simple ingredients. Of course, this is food you’d be hard-pressed to make at home — isn’t that why we go out? — but rather than being overwrought, it’s exquisitely and stealthily layered to bring out the essence of each element. A case in point is the silky chestnut eggnog served in a duck egg shell on a playful ceramic holder in the shape of a duck foot.

Another stunner was the whole-cured kampachi that was presented tableside after carving so we could see get a sense of the process that resulted in the gleaming filet we were served with a gently tart-spicy aguachile and edible flowers.

Which brings me to the service and presentation. While a $280 meal (with wine) is not your everyday night on the town, it’s a bargain for the elevated level of service and presentation that comes along with this experience. Servers in a balletic synchrony arrive with courses served to the whole table simultaneously, while another explains what’s on the plate. And sommelier Derek Stevenson has already come to pour your next glass in anticipation. The pairings are not just selected from the considerable cellar of local Napa wines, but rather whatever best suits the dish, and our pairings ranged from a small-production Austrian Grüner Veltliner to a Kenefick Ranch Cab grown and vinified just next door.

One of the evening’s most delightful treats was being asked into the kitchen, whose floor-to-ceiling windows separate the dining room from the kitchen space — where the pastry chef served cocoa pops with passionfruit gel, Maldon salt and lime zest as a “palate cleanser” before additional dessert courses. It was a “wow” moment of flavor intensity and precision and, really, a metaphor for the entire meal.

This lovely restaurant has been well worth the wait and stands poised to become a Wine Country classic. Garcia says his menus are rooted in what he knows — as well as his native interpretation of local food — and they seem like a kind of culmination of his culinary narrative, which is, of course, still being written. Make reservations here.