A new course for a Yountville’s tasty lakeside favorite
For decades, the Lakeside Grill at Vintner’s Golf Club in Yountville has been the kind of place where regulars know the servers, servers remember the orders and generations of local families and golfers return week after week.
The restaurant, however, had reached a breaking point. The familiar menu had dozens of choices that had become difficult to prepare and costly to serve. With rising costs, the restaurant was losing money, General Manager Jason Boldt said. This left him with some disappointing possibilities: consider installing a stripped-down ordering system such as a touch-screen kiosk and no table service or to simply close the favorite restaurant forever.
“Either we had to make a change or we had to close,” Boldt said.
Rather than close, Boldt found a path forward with Chef Jimmy Martinez, who recently joined the team and, in less than two weeks, upgraded the kitchen equipment, revised the menu and expanded the restaurant hours. With a nod to golf, the restaurant is now called Birdie Yountville at the Lakeside Grill, a name intended to signal change without abandoning the identity locals have known for years.
The restaurant now opens for breakfast at 8 a.m. daily and serves a special brunch on the weekends. Another popular addition is the daily happy hour, and Boldt and Martinez hope eventually to extend service into evening dinner service and revive private events, including wine dinners, weddings, birthdays and class reunions.
“We want to be the outlet for people to gather as a community or family at our beautiful place next to the lake,” Boldt said. “We want to elevate the food.” The overhaul is an effort to make the restaurant sustainable while retaining affordability, evolving into a full-service gathering place.
Martinez arrived with experience in high-volume restaurants, steakhouses, special events and consulting. Raised in Southern California, he attended culinary school and went on to work for Wolfgang Puck, including at Spago in Beverly Hills. His career also took him to the Pine Creek Cookhouse near Aspen, Colorado, Mastro’s Steakhouse in Costa Mesa and BOA Steakhouse in Southern California before moving with his family to St. Helena.
In the Napa Valley, Martinez built relationships through consulting and wine dinners. Boldt said Jude Wilmoth of Cook St. Helena had recommended Martinez.
Martinez had been at the golf club only about 10 days when he concluded that the old operation was among the most complicated kitchens he had encountered. Employees spent much of the day preparing for a restaurant that was typically serving food for only three or four hours, he said. A single burger order could branch into numerous choices of sides and modifications, slowing two small fryers and creating delays throughout the dining room.
His first assessment was direct: The menu had to change. “I’m not coming in here to change things and do them my way,” Martinez said. “I’m doing what fits.”
The shorter menu is designed around dishes the kitchen can execute consistently across longer hours. It still includes the familiar categories of burgers, sandwiches, salads and tacos, but Martinez has reworked the ingredients and preparation.
He is making his own tortillas from a proprietary blend of corn and flour, using English muffins from the Model Bakery for eggs Benedict and sourcing bagels from New York. Fresh fish is butchered in the kitchen, salami is sliced in-house, and chicken is grilled and finished sous vide to keep it tender. Martinez said he is also working with a local bakery on a soft, Japanese-style milk bun rather than ordering frozen bread shipped from outside the area.
The tacos, he said, are meant to deliver refined food in a familiar, approachable form. “I wanted everyone to try high-end food, but in the form of a taco,” Martinez said. “No one’s making tortillas fresh, so we are.”
Taco options include skirt steak, chili verde pork, chicken and lobster roll. Chicken wings, served with crudités and blue cheese or ranch dressing, are available in lemon pepper, buffalo or garlic parmesan flavors.
The new salads include a miso Caesar, an Italian chop chop chop salad, and a kale and endive salad. Other early favorites are the lobster Caesar wrap and brie Big Mac, a burger with lettuce, brie cheese, pickles, onions and a sesame seed bun.
Rotating specials have included chicken tortilla soup, and Martinez plans a smoked brisket sandwich on Fridays. Some former favorites such as the shrimp avocado salad and Chinese chicken salad could return as specials or seasonal offerings once the kitchen settles into its new rhythm.
Breakfast offerings include breakfast tacos (bacon, sausage or soyrizo) and egg, NY bagels with a schmear, an egg, bacon and sausage bagel and a smoked salmon version. A Belgian waffle, breakfast burrito and chicken and waffles are also included. Additions for brunch on Saturday and Sunday include blueberry lemon ricotta and banana chocolate chip pancakes, as well as chilaquiles, omelets and benedicts.
That point matters to diners who formed attachments to dishes served for decades. Boldt said the staff expected some resistance and understands why regulars miss the old menu.
“I’m glad that people miss the Lakeside Grill items because it means that we did something right for 25 years,” he said.
Lead server Gilberto Huijon has become one of the new menu’s ambassadors. When customers express concern, he asks whether they have tried the food. Many report afterward that they love it, he said.
Huijon said the streamlined operation also makes service faster and more practical. He has already memorized the new menu and, as he has long done, keeps orders in his head rather than writing them down.
Early sales offered encouragement. Boldt said the restaurant’s first weekend with the new menu was one of its busiest, and the first Sunday brunch brought in roughly $800 to $900 more than a typical Sunday. The kitchen can serve more guests, Martinez said, because fewer variations allow cooks to work more quickly and consistently.
The changes are also intended to improve quality of life for employees. Boldt said the old system placed enormous stress on servers, bussers and cooks. Martinez said the remodeled kitchen and clearer prep assignments have already made the atmosphere calmer.
“You work the majority of your life,” Martinez said. “Let’s make it fun.”
The physical changes will extend into the dining room, although Martinez described the project as a facelift rather than a structural remodel. Plans call for stained wood and beams, hardwood flooring, additional booths and a lounge area where guests can have a cocktail while waiting for a table. The goal is to create the feel of a classic country club yet remain open to the public.
Martinez also plans to develop the bar and beer program, including sought-after limited-release beers, and to create wine dinners with local wineries.
Events are another piece of the revision. Boldt said the club hosted about 500 weddings during its first two decades. That business receded after the COVID-19 pandemic, and as golf participation grew, it did not make financial sense to close the restaurant to golfers on Saturday afternoons to prepare for a private event.
With Martinez overseeing food production and helping assemble event crews, Boldt said the venue is again booking celebrations. A 50-year Vintage High School reunion is among the events planned for next year.
Those gatherings carry personal meaning for Boldt. His children grew up at the club and worked there, and he has watched employees return from college to rejoin the staff. Some couples who married bring their children back to dine and, sometimes to work.
“Here, you come in and you’re just part of the gang,” Boldt said. “We want the employees to have fun. We want the customers to have fun.”
The golf course and restaurant, which are owned by the Sted family, operate on property that belongs to the California Veterans Home of Yountville. Boldt said the business is about halfway through a 60-year lease. Veterans are among the restaurant’s longtime guests, he said, reinforcing his determination to retain table service rather than replace employees with QR codes or kiosks.
For Martinez, the long-term aim is a restaurant that stands on its own rather than functioning merely as an amenity to the golf course. For Boldt, it is a chance to preserve the warmth of the old Lakeside Grill while giving it a workable future.
“There’s definitely been excitement about the new menu,” Boldt said. “We trust and feel confident in the path forward.”
The Birdie Yountville at Lakeside Grill is open Monday through Friday from 8 to 11 a.m. for breakfast, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for lunch, before moving into happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m. On weekends the hours are 8 a.m. to noon for breakfast and brunch, noon to 4 p.m. for lunch and 4 to 6 p.m. for happy hour.
