Mustards Grill chef-owner Cindy Pawlcyn poses for a portrait at her restaurant in 2021. The Chronicle awarded her the Charles Phan Legacy Award earlier this month at the Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants event for her decades of influence, mentorship and community involvement in Napa Valley.
Laura Morton/For the S.F. Chronicle
Mustards Grill, which has hardly changed since it opened in 1983, has managed to maintain its status as one of Napa Valley’s top restaurants. A view of the dining room in 2023.
Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle
A towering plate of onion rings come out of the kitchen for service at Mustards Grill.
Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle
Cindy Pawlcyn opened Mustards just north of downtown Yountville in 1983 for $125,000.
Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle
Cindy Pawlcyn found a sweet spot at Mustards incorporating fresh ingredients and international influences into classic American dishes, such as meatloaf swimming in a horseradish barbecue sauce or a vegetable tostada with avocado, grilled sweet potato and black beans.
Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. ChronicleChef Cindy Pawlcyn received the Charles Phan Legacy Award for her decades of influence and mentorship in the Bay Area restaurant scene.Mustards Grill, which Pawlcyn opened in 1983, helped establish Napa Valley as a culinary destination.Pawlcyn’s seasonal, approachable cuisine has inspired numerous Bay Area chefs and restaurants.
Chef Cindy Pawlcyn walked so that Thomas Keller could run.
Her restaurant, Mustards Grill, does not have a Michelin star. There’s no caviar service or truffle-dusted pasta, no amuse bouche or tasting menu. “I don’t want a $1,0000-a-person place,” Pawlcyn said. “All that tweezer stuff? I’m not that kind of chef.”
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But when Pawlcyn opened Mustards 43 years ago, Napa Valley was a culinary desert. She was the first chef in the region to incorporate seasonal ingredients into her food, which was familiar, yet progressive — laying the foundations of what came to be known as Wine Country cuisine. Her always-packed dining room became the gathering place where winemakers like Robert Mondavi and Dan Duckhorn shared ideas and poured wines for members of the trade, while seamlessly mingling with hungry tourists who stopped in to refuel after a long day of tasting.
Mustards is “the most impactful restaurant besides the French Laundry in Napa Valley,” said Joel Gott, the founder of Bay Area burger chain Gott’s Roadside, who first met Pawlcyn when she hired him as a higher schooler to work at the Rio Grill in Carmel. “If you look up and down Hwy 29, there’s somebody at every restaurant who worked for Cindy.”
Mustards’ Famous Mongolian Pork Chop, with sweet & sour red cabbage and housemade mustard, is one of its most popular dishes.
Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle
The modest roadside restaurant with checkered floors has barely changed since 1983. Employees stay for decades. Even small changes have led to uproar: Pawlcyn recalled that one summer she switched the red cabbage served with the popular Mongolian pork chop to asparagus. “I got in so much trouble for that,” she said. “It was like, ‘Okay, okay. It’s 110 degrees out, but you can have your red cabbage.’”
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Yet Mustards remains one of Wine Country’s busiest establishments, and its influence on Napa Valley’s rise as a world-renowned tourist destination is undeniable. Pawlcyn’s decades of influence, mentorship and community involvement are why the Chronicle awarded her the Charles Phan Legacy Award at the Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants event earlier this month. Each year, this award recognizes a chef who, like Phan, has had an incredible impact on the Bay Area restaurant scene, is an inspiration to the next generation of chefs, and who reaches beyond their kitchen to uplift their community.
Taylor Boetticher, co-owner of the Fatted Calf butcher shop in San Francisco and Napa, said Pawlcyn has many similarities to Phan, whom he knew for roughly 20 years. Boetticher completed his culinary school externship at San Francisco landmark Fog City Diner, one of a number of Bay Area restaurants that Pawlcyn opened with her former partners at the Real Restaurants group. At the end of it, he said Pawlcyn invited him to stay at her Napa Valley home and cooked him dinner. The next day, she took him to Mustards, the local farmers market and several of her Bay Area purveyors. “I still remember this like it was last night. She gave me 24 hours, uninterrupted,” he said. “She’s just wonderfully giving of her time and talents. She reminds me a lot of Charles in that way.”
Pawlcyn opened Mustards just north of downtown Yountville in 1983 for $125,000. The location had “gone belly up five or six times,” she said. “There was no floor. We rebuilt it ourselves.” Originally, the front room was a screened-in porch that “was freezing” and often leaked; Napa’s Domaine Carneros lent Pawlcyn wine buckets to capture the rain. She planted a culinary garden, inspired by her father, who grew potatoes in the Midwest for his potato chip company. “We had no money. If people didn’t come, we were up sh— creek,” Pawlcyn said.
Cindy Pawlcyn was the first Napa Valley chef to plant a culinary garden and incorporate seasonal ingredients into her food, which laid the foundations of what came to be known as Wine Country cuisine.
Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle
But they did. Pawlcyn found a sweet spot incorporating fresh ingredients and International influences into classic American dishes, such as meatloaf swimming in a horseradish barbecue sauce or a vegetable tostada with avocado, grilled sweet potato and black beans.” She puts a spotlight on things that could be construed as mundane, plain or old-fashioned, and reminds people these things are awesome and have a place in the culinary lexicon,” Boetticher said.
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In the early years, Pawlcyn ran Mustards while driving all over the Bay Area to open new restaurants for the Real Restaurants Group, including San Francisco’s Fog City Diner, Bix and Betelnut. At its height, she said she was overseeing seven restaurants. When Pawlcyn later decided to walk away from the partnership, she asked for just one thing: Mustards.
Mustards was the start of a groundswell of Napa Valley restaurants that serve refined comfort food in an approachable setting. One of the best examples of this was Italian star Tra Vigne, which Pawlcyn opened in St. Helena in 1987. She hired a young chef named Michael Chiarello to run the kitchen. “She brought that simplicity, then Michael executed it in Italian,” Gott said.
A signature Mustards dessert: lemon-lime tart with a brown sugar meringue and candied lemon peel.
Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle
Chiarello, who became a celebrity chef, later brought that concept to Bottega, which became his most famous restaurant. Tra Vigne closed in 2015; its replacement, Charter Oak, from chef Christopher Kostow, was created as a more casual alternative to his menu at the three-Michelin-starred Meadowood.
Pawlcyn’s influence is arguably most tangible at Charlie’s, which former French Laundry chef Elliot Bell opened in 2023 inside Pawlcyn’s former eponymous restaurant, Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen. “Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen was such a locals’ hangout. I remember going in when I first moved to St. Helena and seeing locals, winemakers, chefs and interns all hanging out at the bar,” Bell said. “When we opened Charlie’s, we knew we wanted to embody that same locals’ hangout and warm hospitality.”
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Bell also said that Pawlcyn’s approach to cooking influenced “the whole menu” at Charlie’s, such as his take on “chips and dip” caviar service, featuring mini potato skins and an onion dip. In direct homage to Pawlcyn, Bell preserved a small section of her former wallpaper in a nook of the dining room and brought back her signature dessert (with his own twist): Campfire Pie, a s’mores-inspired dessert with an Oreo cookie crust and a tower of toasted marshmallow fluff.
Mustards was the start of a groundswell of Napa Valley restaurants that serve refined comfort food in an approachable setting.
Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle
There are subtler nods to her recipes at other Bay Area restaurants. When he opened the original Gott’s Roadside in St. Helena in 1999, Gott called the ahi tuna and crackers dish at Mustards his “North star” for Gott’s beloved ahi burger. “She had a wasabi cream, and I thought, ‘I can make a wasabi mayo,’” Gott said. “She made an Asian slaw, and I thought, ‘I can put that on a burger.’”
Pawlcyn’s impact on Napa Valley extends beyond the restaurant scene. She’s a frequent participant in local charitable events, including catering at least a decade of “Dinner at the Dump” dinners. Hosted in partnership with Napa’s Upper Valley Disposal & Recycling, the events helped fund the construction of several new Boys & Girls Club facilities in northern Napa Valley.
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“She’s never crowed for the limelight. She’s unflappable, and she’s still the same sweet, wonderful and supportive person I met back in the ’90s,” Boetticher said. “Napa Valley would not be the same without her.”
Dining and Cooking