For those who don’t know it, Lake Tahoe is the Hamptons of San Francisco. It’s three hours from the city by car, and it’s a brilliant year-round destination. The area is full of beautiful mountains and there are loads of incredible ski resorts including Northstar and Palisades, which hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics.
In the summertime, it’s the best place in the world – the weather is gorgeous every day and there’s zero humidity. And in the middle of it all you have the lake, with its $50 million houses and little dock-and-dine restaurants. It’s super-fun: people go wakesurfing and parasailing, and because half the lake is in Nevada and half the lake is in California, you can go gambling in the right spots.
When we’re there we go to this great little hidden gem of a restaurant. It’s in Truckee, which is a low-key kind of place 20 minutes’ drive from the lake, and it’s the kind of restaurant you stumble across and are then blown away by the food. It uses a lot of local produce on its Mediterranean and Middle Eastern-inspired menu, and everything is delicious. It does a great breakfast, but dinner is the main event with dishes like fried cauliflower with aioli and dukkah, and sourdough tartine with grilled nectarines. It’s like having a grand New York restaurant in an out-of-the-way little hotel in the middle of nowhere.
Stella, Gravity Haus, 10948 Brockway Road, Truckee, California; stellatruckee.com
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