Perhaps it has to do with the seemingly constant uproar in the world, but nostalgic foods are coming back strong. Everywhere we look, restaurants are serving up comfy retro delights like corn dogs, deviled eggs, and your grandparents’ beloved shrimp cocktail cradled in ketchup-horseradish sauce.

“Every time there’s an economic downturn — a recession, a pandemic, a war — people go back to the foods that comfort us,” says Clark Wolf, a Guerneville-based food, restaurant, and hospitality expert who consults for businesses across the country. “From the sourdough bread we baked while we were in Covid isolation, to mac and cheese and barbecue at eateries when we started to get back together, we know what we want.”

Wolf, a 2009 “Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America” James Beard Foundation inductee, author, and host of television and radio shows, adds that the trend isn’t surprising.

“In big cities, and now almost everywhere, in a predictable cycle, casual French bistros resurface,” he says, referencing newer hot spots like Brigitte Bistro in Petaluma and Santa Rosa’s Augie’s French for soul-warming onion soup gratinée and beef bourguignon. “It’s true in New York City, San Francisco, and now, all over Sonoma County, (and) happening everywhere from a limited-service counter spot to a fancy restaurant.”

Foods that remind us of childhood and simpler times when life moved at a slower pace have a similar appeal. Remember when weekend mornings meant French toast in front of Saturday morning cartoons, followed by a neighborhood baseball game while snacking on steamed, grilled hot dogs?

While we may be peckish for the past, many of us have more evolved palates than when we thought Jell-O Pudding Pops were the pinnacle of good taste. We’re no longer picky, we’re choosy. And whether we’re at a diner or a Michelin-starred restaurant, we like our comfort food with a side of sophistication. That French toast might be crafted with ube (vibrant purple yam), topped with fresh local berries and homemade ube-taro whipped cream, as found at the Kelly family’s Two Niner Diner at the Petaluma Municipal Airport. And those franks might be spiffy corn dogs, enjoyed at Sebastopol’s Fern Bar with a contemporary twist of crisp-skin hot links dunked in curried ketchup.

Even the classic grilled cheese is recontextualized with high quality ingredients and some degree of novelty, such as the golden, griddled Texas toast stuffed with melty cheese and juicy birria, plump shrimp, al pastor, grilled chicken, or tender asada at Galvan’s Eatery & Beer Garden in Cotati.

“We want some adventure, but not too much,” Wolf says. “We crave a burrito, but maybe now with a Korean taste,” such as the version at Santa Rosa’s Zoftig gussied up with Stemple Creek Ranch grass-fed beef and housemade kimchi.

Call it “NewStalgia.”

As Sonoma County chefs pull out the stops for treasured treats to soothe our souls, there’s plenty of room for fun.

At the posh Valette in Healdsburg, the “Snickers Bar” has long been a favorite dessert, looking like the famous candy: a slim rectangle of sea salt caramel, peanut powder, and locally made Volo dark chocolate. More recently, chef-owner Dustin Valette revamped the confection into “It’sNotA ‘Snickers Bar’ Deux” as an even fancier work of art, a tall cake layered with dark chocolate sea salt ganache, peanut butter custard, and espresso caramel, then sprinkled in peanut crumble and pierced with shards of cocoa tuile.

“We’ve run our original take on the Snickers Bar forever,” says Valette, who is celebrating the 11th anniversary of his eponymous destination. “Everyone absolutely loves it — it evokes childhood memories, but now it’s with an even more elegant chef touch.”

Some chefs turn to our childhood bookshelves for inspiration — specifically, Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham.” Healdsburg’s Acorn Café offers a version with herbed yogurt, dukkah, and a sprinkling of fresh herbs providing the “green” to poached eggs and ham, while Charlie Palmer, the celebrity chef-owner of the new Folia Bar & Kitchen in Healdsburg, gives a whimsical salute with his Green Eggs and Ham Benedict; the brown butter hollandaise is capped with an herb shakshuka.

Palmer’s son, chef Reed Palmer, Folia’s chef de cuisine, recently unveiled his twist on the tried-and-true tuna salad sandwich. This one features premium oil-packed Italian tuna spiked with pickled peppers and onion, topped with lightly dressed organic iceberg lettuce, and piled atop griddled, fresh-baked challah.

“It’s an homage to an East Coast luncheonette-style tuna fish sandwich,” he says. “The main inspiration is the Palace (Diner) in Maine — the best diner in the world. And if you want, we’re happy to make it a tuna melt with lots of beautiful cheese.”

While homestyle is trending, chefs are walking a tightrope to keep quality high but prices low.

“Value is the story this year,” says Andrew Freeman, founder of San Francisco’s af&co., a lifestyle and hospitality marketing and public relations firm that represents several Sonoma County restaurants. “Even in fine dining, guests want to walk away feeling like it was worth it. So whether it’s a great lunch deal, a prix-fixe only concept, or a high-end ‘happy meal,’ operators are finding creative ways to offer value at every level.”

Sax’s Joint in Petaluma — typically a breakfast and lunch spot — leans into its 1950s-style diner vibe with modern-day blue-plate specials at monthly pop-up dinners. Locals crowd in for prime rib, stuffed pork tenderloin, and the chicken Diane, a mid-20th century throwback recipe from owner “Mee Maw,” featuring pan-seared poultry blanketed in rich, creamy sauce made with mushrooms, brandy, and Dijon mustard. Included in the $35 tab is a choice of salad or soup; baked potato, mashed potato, rice, or French fries; plus a side of veggies and garlic bread.

Even the Michelin-starred Cyrus in Geyserville is taking note. While the restaurant’s multicourse Cal-Japanese tasting menu commands a $325 price tag, savvy diners have discovered the luxe destination’s Sunday Family Meal. Chef Douglas Keane’s menu offers an upscale take on deeply satisfying comfort dishes with an East-meets-West approach: fried chicken glazed in spicy-sweet Korean gochujang and pillowy Parker House rolls slathered in savory-sweet miso butter along with creamy mashed potatoes, housemade pickles, and kimchi. For $95 per guest plus a 20% service charge already figured in, it makes end-of-meal math easy.

The set menu idea ends up being a win-win. “In an era where guests are seeking value at every level, these concepts balance approachability with a sense of occasion,” Freeman says. “Guests know what they’ll spend; operators gain consistency, cost control, and efficiency.”

Desserts, too, hearken back to a bygone era. Suddenly, several Sonoma County restaurants are parading out twists on the iconic baked Alaska — once the height of sweet sophistication on big nights out. There’s the baked “gelaska” at Stella in Kenwood, made with gelato rather than the typical ice cream, and served “up” in a fancy brass coupe. The casual, hip Lazeaway Club at the Flamingo Resort in Santa Rosa has its own inventive take: baked Japan with sesame chiffon cake and matcha ice cream surrounded by fluffy toasted meringue. Tucking into that in the Rat Pack-era resort makes this finish to a meal even more fun.

It all equates to a tasty stroll down memory lane filled with beloved foods that hold timeless allure.

“The bottom line is that we’re coming to really appreciate the foods we may have long taken for granted,” Wolf, the restaurant consultant, says. “Those natural, wholesome, homegrown foods many of us grew up with are harder to get and much more expensive to buy, yes, so we’re learning to value them more. And I think that’s always a great thing.”

The post Sonoma County Restaurants Serving Cozy Retro Dishes appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

Sitting outside her tree-ringed home pottery studio in Santa Rosa, Hannah Allen recalls the exact moment the life she’s now made for herself began to take shape. The Sonoma County native and owner of Olivet Ceramics was tending bar at State Bird Provisions in San Francisco when a customer off-handedly mentioned Heath Ceramics, the esteemed tableware maker founded in Sausalito nearly 80 years ago.

“She was like, ‘I’m the plateware representative. I fly around and talk to chefs about their plateware needs.’ I was like, ‘That’s a job? Oh my God,’” says Allen, who is clad in the clay-stained Carhartt overalls she typically wears on days spent at her pottery wheel. “So that was the first seed.”

Allen and Healdsburg’s Jee Park both craft ceramic pieces for some of the finest restaurants in Sonoma County and beyond, yet these two artists followed wildly different paths toward taking their place at those acclaimed tables.

A longtime restaurant veteran, Allen began crafting her own pieces when she was laid off during Covid, and she started taking classes at Clayfolk, a studio an old friend had opened in Occidental.

“I was wrestling clay off the wheel. It was falling off, it was messy, it was ugly, I had a mask on—it was terrible,” she says, laughing. “I just decided that this was going to be my meditation, because I needed a break from real life. In Occidental, I didn’t get any [cell] service, and I was like, ‘This is good for me to have this quiet time.’ And all of a sudden, that’s where I was spending all of my time. I could not get away.”

In 2021, she took a job at SingleThread, where she still works as rooftop captain, leading the service team on the roof deck. Looking at and handling the three-Michelin-starred restaurant’s plateware on a daily basis proved inspirational, and she often brought her own pieces in to give to co-workers.

“At SingleThread, there’s the principle of kaizen—one good change every day to make improvements,” she says. “Being surrounded by that principle while creating art, I was like, if I can just kaizen every day and kaizen each piece, I can keep doing this.”

Keep on she did, firing and glazing clay mugs, plates, vases, and more in a variety of earth tones, each piece with a tactile, slightly imperfect, wabi-sabi feel. When SingleThread’s owners briefly partnered in the opening of Little Saint in 2022, co-owner Katina Connaughton asked Allen to make vases for the flower program. Around the same time, Melissa McGaughey, who co-owns Quail & Condor and Troubadour Bread & Bistro and uses Allen’s plateware at the restaurants, offered to sell her pieces at Quail & Condor. “She gave me two shelves, and it was gone, just like that,” Allen says.

“Hannah has a unique style,” McGaughey explains. “There’s a feminine feel to it—a softness to the bold colors and weight to the shape. Hannah’s ceramics [at the restaurants] are from a color palette based on a Turkish rug, to showcase our influence from my Turkish heritage. The food has a more complete story when paired with plateware that reflects the founders.”

McGaughey also notes the simplicity of those pieces for everyday use. Functionality is a key consideration for Allen, an approach gleaned from her years of restaurant work.

“As a service industry professional,” Allen says, “I’m like, ‘Are you ready for the high volume that’s going to be put on these plates? Here’s what I think we should do if you’re going to be passing them to people. Here’s what’s going to be easiest to clear.’ I’m always advocating for the ease of it.”

Jee Park also emphasizes practicality when making ceramics, although her style is distinct from Allen’s, and her career path even more circuitous. The proprietor of Healdsburg’s Seoul Sister Studio immigrated to the U.S. at age 4, growing up in the Chicago area in what she calls “a pretty stereotypical kind of Korean family, where academics were really important.”

Park obliged, earning a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT. She confesses she didn’t much like engineering, so she became a high school math teacher, first in New Jersey and then San Francisco. Later, she went to graduate school at Stanford, which led to her becoming an interaction designer at Yahoo in the early 2000s. Her love for ceramics bloomed in part due to a phenomenon many Bay Area residents can relate to—rush-hour traffic.

“I was living in the Haight, driving down to Sunnyvale, which is a bear,” recalls Park, sitting on a couch with her dog in her expansive warehouse studio in downtown Healdsburg. “In order to break up the commute on the way home—and, I think, in response to me making digital things that weren’t physical—I stopped at the Palo Alto Art Center to take classes. That’s how I started ceramics, and I just completely fell in love with it.”

While Park enjoyed the tactile aspect of the art form, she also found a synergy between ceramics and the user interface work she did in the software world.

“I love to solve problems,” she says. “You think about restaurants—especially in San Francisco—their kitchens are fairly small, and you’ve got to think about the footprint of the piece, and about whether they’re going to be handwashed or if they’re going to be dishwasher-safe. I don’t just think, ‘Oh, it’s beautiful’; it’s got to actually work, too.”

Park’s work may be functional, but it’s not simple. She is inspired by architecture, citing the free-flowing structures of Gaudí and Gehry, an influence that can be seen in pedestals she designed for Dry Creek Kitchen. Many of her pieces feature intricate hand-carved lines, including a set of textured bowls she created for Petaluma’s Table Culture Provisions that can be flipped over to be used as platforms.

“I really like to make my pieces multifunctional,” she says. “So you get more bang for your buck.”

Years before she moved to Healdsburg in 2021, Park and her sister brought their mother to Wine Country for her 70th birthday, where they dined at Dry Creek Kitchen and Cyrus, both of which are now clients. “They are just so important,” she says, “because they’re part of my origin story.”

“I feel like it elevates what we’re doing, and it’s a conversation starter,” Shane McAnelly, executive chef of Dry Creek Kitchen, says of Park’s work. “We have little cards one of our managers made that talk about Jee’s background, so when people ask about it—which happens with relative frequency—we can bring those out and plug her.”

While her local ties have proved fruitful, a farther-flung place also lingers in Park’s consciousness. She named her studio Seoul Sister in part to recognize her Korean heritage, and she cites “Irworobongdo,” a screen painted with a landscape of mountains, sky, and water traditionally placed behind the royal throne in Korea, as a touchstone.

“The Korean people are supposed to be like the water in that painting, where you overcome the obstacles,” she says. “Nothing stops water, right? And it may not [take] a direct path, which my life has definitely not been a direct path.”

Water flowing over and around rocks, rarely taking a straight line, but always winding to its inevitable destination—it’s a description that fits not only Park’s journey, but also Allen’s, and perhaps the entire discipline of ceramics.

“When I got started,” Allen remembers, “and pieces weren’t coming out the way I wanted, I often would tell myself, ‘Well, the clay’s going to tell me what it wants to be today.’ And that was it.”

The post Local Ceramics Artists Create Tableware for Some of Sonoma County’s Best Restaurants appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

Forest succession after a major disruption like logging or wildfire — of which we’ve seen plenty lately — can be measured in stages. The early-seral stage, dominated by grasses, shrubs, and eventually saplings among both surviving large trees and standing dead and dying trees, typically lasts between one and three decades.

It’s been more than 100 years since the last big fire at one coastal Sonoma County state reserve, but the forest is largely suspended in an early-seral stage. That’s thanks to decades of active land management for the benefit of a single shrub, the rhododendron, which is also the namesake of the reserve. In May and June, visitors to the Kruse Rhododendron State Natural Reserve will find the plant blooming in all its rosy-pink magnificence.

California State Parks senior environmental scientist Brendan O’Neill explains that crews thin the redwood, tan oak, and fir forest by removing smaller trees from beneath the main forest canopy, then piling the cuttings and covering them to cure, before burning the piles in winter when conditions allow. “The rhododendrons depend upon sunlight and openings in the forest to be at their greatest,” O’Neill says.

Three species of native rhododendrons exploded on the landscape after last century’s fateful conflagration. All are fire-adapted, possessing latent buds in their root crowns that initiate vigorous new growth after a fire, even if the rest of the plant is charred beyond repair. In 1933, about a decade after the fire, Edward P. Kruse donated to California part of the large ranch on which his family had been raising sheep and logging tan oak — expressly for the public’s continued enjoyment of the dense rhododendron stands whose fragrant, late-spring blossoms had already become a popular tourist attraction.

As the decades passed, the forest advanced into a mid-seral phase and the rhododendrons began to suffer. By the 1970s, State Parks ecologist Jim Barry recognized that without logging or fire, they would largely disappear. So he proposed an “out-of-the-box” and “a little bit revolutionary” idea, in O’Neill’s words, of maintaining the forest in an early-seral stage indefinitely.

Today, selective thinning and pile-burning are far more commonplace for fire safety and fuel-load management: a clear co-benefit of the rhododendron-driven work at Kruse. Another benefit? The unique beauty of a steep, deep-green forest lit with dappled sunlight and pastel-pink blossoms held 20 feet high on the elongated branches of these endemic yet ephemeral shrubs.

Where to see rhododendrons in bloom this spring and early summer

Kruse Rhododendron State Natural Reserve

Kruse Ranch Road, Cazadero. parks.ca.gov

Salt Point State Park

25050 Highway 1, Jenner. saltpoint.org

Botanica Nursery and Gardens

3970 Azalea Lane, Sebastopol. botanicanurseryandgardens.com

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens

18220 Highway 1, Fort Bragg. gardenbythesea.org

The post Where to See Rhododendrons in Bloom in Sonoma County appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

Basil is a signal creature of summer, a robust herb that flourishes in the hot sun. Genovese basil—sometimes called big leaf basil, sweet basil, or true basil—is the very scent of the season, with sweet, heady aromas evocative of clove, anise, lemon zest, and licorice root. Tear a single leaf and you are enveloped in the essence of summer. Basil tastes refreshingly green.

Frédérique Lavoipierre, author of “Garden Allies” and a former longtime resident of Sebastopol, offered advice that made her then-young son blush.

“Basil should not be planted until you can lie on the ground naked,” she told customers at her diminutive Shoestring Nursery.

Plant basil in May, when the ground is indeed warm, and begin harvesting in June. Three to six plants, depending on how many you typically feed, should keep you in delicious basil and its classic sauce, pesto, until the first heavy rain or freeze. And then you should forget about it, as basil is meant to be enjoyed in hot weather, not in colder months.

The very best pesto is made by hand with mortar and pestle (or the similar Japanese suribachi), but time being what it is today, there is an easy alternative: grinding the garlic, basil, and parsley in a food processor and folding in the other ingredients by hand. Pesto should not be a smooth pureé; it should have some texture and this technique provides some. Just before using, stir in a tablespoon or two of hot water to loosen the pesto and make it easily spreadable.

Traditional Summer Pesto

Serves 4 to 6

• 1 large bunch fresh Genovese basil (about 4 cups of leaves), loosely packed

• 1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley

• 6 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

• Kosher salt, to taste

• 1/2 cup shelled walnuts, lightly toasted and chopped into small pieces (see note below)

• 3 ounces (about 3/4 cup) Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated

• 2 tbsp. butter, at room temperature

• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Do not wash the basil. Instead, brush off any dust or dirt that clings to the leaves. If you have not already done so, remove and discard the stems. Tear or chop the basil and parsley coarsely; set aside.

Put the garlic into the work bowl of a food processor, sprinkle generously with salt, and pulse several times until the garlic is reduced to a smooth paste, scraping the sides of the work bowl as necessary.

Add the chopped leaves and pulse several times, stopping before the leaves are pureed; they should retain some texture. Scrape the mixture into a mixing bowl.

Fold in the walnuts, cheese, and butter. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while mixing with a rubber spatula. Taste and correct for salt.

Cover and set aside until ready to use. The pesto will keep, refrigerated, for 2 to 3 days. Bring to room temperature before enjoying tossed with pasta or new potatoes; spread over bruschetta or pizza; spooned over tomatoes, grilled vegetables, or polenta; or stirred into soup or risotto.

Note: Although pine nuts are traditional in pesto, they can be both expensive and vary widely in quality. Walnuts are a delicious, inexpensive alternative.

The post This Basil Pesto Recipe Captures the Flavor of Summer appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

May marks the 50th anniversary of the “Judgment of Paris,” when a panel of French wine judges chose the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay and 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon as the top wines in a France-versus-California showdown. What many people don’t know is that Chateau Montelena bought most of the grapes for its winning Chardonnay from two Sonoma County vineyards.

Bacigalupi Vineyards Goddard Ranch

When Charles and Helen Bacigalupi bought their Russian River Valley ranch in 1956, they weren’t sure what to do with the existing vineyard, planted to old-school grapes like Mission and French Colombard. Farm advisor Bob Sisson convinced Charles to try planting a variety called Chardonnay.

He’d never heard of it and had to grab a piece of paper to write down the name. “Bob told him, ‘Go see Karl Wente in Livermore,’” explained Charles’ granddaughter Katey Bacigalupi Row. “He’ll take care of you.”

Bacigalupi brought back Chardonnay cuttings from Wente Vineyards and planted 14 acres at Goddard Ranch.

Part of the vineyard’s magic is its rocky, volcanic clay soils. Because the vines struggle, the resulting wines have tension and minerality. Differing berry sizes on the clusters—known as “hens and chicks”—mean the grapes ripen at different rates, balancing acidity with ripe fruit flavors.

Belle Terre Ranch

Belle Terre’s Chardonnay vines, planted by Henry Dick in 1970, were just getting started in 1973. That made it all the more incredible that the Alexander Valley vineyard achieved such legendary status.

“It was unusual for a vineyard that young to do so well,” said Henry’s son Ron Dick, who now runs Belle Terre.

Dick said the magnitude of the Paris tasting didn’t really hit him until then-Chateau Montelena winemaker Mike Grgich came out and explained it. “After that,” Dick said, “I was flabbergasted.”

The following year, Chateau St. Jean began making a Belle Terre Chardonnay, celebrated for its minerality and ripe, stone-fruit flavors. The winery continued producing it for more than four decades.

Though Dick said he didn’t find a home for the fruit last year due to the industry glut, it’s part of the blend for Rodney Strong’s 2024 Sonoma County Chardonnay.

Three to try

Bacigalupi Vineyards

2023 Renouveau Paris Tasting Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, $85

This is currently the only wine made from the historic “Paris Tasting Block” on Goddard Ranch. The wine has ripe, peachy aromas with stone fruit and citrus zing on the palate. Rich and creamy, it finishes with a kiss of vanilla.

Auteur Wines

2024 Bacigalupi Vineyard Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, $65

Hailing from the block just below the Paris Tasting vineyard, this is a bright-yet-round rendition bursting with pure fruit flavors—think Golden Delicious apple—and balancing acidity. (It’s set for release in September—but wines this delicious are worth the wait.)

MacRostie Winery

2023 Bacigalupi Vineyard Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, $55

Rich and round on the palate, this has aromas of vanilla and flavors combining lemon meringue pie with tangy green apple. The wine has a creamy texture and a lingering finish.

The post Two Sonoma Vineyards That Made History on the Wine Scene appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

As chair of Santa Rosa Junior College’s Culinary Arts Program, Betsy Fischer has worn many hats over her decades-long career: administrator, publicist, teacher, and mentor. The one she’s never claimed is a chef’s toque.

Trained as a vocalist rather than a chef, Fischer brings a performer’s instincts to her front-of-house hospitality training, teaching students that service and connection matter as much as knife skills. That perspective has defined her leadership style in the classroom and in the student-run dining room, where she’s a constant presence.

On May 24, she’ll walk with her graduating students for the last time, leaving behind a program and a generation of students shaped by her influence.

Saying goodbye

I’m turning 70 this year. This has been my whole life for 26 years, but it’s a 50-60-hour-a-week job as chair. It’s bittersweet, but I’m tired. At some point, you think, ‘I’ve done what I wanted to do.’ I won’t lose touch with this place — it’s too much a part of who I am. I plan to come back at some point and teach a few classes.

The perks of teaching

The biggest joy as a teacher is that moment you know you’ve connected to someone in the classroom. That doesn’t always happen, but the pleasure of teaching is knowing you’ve given students a set of skills and a passion and a better chance of finding their way. You know you have the potential to change people’s lives.

Why culinary school matters

We are a conduit for students that have no experience in the food world. Just because grandma taught you to make spaghetti sauce, doesn’t mean you understand how to open a restaurant. They’re looking for guidance and help because they love to cook, and this is a comfort zone for them to expand their abilities. This is a very difficult business and we tell them the whole story and help them avoid pitfalls.

Lasting advice

For me it’s always been about things falling in my lap — being in the right place at the right time. Be open to anything. If you have an opportunity, take it. You never know what doors will open when you tell people who you are and what you’re interested in.

The post SRJC Culinary Chair Betsy Fischer Reflects on the ‘Joy as a Teacher’ appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

Elaine’s Big Salad from “Seinfeld” pretty much nails the main-character energy we’re after when we say, “Let’s have a salad.” No wimpy greens, no bottled dressing, no dainty plates. Just a big bowl, a fork and a stack of napkins — because a real salad should be a meal, not a supporting player.

Taco salad

Don Julio’s

The best burrito of your life, in salad form. Sweet al pastor pork or Salvadoran orange-marinated chicken are the go-to proteins at this tucked-away cafe. Crack into the edible tortilla bowl to reveal refried beans, guac, sour cream and rainbow greens ready for their close-up. 217 Southwest Blvd., Rohnert Park. 707-242-3160, donjulioslatingrill.com

Maccabi Salad

Zoftig

Everything you love about a mezze platter in a power bowl. Dollops of housemade hummus, baba ghanoush, beet and walnut dips meet mixed greens, tabouleh, and crispy falafel with a handful of whole-wheat pita chips for the win. Virtuous without even trying. 57 Montgomery Drive, Santa Rosa. 707-521-9554, zoftigeatery.com

Wedge Salad

Stark’s Steak & Seafood

This steakhouse classic almost dares you to call it a salad. A thick wedge of iceberg lettuce is a vehicle for blue cheese dressing and bacon, as it should be. Tiny tomatoes and a slice of red onion help keep up appearances that you’re actually eating vegetables. 521 Adams St., Santa Rosa. 707-546-5100, starkssteakhouse.com

Monterey Trout Salad

Handline

Though seafood stars at this neighborhood cafe, locally sourced, seasonal veggies always steal the show. Piles of butter lettuce support flecks of house-smoked trout, Meyer lemon crème fraîche dressing, candied walnuts and roasted beets. Perfection. 935 Gravenstein Highway S., Sebastopol. 707-827-3744, handline.com

Pea Shoot Salad

Lo & Behold

Chef Sean Kelley’s ode to Berkeley in the ’90s is a tangle of crunchy pea shoots, shaved carrot, radish and toasted sunflower seeds with a lemon-sesame yogurt dressing. It’s never leaving the menu because it’s just that good. 214 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg. 707-756-5021, loandbeholdca.com

Farro Chicken

Lunchette

Chef Naomi Crawford is an outspoken advocate for honest ingredients and walks the walk. Glowing greens from nearby farms form the base for her nourishing farro salad with apples, herbs, shallots, goat cheese, pickled onions, and candied almonds topped with harissa-baked chicken. 25 Fourth St., Petaluma. 707-241-7443, lunchettepetaluma.com

Seasonal Salad

Sonoma Pizza Co.

Whatever time of year you visit, there’s an artful salad of the moment. Maybe it’s melon and burrata with nasturtium leaves, or summer greens with mimosa vinaigrette. No matter what you find, it’s good. Make sure to check the daily tapas menu for additional picks. 6615 Front St., Forestville. 707-820-1031, sonomapizzaco.com

Stoned Salad

Spread Kitchen

A Levantine-inspired salad of tender greens, summer stone fruit and slivers of watermelon radish is dusted with sumac and drizzled with tart pomegranate vinaigrette. Crisp, colorful and bright, it’s summer on a fork. 18375 Highway 12, Sonoma, 707-721-1256, spreadkitchensonoma.com

The post Where To Find the Best Big Summer Salads in Sonoma County appeared first on Sonoma Magazine.

When Courtney Summers landed an apprenticeship at Silver Oak Cellars through The Veraison Project, it helped the Texas native realize her dream of working in the wine industry.

By the end of her time at Silver Oak, Summers—now the wine club coordinator for Bricoleur Vineyards in Windsor—and her fellow apprentice, Philadelphia-based Tahlia Suggs, had founded Cookout at the Vineyard. More than just a party, the women created it as a fundraiser for The Veraison Project, an organization that funds scholarships and mentorships for people of color in an industry where BIPOC representation has historically been less than 1%.

What started out as a one-day party has grown to a three-day celebration of wine, food, and good times held June 11-13 at three different Sonoma County wineries. Like all good cookouts, says Summers, the focus is on hospitality and building community. “By Saturday, y’all are best friends. At the end of it all, everybody’s cousins.”

Getting the party started

When we came out here, we were in awe of the beauty. We were in awe of the experiences. We just couldn’t help but think it would be so fun if we could also have something that represented where we come from in this same setting. What would it be like to have a fish fry in the vineyards? We hadn’t seen that. What would it be like to have gumbo prepared for you along with wine in the vineyards—having that kind of interaction with the BIPOC community, with our allies? We decided to see if it could happen, and we just asked.

About Cookout Culture

Cookout culture has always been appreciating the food that we grew up on. It’s bringing community together. Everybody should be proud of where they come from. We’re just letting you know that this is where we come from. These are the recipes that we were raised on, and then we’re elevating them a little bit. Cookout food—barbecue, it goes with wine. Southern meals go with wine. Soul food goes with wine. (It’s) combining those worlds together and showing that they do belong together.

A Wine Country welcome

We really care about the connections we’re building and it’s bringing people up here. We continue to get Bay Area natives—they have never been up to Alexander Valley and didn’t even feel like they could come up that far. So, I think that continues to drive more and more access to this area. With our itinerary, we’re making sure that when people come out here, (they know) these are the places we felt welcome.

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What could be better than tasting a variety of chocolates? Making and decorating the treats yourself before savoring the sweet morsels.

Forestville’s newly opened Rainy Day Chocolate hosts classes and tastings at its kitchen and shop tucked into a small strip mall on Mirabel Road.

Inspired by San Francisco’s renowned Dandelion Chocolate, Rainy Day sources cacao from small producers in Tanzania and Guatemala, says co-owner and CEO Jennifer Daly, who founded the small bean-to-bar operation with her partner in both love and chocolate, Chris Sund. The couple started making chocolate together several years ago on a rainy day (thus the company name), selling at farmers markets and festivals before finally opening their brick-and-mortar shop in early March.

Walking into Rainy Day Chocolate feels like entering a tropical forest thanks to the vibrant mural of multi-hued cacao pods growing alongside volcano-backed Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. When Daly and Sund travel to Guatemala, they bring back 100 to 200 pounds of cacao in their luggage.

At a recent weekend workshop, Daly began with a brief description of the chocolate-making process. The colorful cacao pods, which look like small, psychedelic footballs, hold 30–50 seeds that are fermented, dried, and shipped (or hand-carried) from abroad—that’s when Daly takes over.

She roasts the seeds in a convection oven no bigger than what you might find in someone’s home, then “winnows” them to remove the papery shell. The result is cacao nibs, which we taste first. This is 100% cacao that’s crunchy, nutty, and bitter, which makes the 10-year-old girl in the class, Kat, wince. After tasting chocolate ranging from 90% to 69%, each with distinct flavors, such as sour cherry notes, Kat finds a clear favorite in milk chocolate with about 33% cacao that has caramel undertones.

For the finale, Daly brings out chocolate for decorating with “luster dust,” powdered food coloring mixed with vodka. “You get to paint, then the alcohol evaporates and you get beautiful painted chocolate,” says Daly, noting there’s no vodka taste.

Daly sees her chocolate business as an opportunity to support small cacao growers in the developing world while visitors to the shop get to learn something and go home with a delicious treat. “I really just want to make people happy,” she says.

6492 Mirabel Road in Forestville. Book a tasting and decorating class at rainydaychocolate.com.

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It’s hard not to notice the grin on Michael Thiele’s face as he watches several women tug on a rope and pulley to hoist a 4-foot, 200-pound hollow Douglas fir log about 25 feet in the air. From afar, it looks almost like they’re lifting a piece of furniture—maybe a coffee table or end table—into a 50-foot cedar tree.

“This is the exciting part,” says Thiele, founder of Apis Arborea, a grassroots nonprofit that has installed hundreds of these log hives, or “TreeNests,” across Northern California as part of its controversial mission to “wild” honeybees by encouraging them to live outside of box hives and in trees.

It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon on an apple orchard in the hilly backcountry between Sebastopol and Occidental. One of the women helping install the nest is Laura Cheever, owner of Laura’s Apples. A few moments before lifting the hollow log, she leans into an opening at the bottom to smell melted beeswax and propolis inside—a concoction designed to attract honeybees.

“I expected it to smell like honey, but it doesn’t,” Cheever says. “It smells like that warm beehive smell.”

A few months ago, when she was approached by Noelle Johnson, deputy director of Gold Ridge Resource Conservation District—one of the women also helping heave the rope—Cheever had no reservations about hosting a TreeNest on her apple farm. Back in 2018, she allowed a beekeeper to park around 40 hives in her orchard. It seemed like a win-win. Her apple blossoms would get pollinated and the honeybees would get some much-needed R&R after a busy almond season in the Central Valley. It’s something that happens all across the more temperate North Coast every year.

“But they got very, very aggressive to passersby,” Cheever says. “So, I only did it once, and I won’t do it again.”

This time, there are no Langstroth box hives stacked on pallets beside the orchard. In a test of “biomimicry,” once the log is firmly strapped to the cedar trunk 30 feet in the air, the only thing left to do is wait for a new colony of bees to find it. Of the roughly 200 nests Thiele has installed across Northern California, this one is special. It’s the first time Apis Arborea has collaborated with a public agency willing to fund a TreeNest to host feral honeybees. Several years ago, Thiele tried unsuccessfully to lobby the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Unfortunately, he says, government officials “often look at bees as livestock that comes with an ecological impact.”

But, two days after the installation, Johnson is having second thoughts. She follows up to say she’s worried what native bee advocates will think when they hear that Gold Ridge RCD is funding even the marginal installation of a $795 TreeNest. For the past 15 years, RCD has been planting hedgerows around farms throughout west county to encourage healthy habitats for fragile native bee populations. Installing a nest to attract honeybees will likely be seen as direct competition to native bees such as bumblebees, carpenter bees, mason bees, and leafcutter bees, she says. Johnson wants to stress that the nest is only being used in an agricultural setting, employed as an alternative to large-scale commercial beehives that can spread viruses and are more likely to crowd out native bee foraging.

“One reason Michael is controversial is because he’s also putting those TreeNests in the wildland areas,” she says, citing a nest he installed in the Grove of the Old Trees west of Occidental.

She points out that honeybees are an introduced species and are not native to North America. As a result, biologists don’t use the term “wild” to describe non-native animals. Instead, they use “feral” to refer to free-roaming, non-native honeybees that live in tree nests rather than captivity in box hives.

“They’re native to where he’s from,” Johnson says. “So back home in Germany, people are talking about ‘rewilding’ bees. They’re part of the ecosystem there—that makes sense for Europe, but not North America.”

Although he’s somewhat surprised to hear that RCD is having reservations, it’s nothing new to Thiele, who has been fighting the native vs. non-native battle for years. When he met with Johnson and RCD last October, he says he felt like they understood the difference. “They said, ‘Oh yeah, you are actually serving native pollinator communities through your programming.’”

For now, he’s looking forward to seeing what happens next at the orchard. “There’s so much more to come,” he says.

It’s a debate many centuries in the making when you consider the European honeybee (Apis mellifera)—somewhat of a misnomer since it originated, not in Europe, but likely in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia—was brought to America by English settlers in 1622 before making its way to California in 1853. Pointing out that the Gravenstein apples in Cheever’s orchard are also non-native, Thiele sees the debate between native and non-native as outdated.

“The whole world has become a migrant,” he says in a rhythmic German accent that occasionally channels the enthusiasm of documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog. “It’s not only people. All species are migrating.”

Thiele could be talking about himself. A native of Germany, he grew up in a small town about two hours north of Frankfurt, on a farm where “we fixed all of our own things.” Some of his heroes are German bee expert Jurgen Tautz and British author Isabella Tree, who wrote a book about rewilding her farm.

Thiele is quick to cite numerous studies of honeybees, including work by renowned University of Georgia professor Keith Delaplane, who argues that supporting a wide diversity of bee species—including both commercially managed honeybees and free-roaming, feral honeybees—“is critical for the future of agriculture,” he says.

From 2023-2024, more than 55% of managed honeybee colonies died, according to the U.S. Beekeeping Survey. Another study in 2025, by Project Apis m., found that commercial operations (those with more than 500 colonies) lost 62% of their hives, whereas in the wild, Thiele has documented honeybee survival rates soaring above 80%.

His mission at Apis Arborea is to support and boost the survival of wild honeybees, while collecting data, encouraging scientific study, and educating the public and other beekeepers about the benefits of “wilding.” In an age where honeybee survival numbers have plummeted, many beekeepers point to varroa mites and a host of viruses as the major culprits. Instead, Thiele sees pesticides, over-crowding, lack of foraging habitat, boxed beehive management, and breeding as the major factors.

To some in the commercial beekeeping world, Thiele is almost a pariah, though some large-scale beekeepers are willing to engage with him, like Tauzer Apiaries owner Trevor Tauzer, whose family has been keeping bees in Northern California for more than 50 years. “He and I do not always see eye to eye,” Tauzer says, but admits they have found some common ground. “We align as we are committed to giving disparate voices space to be heard.”

To others, he’s celebrated as the local guru of wild honeybees. “He’s thought of as like the god of natural beekeeping,” says Healdsburg organic beekeeper Candice Koseba, owner of Sonoma County Bee Company. She’s using the term “beekeeping” loosely. Thiele might bristle at the description, since he’s not interested in “keeping bees” or harvesting honey.

Like Koseba, Bee Focused beekeeper Joy Wesley was immediately hooked when she heard Thiele talk at an industry event nearly a decade ago. “He spoke on honeybees in a way that I hadn’t heard before,” she remembers. “He was more honeybee-centric, like from the point of view of the honeybee as opposed to the point of view of the human.”

Boonville farmer Chris Tebbutt likens him to a bee whisperer. “He’s got a really unique, incredibly sensitive approach.” Tebbutt hired Thiele to install a handful of TreeNests at his 50-acre Filigreen Farm, where honeybees are crucial for pollinating apples, pears, peaches, plums, blueberries, and olives. “The way he handles bees and how he imagines conditions in the hive, it’s not a product. Bees are not just some commodity for him.”

But to truly appreciate Thiele, you have to understand his zen approach to science. Inventing his own language, he calls honeybees “apians,” recasting the adjective “apian” (from Latin root word “apis” for bee) as a noun. He named his 5-year-old nonprofit “Apis Arborea,” meaning bees that live in trees. He calls his installations “TreeNests” instead of log hives because he feels the word “hive” is a man-made construct.

Standing outside his workshop one morning, Thiele scrolls through his cellphone, poring across five years of research compiled at Sonoma State University’s Galbreath Wildlands Preserve in Mendocino County, where Thiele and collaborators are studying more than 70 wild bee trees where honeybees have nested on their own without human intervention. Last year the survival rate was 83%.

Monthly monitoring data on his phone includes temperature, weather conditions, moon phases, and a detailed count of bees, both leaving and returning. His approach isn’t merely data-driven, but also philosophical, using poetic language to describe their nests (“Light angel, dancing oak”) and pondering the “apians’” state of consciousness.

In the spirit of San Francisco Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, whose face is on a poster hanging in his workshop, Thiele often invokes the unity and interconnectedness of bees to all life around them. A colony of bees, he points out, will act as an individual, functioning as what is referred to in biology as a superorganism, like a coral reef or termites.

“Here we have 20,000 individuals on one hand, but they are not individuals because they need everybody to exist,” he says.

It’s all part of a spiritual quest that goes back to his time at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin. After his first wife died of cancer, Thiele moved to the United States and lived for eight years at Green Gulch, where he met his new wife. After they left the community with two kids in tow, Thiele got a job at a water treatment plant to pay the bills. But beekeeping was his passion. He named his first company Gaia Bees. Soon after, he co-founded the honeybee sanctuary Melissa Garden, where he had a log-hive epiphany. After honeybees settled into the log, he took a peek inside the log for the first time.  “What I saw was completely outside of my reference frames,” he remembers. “It was like, ‘What is this? What’s happening here?’”

What he observed was a conical shape forming from the ceiling of the nest, as the bees populated in layers creating “a sheath of living bees that almost looked like a skin.”

At that point, he says, “I realized beekeeping is such a contrived practice and paradigm. I felt it with my whole body, with my whole being, and I knew that I had to shift and start learning about the species and how they live in the wild.”

Another watershed moment occurred at Green Gulch Farm, where Thiele began experimenting with log hives in 2014. For the first four years, the annual survival rate was around 20%. When it plummeted to total losses in the fifth and sixth years, “I sat there in the winter fields, with blossoming brassica all around me, literally crying,” he remembers.

But in the seventh year, the log-hive populations began to rebound, he says. Now, 12 years later, the health of the feral honeybees is thriving, with an 87% survival rate last year, he says.

One of the biggest threats to local honeybees he sees is the unregulated seasonal influx of large-scale commercial beekeepers who rotate thousands of hives in and out of Sonoma County throughout the year. The issue came to a head three years ago when Tauzer contracted with the county to park his hives at a county disposal site across the street from Koseba’s bees in Healdsburg. Alarmed by the proximity, Koseba raised the issue at a Healdsburg City Council meeting, where Thiele spoke in her support. Eventually, Tauzer’s contract was canceled. It led Thiele and Bee Focused owner Wesley to form the Pollinator Advocacy Alliance, with the goal of negotiating apiary size limits in Sonoma County. Along with Koseba and other small organic beekeepers, they are including Tauzer in a working group to draft language for a proposed county ordinance.

Thiele is also working on a new model for local beekeepers who are willing to agree to a handful of rules: no treatment or pesticides, embracing swarming as propagation, not moving beehives farther than a half-mile, and not purchasing bees from anywhere to put in your apiary.

It’s called “LocApiary,” as a play on locavore, and the goal is to create what Thiele describes as “a watershed-wide apiary.” He’s putting it forth almost as a challenge. “We want to get beekeepers involved, to see who is brave enough or feels called to take that next step.”

Back at Laura’s Apples, the 6-acre orchard west of Sebastopol, it only takes four days for a new colony of bees to discover the new TreeNest. Cheever sends a video of hundreds of bees buzzing around the opening, with a note that reads, “I’m just so excited. Bees are moving in already!”

Thiele is happy, but hardly surprised. In his experience, the record time for bees to inhabit a new TreeNest is two hours. It’s a migration he has witnessed again and again, giving him hope for the future of wilding.

A few days before, while standing below a 20-foot-high nest he installed on a neighbor’s property, he watches several bees buzz around two half-dollar-size entrance holes.

“Did someone move in?” he wonders, watching scouts come and go. “It could be imminent today. It could be that there’s a swarm sitting somewhere, and when it’s warmer, they’ll move in in two hours.”

He explains how a roaming scout likely found the new location first and returned to the old hive to communicate through dance, saying, “I found something really cool that could work for us.” After other scouts zero in on it, soon around 50 scouts are coming and going, dancing about this new location. While maybe only five scouts are dancing about another location. Eventually, they decide to move.

“It’s not about vanity,” he says, anthropomorphizing the lives of bees. “Like saying, ‘I’m the most successful experienced scout, and we should go to what I found.’ Because it’s a life and death decision. If you’re driven by pride and vanity and ego, that could be devastating.

“We humans do that, too,” he says, laughing.

After a brief moment of self-reflection, he’s consumed again by wayward “apians”; his eyes dart across the sky, hoping a few buzzing scouts might lead him to their old home. He has perfected a field practice called “beelining,” where he lures honeybees with a sweet liquid and then, using a soft-bristled brush, paints different watercolors on the abdomens or thorax of several bees to track them. After timing their departing and returning flights, he can ultimately follow them to their hive. It’s a technique that’s helped Thiele find 77 bee trees over the course of six years at Galbreath Preserve, an exercise in patience to be sure.

It’s a testament to the old saying, “It’s the journey, not the destination,” or as Thiele learned in his Zen studies: “It’s the path and not the destiny.”

Coming out in late May, The Wild Honeybee Atlas is a community-based, open-data platform similar to an app that can be used to find and monitor honeybee populations in your area. Once it’s available, users can sign up and become custodians on the website (apisarborea.org).

Also on the website, check out the podcast Arboreal Apiculture Salon, featuring scholars, scientists, and activists from around the world, engaged in long-form interviews and discussions about honeybees.

Upcoming events

May 9: “Spring Field Trip to the Wild Honeybee Populations of the Galbreath Wildlands Preserve,” 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Yorkville. $10.

May 22 & Aug. 8: “Honeybee (Re-)Wilding Walk with Apis Arborea,” 10:30 a.m. to noon at Sonoma Botanical Garden, 12841 Sonoma Highway, Glen Ellen. $10-$20, available at sonomabg.org.

May 29: “Learning from Wild Honeybees” A first-ever overnight immersion invites a small group into the living interior of Galbreath Wildland Preserve. 3 p.m., May 29 – 2 p.m., May 31. $300.

June 17: “TreeNest Tutorial: Designing and Building Arboreal Nest Habitats,” 5:30-7 p.m. $20-$35.

apisarborea.org

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