Just a year after opening, Healdsburg’s Little Saint has announced the closure of its innovative vegan restaurant, The Second Story, as it converts the eatery into a full-time event space.
A final dinner at the restaurant will be June 14. Little Saint, a sprawling art, wine, food and event space, will continue to operate its casual cafe and lounge on the first floor.
Headed by former Noma chef Stu Stalker, The Second Story sought to push the boundaries of plant-based cuisine. The multicourse menu created by Stalker played with complicated gastronomic techniques to mimic traditional haute cuisine while celebrating micro-seasonal produce from Little Saint Farm. Stalker’s long collaboration with Rene Redzepi, founder of Copenhagen’s Noma (considered one of the world’s best restaurants), heavily influenced his culinary style.
Seemingly simple dishes at The Second Story often included ingredients that could involve days of preparation, like freezing, melting, clarifying, dehydrating and reducing, such as their carrot yeast, a tiny footnote to Stalker’s aebleskiver (Danish pancake-like balls). With just a handful of staff, the logistics of pulling together such complicated yet mind-blowing creations seemed ambitious.
There was frequent confusion about the multi-use second floor of the 10,000-foot space that served as a restaurant, private party venue, community gathering space and concert hall.
That was part of the challenge of operating The Second Story, according to Little Saint Director Jenny Hess.
“We see this as another chapter of growth for Little Saint. Behind the scenes, our team does a weekly ‘dance’ upstairs to transition from a community event to live music, to the restaurant and onto a private party. While we love the dynamic use of our space, we want to focus our team’s energies on further building our community,” said Hess.
The second-floor space will now be used exclusively for events. Stalker will continue in his role as Executive Chef at Little Saint, focusing on the evolution of the cafe and lounge menu downstairs.
Second Story opened in June 2023 after Little Saint’s operations management company, Vertice Hospitality, departed in December 2022. Vertice is co-owned by Tony Greenberg and Kyle and Katina Connaughton of Michelin-starred SingleThread in Healdsburg. No reason was given for the break.
During Vertice’s collaboration with Little Saint designer Ken Fulk; philanthropist Jeff Ubben and his wife, animal activist Laurie Ubben; and program director Jenny Hess, Little Saint was lauded by The New York Times as one of their “50 places in America we’re most excited about right now.”