Chef Duskie Estes puts the final touches on a Liberty Duck appetizer with star anise, bing cherry on a sesame rice cake at the North Coast Food and Wine Festival at Sonoma Mountain Village in Rohnert Park. (John Burgess / The Press Democrat)
This year, there’s plenty of delicious dining fun at the Sonoma International Film Festival (March 23-27), including an all-star dinner with legendary French chef Jacques Pépin on Thursday, March 24 (sorry, it’s already sold out) and treats from TV personality and local chef Duskie Estes (of Zazu and Black Piglet), now the executive director for the nonprofit Farm to Pantry.
During the dinner event, noted chefs will prepare a five-course meal to accompany a series of movie shorts, and Pépin will be honored with the first Sonoma International Film Festival Culinary Excellence Award, which includes a $10,000 donation to the Jacques Pépin Foundation.
On Thursday and again on March 26, Estes will discuss Farm to Pantry, a gleaning powerhouse that harvests unwanted local farm produce to benefit underserved communities. She’ll talk before the screening of “The Kitchenistas” at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 24, and 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 26.
“The Kitchenistas” documents a Latina-led movement in southern California to improve their community’s health and well-being. Program graduates, called “kitchenistas,” are mentoring and developing a sisterhood to bring high-quality food and cooking to their homes, schools and neighborhoods.
Attendees at that screening also will be treated to Estes’ Black Pig gourmet bacon popcorn, and her Black Pig Meat Company food truck will be parked outside the Cogir Hospitality Tent.
Also as part of the film festival, chef and cookbook author Joanne Weir will host a “Plates & Places” lunch at 11 a.m. Friday, March 25 (special ticket and RSVP required). Weir will share some TV segments from her PBS show of the places she’s traveled to.
The festival worked with Sonoma vintner and filmmaker Robert Kamen, of “Karate Kid” fame, to make a collection of four commemorative plates featuring the festival’s 25th anniversary logo, along with quotes from some of Kamen’s best-loved movie lines like “Wax on, wax off.” The plates, which cost $100 each or $350 for four, can be purchased without attending the festival.
The former Ruin Bar on Sebastopol’s South Main Street is expected to reopen early this summer as a craft cocktail spot called Third Pig, according to owners Alex and Katie Bowman.
The couple, who own Bowman Cellars in Graton, took over the lease after the closure of Ruin Bar, a pandemic casualty. The narrow, windowless space snuggled between Bank of the West and nearby Sebastopol Sunshine Cafe had long been a dive bar before Ruin owner Mathew Carson spiffed things up in late 2018, but since its closure in March 2020 it has sat empty.
Details are still a bit sketchy, but the Bowmans plan to make the cocktail bar a more lively space with greenery and modern decor that features the exposed brick.
Alex and Katie Bowman opened Bowman Cellars tasting room in 2018, a hip, millennial-friendly space with approachable but well-made wines. Both have roots in the community: Katie’s grandparents are the founders of Andy’s Produce Market in Sebastopol, and Alex’s family owns Bowman Electric.
Single Thread Restaurant & Farm will offer a limited series of dinners at Silver Oak Alexander Valley winery after last month’s fire, which has temporarily shuttered the Healdsburg restaurant.
All bookings at Single Thread’s restaurant have been canceled until the restaurant reopens. The dinners at Silver Oak will begin Friday and include a seven-course wine and food pairing with panoramic views of the Alexander Valley. Silver Oak, Twomey and other collector wines will be featured. Tickets cost $725 per person. Information at exploretock.com/silveroakwineryalexandervalley
In the meantime, owners Kyle and Katina Connaughton’s other project, Little Saint, is expected to open in late April. The plant-based restaurant and café is located inside the 10,000-square-foot space that previously housed SHED. (Curious foodies can sample a mezze plate prepared by the team behind Little Saint at Marine Layer Wines in Healdsburg. Read more here.)
Kyle and Katina Connaughton of Single Thread in Healdsburg. (Eva Kolenko)
Chef de Cuisine Bryan Oliver is reprising his role in the kitchen, and Rusty Rastello, whose team recently won the Wine Spectator Grand Award at Single Thread, will be executive wine director. Akeel Shah, Single Thread’s service director, will be the general manager. Read more here.
On March 31, the Connaughtons will welcome Junghyun “JP” and Ellia Park of the two-Michelin starred Atomix for a night of culinary collaboration. The two couples will craft a 10-course tasting menu reflecting both restaurants’ Asian-influenced cuisines and service styles. Read more here.
A view inside the Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum) an odiferous, seldom blooming plant in full display at California Carnivores in Sebastopol. (John Burgess/The Press Democrat)
Itching to get your hands in the dirt? These plant experts have your back.
Roses For All: Cottage Gardens of Petaluma
This gorgeous destination nursery is known for hundreds of different roses. They start ramping up for spring planting as early as January, and the most popular varieties—pale pink climber Cécile Brunner, classic Iceberg, old-fashioned Sally Holmes— can sell out quickly. If you love vines and twining plants, check out the selection of clematis as well.
Want to try your hand at grapegrowing on a small, backyard scale? Grapevines Galore is the public arm of industry source Grey Creek Viticultural Services, located in the heart of Dry Creek Valley. The nursery sells beautifully healthy, ready-to-plant varieties of both winegrapes and yummy table grapes like Flame and Perlette. Grapevine-specific planting advice, too—mid-March through April is ideal for this area.
Owner Mike Umehara comes by his expertise in Japanese horticulture honestly: His father was the longtime curator at the Japanese Garden in San Mateo. Umehara established the nursery over 30 years ago, focusing solely on rare Japanese maples. These trees’ lacy leaves and delicate forms make them versatile players in wine country gardens, and their spectacular fall colors echo the change in the vineyards. This is a sweet, family-run spot, and well worth the time to seek out.
When April rolls around and you start to think you’ve missed your window for starting from seed with some of the more exotic, difficult-to-find varieties of tomatoes, eggplants, and melons, Healdsburg’s Mick Kopetsky can help you out. He and his team will have ordered the seeds months ago and raised healthy 4-inch plants in their specialty greenhouses, all perfectly in time to start your summer food garden.
Not Just For Pros: Sonoma Valley Wholesale Nursery
This is the professionals’ secret source for well-adapted, organically-grown shrubs and trees in Sonoma Valley, and, despite the name, the nursery is open to the general public. You can get wonderful advice on choosing plants here—owner Paul Martinez is a passionate plantsman—but this selfservice spot works well if you know what you’re looking for and simply want the best quality plants you can find.
Irrigation and Tools: Harmony Farm Supply & Nursery
This organic nursery stocks native grasses, drought-tolerant plants, and veggie starts—but what they’re best known for is their practical, hands-on advice to keep your garden healthy and productive. They have decades of experience helping customers install their own drought-friendly drip irrigation systems (with their help, it’s doable!), and they sell all kinds of soil amendments, tools, and organic pest controls.
Ask almost any ten-year-old what their favorite plant is, and you’ll likely hear, “Venus flytrap.” And California Carnivores has hundreds of them, along with sundews, butterworts, and both hardy and tropical pitcher plants— the latter kept warm in a special humidity-controlled room. Founder Peter D’Amato wrote the book on these exotic gems: his best seller “The Savage Garden” is considered the bible for hobby growers.
Whether you’re looking for a single mature tree to anchor a planting or advice on a backyard grove to make your own olive oil, these experts are a go-to. The nursery propagates its own trees from cuttings, focusing on European varieties for either blending into oil or curing for eating—Frantoio and Leccino from Italy, Arbequina and Manzanillo from Spain. They also stock olive tree bonsai, carefully pruned into shape and nestled into hollowed-out stones.
Curry gumbo from Bayou on the Bay. (Heather Irwin/Sonoma Magazine)
Waking up to the aroma of frying beignets at his grandmother’s house in Louisiana is one of Chef Bradley Wildridge’s earliest memories. Cajun through and through, he has jambalaya in his blood and roux in his soul.
“Yoo-hoo!” was his grandma’s call for him to get out of bed and make a beeline for the kitchen, where the warm, yeasty puffs waited.
Now Wildridge and his wife Mandy make the same beignets each Sunday at the Sebastopol Farmers’ Market under a small tent emblazoned with the name of his fledgling food business, Bayou on the Bay. Other dishes include curry jambalaya, crawfish meat pies and Muffuletta sandwiches, plus other rotating menu items listed on their chalkboards.
It’s been less than a year since Wildridge got serious about his dream of French-Cajun fusion and offered his first pop-up menu at Shady Oak Barrel House in Santa Rosa in late November.
“I just asked some friends one night after beers,” Wildridge said of how his plans to start Bayou on the Bay came to be.
Gumbo and muffaletta sandwich at Bayou on the Bay. (Heather Irwin/Sonoma Magazine)Chef Bradley at Bayou on the Bay. (Heather Irwin/Sonoma Magazine)
A former cook at Dry Creek Kitchen and vegan catering chef, he gained traction with his idea after posting a GoFundMe page to test the waters. He soon found an investor and kitchen space at Old Possum Brewing Co., which has been fostering another pop-up, Austin’s Southern Smoke BBQ (at Old Possum on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays).
Now Wildridge’s venture is one of the many emerging pandemic food pop-ups fueled by invitations to serve food at breweries like Old Possum Brewing, Old Caz, Henhouse and Parliament. It’s a win-win as young, food-savvy beer drinkers come both for the brews and for the rotating food trucks and tents — from sushi and Asian cheesesteaks to samosas, gumbo and barbecue — ushering in a new food culture in Sonoma County.
Without onerous rents, expensive equipment and heart-stopping start-up costs, passion projects that once seemed impossible have become reachable for chefs and bakers. Call it the silver lining to being out of work for a traditional restaurant or catering job after years of pandemic closures and uncertainty.
On an early Saturday afternoon at The Barlow’s Seismic Brewing, Mandy Wildridge whisked a coconut and pecan caramel sauce for their Cajun Cake. The moist, dark crumbs studded with pineapple took me back to childhood granny cakes made with brown sugar, pecans and pineapple. So. Freaking. Good.
With a small fryer, chafing dishes and portable cooktops, the couple danced around their 10-by-10-foot space, turning out orders efficiently and smiling at curious passersby. Most people ended up stopping, having seen the Wildridges at other breweries. As they whipped up my order, Bradley encouraged a trip into Seismic for a beer. A new sushi rice lager (brewed with sushi rice in the grist) was a perfect pairing for the bright, bold, spicy, utterly fusion flavors of Bayou on the Bay. Ca c’est bon, y’all.
Best Bets
Wildridge is an experienced vegan chef and creates vegan and vegetarian riffs on many dishes. The menu frequently changes, with additions and subtractions. Beignets are served only on Sundays.
Smoked BBQ Mac and Cheese, $15: Smoky Joe Matos cheese is the base for creamy macaroni topped with barbecue mushrooms (possibly my new favorite food), crispy onions and jalapeños and barbecue sauce. You can add andouille sausage, chicken or bacon, but it’s pretty perfect on its own. The generous portion is enough for three people or one spectacularly hungry person.
Crawfish Deviled Egg, $7: Crawfish, if you’re not familiar, are the lobster of the Bayou and have a similar sweet and briny meat, just in an abbreviated package. At Bayou on the Bay, their little tails are sauteed in truffle butter and set atop a spicy deviled egg. Add hot sauce, green onions and sprouts (to cool it off). Cajun food isn’t three-alarm hot (at least not here), but it does have a kick that’ll make your eyes water.
Curry Jambalaya, $15: Here’s where the fusion surfaces in Wildridge’s cooking. Curry and coconut milk are added to traditional jambalaya spices (usually a mix of onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, basil, thyme, black pepper, white pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika and salt) and a Cajun “holy trinity” of onions, bell peppers and celery. Chicken and sausage stud the rich, aromatic stew, a delicious mash-up that somehow makes a ton of sense.
Gumbo Ramen, $15: Things get a little crazy with this dish. Wildridge starts with a gumbo base of roux, adds vegetables and thins the broth with veggie stock (the broth is vegan). Ramen noodles, sliced andouille sausage and chicken are added, a la carte, along with a smoked six-minute egg. The rich, dark broth is bursting with flavor in a not-quite-ramen, not-quite-gumbo way that worked so well with the light nuttiness of my sushi rice beer. Score!
Natchitoches Crawfish Meat Pies, $7: Call ’em Louisiana empanadas or just plain delicious. Sweet crawfish, veggies and jambalaya rice are stuffed into a dough pocket and fried until crispy and hot. Because we’re dippers, the “Secret Bayou Sauce,” a spicy-creamy dip that adds a proper heat, makes these hand pies doubly delicious.
Bayou on the Bay is at Old Possum Brewing Co. (357 Sutton Place, Santa Rosa, oldpossumbrewing.com) 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and the Sebastopol Farmer’s Market on Sundays. For other times and locations, visit their Instagram @bayou.onthebay.
Server Marlen Flores speaks with customers at La Fondita restaurant in the Roseland neighborhood of Santa Rosa, California, on Friday, February 15, 2019. (Alvin Jornada / The Press Democrat)
La Fondita will open a new location in downtown Santa Rosa on Saturday at 630 Third St., in the space once occupied by Chandi Hospitality Group’s Mercato, which closed in 2018. The Roseland-based Mexican restaurant and food truck had announced plans to expand to the Third Street space in 2020, but halted moving forward during the pandemic.
Known for more than 20 years for her authentic, affordable Mexican cuisine, La Fondita owner Elena Maria Reyes started her food business with an old food truck she and her husband financed by selling their cars and asking her grandmother for a few thousand dollars in startup money.
That same truck — which became the unmistakable orange Delicias Elenitas mobile kitchen — remains permanently parked outside the La Fondita restaurant at 816 Sebastopol Road. Open until 3 a.m., it remains one of the most popular stops on Sebastopol Road.
Pastis-scented steamed mussels and fries at the Girl & the Fig in Sonoma. (Beth Schlanker/The Press Democrat)
The town of Sonoma has a vibrant dining scene that often gets short shrift in comparison to the glitzier Healdsburg. The walkability of the town square, the unpretentiousness and the focus on locally-sourced ingredients makes it a required stop for Wine Country adventures. You could easily spend a weekend eating and not get to even a fraction of the great restaurants in town. Here, however, are some favorites that never let us down. Click through the gallery for details.
Tiffany Holbrook prepares to feed the chickens at Wise Acre Farm in Windsor. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
Raising backyard chickens for 15 years was the sum of Tiffany Holbrook’s experience when she and her husband, Jason, purchased Wise Acre Farm in Windsor in 2018. Since then, the couple has raised 2,000 laying hens a year to supply not only local restaurants, but also their 24/7 egg vending machine, which, during pandemic-related supply-chain disruptions, has helped keep area residents in eggs. “We operate extremely transparently,” says Holbrook. “I want people to see how healthy the chickens are and where their eggs come from.”
5 a.m. My alarm goes off, and by 5:30, I’m in my home office doing paperwork, email, social media posts. If it’s a day when I’m expecting a shipment of chicks, I get a call between 5:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. to pick them up at the post office.
7 a.m. I get my son up — he’s 13 so he’s self-sufficient — and bring him to school. Jason works full-time at Chalk Hill Estate in Healdsburg, so beforehand, he goes to the farm and takes care of the specialty-breed chickens: Frizzles, Polish, Silkies. We also have a flock of special-needs chickens: partially blind, permanent limp, digestion problems. He feeds and waters them and then goes to work.
A carton of eggs from the egg vending machine at Wise Acre Farm in Windsor. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
An egg vending machine at Wise Acre Farm in Windsor. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
8:15 a.m. If I’m picking up chicks, I take them over to the farm. We inspect each one and put it in the brooder. It takes about five months for chicks to start laying, so we’re constantly raising new ones, which gives us a variety of egg sizes.
10 a.m. I bring fermented feed and dry grain to the main flock of about 1,500 laying hens on the 15-acre pasture. We have good egg production this time of year.
11 a.m. Chickens eat the grass down, so I move our four mobile coops to fresh grass around the pasture using our ’73 Chevy 350 with custom fabrication for tracks. (Our pasture gets pretty muddy.) The chickens know to run alongside the monster truck to grab the grasshoppers as I’m driving!
2 p.m. I’ll check on the chicks, sit with them, hang out for a little bit, make sure they’re OK and no one’s acting lethargic. I spend time with the animals so I can pick out when someone’s behaving oddly.
5 p.m. Evening chores start two to three hours before sunset. After my husband gets off work, we do a second round of fermented feed, collect eggs, and close the nesting boxes.
My husband is my egg washer, so he runs them under water; we’re more efficient than machines. As he’s washing, I’m prepping egg cartons. We hand-weigh each egg and distribute it by weight according to regulations. Once all the eggs are sorted, some go in the cartons, some are set aside for restaurants, some go to our vending machine.
Tiffany Holbrook receives a hug from her livestock guard dog, Phoebe, at Wise Acre Farm in Windsor. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
7 p.m. I go home and start dinner. Once the chickens are all roosted and tucked in, my husband will open the boxes back up to feed the livestock guardian dogs, who keep watch for predators — skunks, possums, raccoons, bobcats, coyotes. We keep a few roosters to help guard the chickens during the day. Same with the geese, who are great with hawk alerts.
No day is the same; that’s why I love my job. And happy animals produce good food. If they aren’t happy, they aren’t laying eggs.
Try Tiffany Holbrook’s eggs at the Wise Acre Farm vending machine, 631 Arata Lane, Windsor. 707-480-1900, wiseacrewindsor.com
Cheese is a lifestyle choice in Sonoma County. Goat, sheep, cow, and even buffalo milk are blended to make some of the best artisan cheeses on the West Coast, right here in our own springtime backyard. Click through the above gallery for eight favorite cheeses.
Kevin Jorgeson makes his way up a newly installed route at Session Climbing in Santa Rosa on Thursday, January 27, 2022. (Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat)
Session Climbing is in the homestretch. The 23,500-square-foot climbing and fitness emporium, located a mile south of Santa Rosa’s Courthouse Square, launches this May. And as sunlight streams through the gym’s large windows on a bright afternoon a few weeks before its public debut, another sound is audible over the din of nearby power tools: euphoria.
After nimbly clambering up a challenging intermediate route, Kevin Jorgeson pushes off the climbing wall and into space – his 50-foot fall arrested by his climbing partner of two decades, Mike Shaffer, who is holding the rope and belaying him from below. Jorgeson and Shaffer are the gym’s cofounders: their whoops and laughter fill the building.
Jorgeson, a native of Santa Rosa, is best known for his 2015 first ascent of the Dawn Wall in Yosemite National Park, the hardest big-wall climb in the world. The patience and resilience required for that feat, which took 19 days, have been helpful over the six years that it’s taken Jorgeson and Shaffer to shepherd their passion project to the finish line.
Kevin Jorgeson makes his way up a newly installed route at Session Climbing in Santa Rosa. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)Kevin Jorgeson applies chalk to his hands at Session Climbing in Santa Rosa. (Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat)Kevin Jorgeson is the co-founder of Session Climbing, along with Mike Schaffer. (Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat)
Jorgeson spends as much time growing his sport as he does participating in it. His nonprofit, 1Climb, puts up more modest climbing walls in Boys & Girls Clubs across America. To his delight, interest in Session Climbing has extended far beyond the core community. “Which is the goal—to bring climbing to more people,” he says. In addition to offering an array of climbing and bouldering walls, and classes for local kids, Session features a mezzanine with rooms for yoga, and other fitness equipment, all built around a cafe and gathering area.
As Jorgeson unclips from his rope, he bumps fists with Shaffer, who says, “That felt like a huge moment.”
“It was,” agrees Jorgeson. “It is.”
With their ascents, they’d unofficially christened Session. For Jorgeson, it was like test-driving a car he’d designed himself. “It’s one thing to look at your walls in a rendering, in design, in construction. It’s another thing to be moving over them for the first time, to see how those ideas translate in real life,” he says.
