5 Sonoma Breweries Wine Lovers Should Visit

By Jess Poshepny Vallery

For as long as people have been drinking beer and wine, beer has been regarded the inferior beverage. Wine is “classy,” it takes time to craft and age, a refined palate to appreciate, and is often paired with fine food. Beer is less expensive, often comes in a can, and you can find it anywhere. But, with craft beer now taking the center stage – even in Wine Country – many connoisseurs are heading out to explore hoppy drinks. However, there are still a few wine lovers who aren’t quite ready to make the leap to beer – it’s not fruity or oaky enough, it’s too bitter. If you happen to be one of those people, we’re here to change your mind. Click through the gallery above for five Sonoma breweries that will leave wine lovers begging for more. 

 

 

 

The Hottest Restaurants in Sonoma Right Now

By Heather Irwin

Dining Editor Heather Irwin dives into summer with a celebration of cuisine as community — plus where to go crepe-crazy and how community-supported kitchens can help us all eat healthy. Click through the gallery above for photos. 

REVIBE CAFÉ, Sebastopol
Amidst women in flower-print dresses, the gently scented breeze of a Southern Pride smoker and the lilting patois of Caribbean music, the patio of Revibe Café and Scoop Shop in Sebastopol is about as close to Jamaica as you can get in Sonoma County. Aside from, perhaps, a backstage pass to a Marley concert.

Though the tiny island nation is still 3,000 miles away, it’s not a stretch to say that Sonoma County shares the Caribbean passion for laidback lifestyles, dreadlocks, herb and embracing diverse culinary traditions in a literal melting pot of flavors. And at that intersection
of NorCal and Kingston is a restaurant that brings the best of both to the table.

Revibe Café is a longtime project of its owner, Bronx transplant Will Abrams, and executive chef Anthony Walters, of Kingston, Jamaica. Serving up authentic “beanie” or tapas-style plates of curried goat, jerk chicken, rice and peas, and yam cookup, along with their own exotic ice creams, the restaurant showcases the mashup of Spanish, African, British, Chinese, East Indian and Rastafarian cuisine.

Why Jamaican? It certainly wasn’t a lifetime spent on balmy West Indies shores that led Abrams, his Jamaican-American wife, and their two kids to spend three years rehabbing the former Quonset hut on Healdsburg Avenue into an irie (translation: cool, nice) eatery. Instead, it was simply that Abrams missed the ubiquitous Jamaican cafes found in the Bronx, where he lived for many years.

“I could leave a busy day at work and then get into a packed subway with a thousand people and then finally find respite from the city grind in a local Jamaican cafe,” says Abrams, who used to make his living in the nonprofit world. “As soon as you walk in, you can feel the vibe … reggae music pulling you into a groove and taking away that city edginess.”

That and the cultural blend of a big city. “Here in Sonoma County we are spoiled with the natural and diverse beauty of our surroundings, but it is the cultural diversity of the people and their feelings and food that we have to seek out here among the picturesque landscapes,” Abrams adds. “I hope folks can find some of those good feelings and diverse influences here.”

Abrams had a list of culinary ideas he was considering when he first began pondering a restaurant, including a Jewish deli. But it was Jamaican that stuck when he met Walters, who worked for several years to create a menu that would capture the traditional flavors of the island in refined presentations. Abrams gives Walters, a CIA alum who has cooked for dignitaries including former President Barack Obama, complete credit for the food.

“The only thing he lets me make is the tea,” he says — a bright-red Jamaican hibiscus drink you’ll definitely want to try.

Abrams has decided to bring his expertise in the nonprofit world to his new role, donating 50 percent of all profits from the restaurant to local community-based organizations. After asking the community for suggestions, he’s currently supporting the Teen Work Program at the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center and Teen Leadership Project at the Ceres Project.

“As a new restaurant venture, we have limited dollars and limited time to offer so we wanted to make sure we were putting these efforts in programs where they could really make a difference,” says Abrams. Bringing the community together is what the word “revibe” means, he explains — creating a contagious effect of good feelings and healing in a community.

As for the food, one common misconception about Jamaican cuisine is that it’s always excessively spicy. But at Revibe, there’s actually very little heat in any of the dishes. Instead, herbs and spices provide a big flavor boost. If you’re concerned about specific ingredients, ask your server. All of the tapas plates are $8.26, and $3.67 for sides. Notable dishes include Saba’s Signature Curried Goat, the jerk chicken kabob, the vegan ital stew, and for dessert, Sudanese tamarind ice cream. Irieshun, bredda.

7365 Healdsburg Ave., Sebastopol, 707-827-8188, revibecafe.com

BISTRO 29, Santa Rosa
You have not had a crepe until you have had a French crepe. And you have not had a French crepe until you have had a buckwheat crepe. Fortunately, both are now available at lunchtime in downtown Santa Rosa at Bistro 29. The longtime French cafe has reopened for lunch featuring both sweet and savory crepes (along with a duck burger, frisée salad, and Croque Madame).

Bistro 29’s crepes are dairy- and gluten- free, stuffed with things like Gruyère, figs, lox and crème fraîche, pears or bacon. We’re partial to the sweet crepes, as well. Made with regular flour, they’re the light brown discs some of us remember from the 1970s, when the Magic Pan crepe restaurants were all the rage, and flambéed crepes Suzette seemed the height of culture. Here, simpler ingredients fill these gently folded pillows, stuffed with lemon curd, caramelized apples, butter, sugar and about 10 other goodies.

620 Fifth St., Santa Rosa, 707-546-2929, bistro29.com

THE REEL FISH SHOP & GRILL, Sonoma
Each morning, Chef Aiki Terashima butchers whole fish for his Sonoma seafood restaurant, some of them weighing as much as 500 pounds. A former sous chef at Napa’s Morimoto, Terashima spends up to 15 hours a day, six days a week at the restaurant, which serves up coastal fare from ahi poke and New England clam chowder to cioppino, fish tacos and lobster rolls — a rarity on the West Coast.

Make sure to try their signature two-day Japanese curry, chowder-covered fries, lobster with drawn butter or sizzling sweet soy catch, often made with fresh rock cod from the Bay. Housed in a former dance hall that’s more than 100 years old, the space has been refreshed, with weekly live music and a bar that’s seen generations of Sonomans belly up after a hard day’s work in the vineyards.

401 Grove St., Sonoma, 707-343-0044, thereelfishshop.com

LUNCHETTE, Petaluma
Featuring simple, plant-based carryout lunches for on-the-go downtown workers and shoppers, this tiny walk-up has already become a quick-bite favorite. The owners of the mobile pizzeria Pizza Politana have a selection of premade vegan salads that can be upgraded with smoked trout, chicken salad or a soft-boiled egg. For bigger appetites, consider hearty focaccia slices with organic whole wheat and spelt flours, topped with seasonal ingredients.

For dessert, almond flour cakelettes and vegan/ gluten-free cookies are sweets without all the guilt. Salads range from $8 to $12, slices $5 to $7 and desserts $2 to $4. There won’t be any seats at the storefront, so you’ll literally have to grab your food and go, though they’ll offer blankets for folks who want to picnic across the street at the city’s Historical Library & Museum.

25 Fourth St., Petaluma, 707-241-7443, lunchettepetaluma.com

THREE LEAVES, Santa Rosa
Former Ceres chef Rob Hogencamp has taken over Sonoma County’s first CSK (community- supported kitchen), introducing many of his own recipes for weekly “shares” picked up at the Santa Rosa store that include soup, a large entrée, salads and dessert. He’s also got several freezers and refrigerators, however, for a la carte offerings ranging from bone broth and burgers to vegan desserts, probiotic drinks, nut butters and dressings.

Each “share” is $80, and is roughly two to three meals, depending. (For comparison, we tried Blue Apron, which is about $60 for three meals and requires prep and cooking). We use the salads as supplements to our usual dinners, soups for two to four lunches, and the entrée for, well, an entrée with some leftovers. It’s the perfect solution to the never-ending quest for a healthy diet.

Big Oak Shopping Center, 2484 W. Third St., Santa Rosa, 707-595-0316, threeleavesfoods.com

A Napa option…THE RESTAURANT AT CIA COPIA, Napa
The Culinary Institute of America recently acquired the long-fallow Copia, which boasts a theater, classrooms and an impressive restaurant space (along with a destination-worthy bookstore and culinary lifestyle shop). Food and wine classes are offered several times a week, but one of the most engaging activities is a lunch or dinner at their staff-run restaurant. More than a meal, it’s an experience that includes a cheese cart shaped like a cow, a wandering cocktail cart and a lineup of rotating small plates eaters can pick and choose from, then have delivered to the table by a chef.

Call it interactive eating, where dishes like duck fat potatoes with Spanish chorizo and crema, fire-roasted cauliflower with raisins and caper chips, pork belly with lentils and shiso, or bruléed oysters with verjus can be ordered a la carte, most for under $15. As you see something that strikes your fancy, it’s added to your bill and brought to you. Larger entrées are available for the table, like a 34-ounce ribeye, whole roasted chicken or seared rack of lamb. Carts with the day’s cocktail special and various wines by the glass roll through the room, as does the signature cheese cart, affectionately named “Bessie” and filled with all manner of local artisan cheeses you won’t be able to resist.

500 First St., Napa, 707-967-2555, ciarestaurantgroup.com

Girls Getaway to Sonoma, Millennial-Style

By Susannah Shaye

On a recent balmy Friday, four freshly minted college graduates played hooky from new jobs and new lives in Berkeley; Flagstaff, Arizona; New York City; and Washington, D.C., to take in all the sights, sounds and sips that Sonoma has to offer. Click through the gallery above to read their story (and see some of their favorite photos).

 

Reel Fish Shop & Grill: A Sonoma Seafood Catch

By biteclub
Fish and chips at Reel Fish Shop & Grill in Sonoma. Heather Irwin/PD
Fish and chips at Reel Fish Shop & Grill in Sonoma. Heather Irwin/PD

There’s a good reason the apprenticeship of a sushi chef can take 10 years or more: It’s really hard to cut up a fish without making a serious mess of the whole thing. Add in razor sharp knives sliding along wet, slippery flesh and suddenly deboning a chicken seems like child’s play.

But after dead lifting a 150-pound tuna with his sous chef, both of them straining to hold on for the nail-biting 50 feet to the kitchen, Chef Aiki Terashima of Reel Fish Shop & Grill breathes a sigh of relief once the yellowfin is firmly on his chopping board. Worth several thousand dollars, the tuna is a serious investment for the restaurant. Considered a more sustainable tuna, as opposed to the bluefin, it retails for up to $30 per pound.

What happens next, however, will make even a jaded culinary observer go slack-jawed. With a finely honed Japanese knife in one hand and a carefully placed wet towel bracing the fish in the other, Terashima butchers the tuna in minutes according to incredibly specific techniques he learned as a sushi chef for Masaharu Morimoto (of NYC’s Nobu, Napa’s Morimoto and, yes, “Iron Chef”). The whole thing looks terribly simple as he glides the knife along the lines of a mental map of the fish’s anatomy — leaving only a few slips of meat sticking to the bones. The only tell that this is actually brutally physical work are the tiny beads of sweat on the chef’s forehead, and a weightlifter’s tensed face as he lifts a huge hunk of fish to go into the restaurant’s blast freezer.

And though it would be far simpler to order presliced, preweighed fish from a restaurant supplier, Terashima makes a habit of regularly buying whole fish like Scottish salmon and ling cod. Cutting up the fish himself is cost-effective and more sustainable (all the fish is used, not just filets), and frankly, it just tastes a whole lot better.

The Reel Fish Shop & Grill opened in January, replacing Rossi’s 1906 on the outskirts of the town of Sonoma. The menu is a something-for-everyone mashup of sushi rolls, poke, fish and chips, seafood chowders and stews, along with Japanese curry, shrimp po-boys, fish tacos and for the seafood-challenged, even a burger and steak frites. The historic 100-plus year old roadhouse once again has destination-worthy food in addition to its still-great lineup of live music and massive outdoor patio.

One of the questions most often asked by restaurant-seekers in Sonoma County: Where can I get great seafood? And though many restaurants have one or two seafood items on the menu, Reel Fish Shop & Grill is one of only a handful that specialize in seafood. With a focus on helping to maintain rather than deplete ocean populations, it’s a solid choice when you’re craving a taste of the sea.

Best Bets

Grilled Salmon Salad ($16): What could be a ho-hum pile of greens goes the extra mile. A generous hunk of grilled salmon tops creamy dill dressing mixed with fresh greens, pickled cucumbers, red onions and oranges. We licked the bowl clean, and just looking at the pictures again makes us drool a little.

Fish & Chips ($16): Along with great clam chowder, every coastal adventure seems to culminate in a search for the ultimate fish and chips. And always ends in disappointment. This crispy beer-battered version uses ling cod, and is refreshingly light enough to actually dip in tartar sauce — something we dare not do with greasier, more dense versions.

Chef’s 2-Day Curry ($16): A slightly sweet Japanese style curry. Japanese curry? Adapted from Indian recipes, curry is actually a pretty common Japanese food, though it tends to be sweeter, often with apples added to the veggies. This version, with shrimp (you can sub steak, salmon, chicken or mushrooms) is offbeat, but delicious comfort food.

Fish Tacos ($10): Fish often feels like an afterthought in fish tacos — a fried filler of dubious origins. Gild the lily with the fried version, with salsa fresca and citrus creme.

Did we mention? The restaurant has a full bar, along with a happy hour with fish tacos, wings and fries for $3-$6. Live music Friday and Saturday nights, in addition to some Thursdays and Sundays.

Reel Fish Shop, 401 Grove St., Sonoma, 707-343-0044, thereelfishshop.com

12 Sonoma Garden Events for Green Thumbs, July – Sept

By Sarah Stierch

Whether you’re seeking to learn a new skill, pick up the right plant for your fall garden, or relax among lavender fields, Sonoma County has something for green thumbs seeking some fun this summer. Click through the gallery above to discover eight Sonoma County garden-related events not to miss this summer.

Get Sauced at the Wine Country Big Q in Petaluma

By biteclub

Q ain’t for quaint at the seventh annual Wine Country Big Q (1-5 p.m., July 8). This is a rib-tastic, porkapalooza of hardcore barbecue pit posses, itching for some Kansas City gold. The only KC-sanctioned event in Wine Country, this is the mac daddy of barbecue cook-offs, with trained judges and serious teams vying for cash prizes and bragging rights. 

In addition to the ‘cue pros, wineries will also go head to head with the Big Beef Challenge to find the best tri-tip (paired, of course with their wines), local firehouses will let ‘er rip with the Bold Bean Challenge–a competition for the best barbecued beans, plus there’s the Bakin’ for Bacon sweet and savory dessert-off, spirits tasting and cooking demos.

Attendees are offered up a full pound of meat, should they accept the challenge, and it’s fairly likely you’ll be nursing some serious meat sweats the next day.

The Wine Country Big Q has expanded to the Sonoma-Marin Fairgrounds in Petaluma for plenty of finger-licking, sauce-swigging fun, and tickets are available for $50 for general admission and $75 for “Bull Pen” VIP tickets that include special samplings of wine, beer and spirits.

Details online at winecountrybigq.com.

Golf Getaway: Where to Play and Stay in Sonoma & Napa

By Sarah Stierch

Sipping fine wine isn’t the only activity drawing visitors to Wine Country – golfing is, too. Sonoma and Napa enjoy extended months of near perfect playing weather, smooth rolling hills, and no shortage of luxury accommodations to wind down at (with a glass of good Cabernet Sauvignon, of course!) after a day on the links. Click through the gallery above to discover the best places to play and stay in Wine Country. 

Andrew McMahon Parties Under a Parachute at Robert Mondavi Winery

By Estefany Gonzalez

Hot off the summer festival circuit, Andrew McMahon and his project Andrew McMahon In the Wilderness returned to Robert Mondavi Winery to commence the winery’s 2017 Summer Concert Series on July 1.

Since its premiere in 1969, the Robert Mondavi Summer Concert Series has hosted hundreds of jazz legends and acclaimed artists, including Ella Fitzgerald, Roberta Flack, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughn, Aimee Mann, Blondie, Chris Isaak, The Wallflowers and k.d. lang.

This year, the winery has teamed up with Napa’s BottleRock festival to bring five award-winning musical acts to the winery lawn. With summer in full swing, it is refreshing to be able to catch your favorite acts in a more relaxed environment than the festival setting – not worrying about spilling your wine as you run from stage to stage!

Allen Stone, an energetic musician from Chewelah, Washington, kicked off the opening night while concert goers were dancing or enjoying the show on blankets, sipping wine from the Napa Valley winery. If you looked closely, you could spot members of the Wilderness crew joining the dancers.

When McMahon and his band took the stage, all blankets and chair were put aside and the crowd partied under a parachute, tossing beach balls and rubbing elbows with McMahon. The party lasted well into the night and was a great start to the 48th annual concert series. Click through the slideshow above for some concert highlights, and check out the remaining summer line up here.