Get ready for fall pastry treats like pear chai scones, vegan apple oat muffins, pumpkin spice latte cake and pumpkin doughnuts as Monday Bakery prepares to open its doors on the Sonoma Plaza.

The soft opening for the new outpost of the Napa bakery is 9 a.m. to noon Sunday. A Monday grand opening is set to start at 7:30 a.m. at the bakery.

Owner Sally Geftakys, a CIA Greystone graduate and passionate baker, launched Monday Bakery at local farm markets and pop-ups in 2017. But after finding a grateful audience for her seasonally inspired sweet and savory pastries, she opened a storefront in downtown Napa in 2019.

“After the success of our Napa location, I’m absolutely thrilled to bring my dream to Sonoma,” Geftakys said.

She’s especially proud of her croissants and sweet kouign aman, a sweet cake made with laminated dough.

“I think we make some of the best croissants in the Valley,” said Geftakys, who said she owes her love of baking adventures to the Easy Bake Oven of her childhood.

“Pastries seemed to be a common thread throughout my life from that moment on, and it soon became clear that owning a bakery was what I was meant to do with my life,” she said on the Monday Bakery Instagram page (@mondaybakery)

The Sonoma bakery also will offer custom orders and sell cakes and cookies. Monday Bakery is at 117 E. Napa St. in Sonoma.

Sonoma Index-Tribune staff writer Rebecca Wolff contributed to this article.

The restaurateurs behind the Flamingo’s Lazeaway Club are teaming up with San Francisco’s Lord Stanley restaurant for a monthlong chef residency and pop-ups at the Santa Rosa resort.

Launching on Monday, Oct. 2, the Flamingo x Turntable series will feature dishes from New York chef Susan Kim of Doshi (Oct. 2-14) and Los Angeles chef Amanda Kuntee Maneesilsasan of Chao Krung Thai (Oct. 16-29).

Both previously did stints as part of Lord Stanley’s two-year culinary series called Turntable, where chefs from around the country — well-known and emerging — hosted pop-up dinners at the Michelin-starred restaurant featuring their unique styles.

Lord Stanley closed in 2021 but is reopening this month, with longtime chef de cuisine Nathan Matkowsky. At the same time, their Turntable concept has gone on the road, first to Los Angeles and now to Santa Rosa.

It’s a bit of a feather in our cap to have the chef-residency series in our own backyard, and hopefully it’ll continue.

Kim focuses on Korean-inspired cuisine and won acclaim in New York City for her doshirak, prepackaged lunchboxes filled with home-cooked rice, meat and vegetables. The Chez Panisse alum gives dishes her chef-y twist, such as with pickled, preserved and fermented goodies including marinated skirt steak, kimchi, braised greens and purple gingko rice.

“I spent a lot of time poring over the details of my version, because the sum of all parts matter. I want people to feel delighted when they are opening this gift,” Kim said in a news release about the residency.

Kim’s a la carte lunch and dinner menus at Lazeaway will feature larger family-style dishes like beef carpaccio with tonnato and anchovy crumble; seared tteok (rice cakes) with halloumi, a seven-minute egg and brown butter gochu; and bugak (fried seaweed chips) with Dungeness crab dip and caviar. Doshirak will be served poolside.

The last two weeks of the series will highlight Maneesilsasan’s Thai cuisine with family-style shareable plates such as smoky prawn pad Thai, Thai-style pork jowl, crab fried rice and papaya salad with salted egg.

Reservations for Flamingo x Turntable are available at flamingoresort.com/events/turntable.

The Flamingo Resort also has announced the opening of Fernando’s Hideaway, a private dining room available for up to 30 guests. The recently redesigned and renovated space will offer family-style meal selections including glazed pork bao, crispy chicken sliders, coconut green curry, grilled prawn tacos and soba noodle salad.

Ricky’s Eastbound restaurant and cocktail bar in Santa Rosa’s Skyhawk Village will close at the end of September to make way for a new family-friendly eatery from the owners of Ausiello’s Fifth Street Bar and Grill.

The Ausiello family’s new project was rumored for months, but Leeanna Kane, the daughter of Ausiello’s founder Armand Ausiello, confirmed Saturday that Ausiello’s Homeslice will be replacing the Mountain Hawk Drive restaurant owned by Rick and Linn Bruno.

“We’ve lived in Rincon Valley for a long time, and we knew we needed a family restaurant around here,” said Kane, who grew up in east Santa Rosa with her brother, Mario. The brother-and-sister team joined their parents in operating the downtown sports bar and will all co-own the new restaurant Kane describes as “family-friendly and cocktail forward.” They hope to open later this year.

It was a matter of good timing for the Ausiellos when Ricky’s went up for sale.

“We had been looking to expand our business for almost eight years, and we’ve been very particular about the location. We know about restaurants and bars and the high turnover,” she said. Kane was confident a restaurant with familiar favorites — wood-fired pizzas, burgers, hearty salads and a happy hour — would be well-received by locals.

The name has a special meaning to Kane, capturing the neighborhood vibe and as a metaphor for growing up nearby.

“This is our homeslice,” Kane said of the slang word meaning “little slice of home” or something dear to your heart. Chef Will Suman, formerly of Bistro 29 and Rosso, will helm the kitchen.

Chef Rick Bruno, who also owned Bruno’s on Fourth (which closed in 2020) and a food truck, said he’s welcoming a breather after more than 40 years of cooking and is ready to start the next chapter, though he plans to continue catering for the next several months.

“After that, I’m going to take a harder look at what I want to do. Getting to be 60 changes your life,” he said, as he prepared to open Ricky’s on Saturday morning.

“We took on a challenge that most people wouldn’t have attempted,” said the longtime chef of the Skyhawk Village location. Several businesses came and went from the site in rapid succession before the Brunos took over the space.

“We made this a next-level restaurant, and we were able to sell it. I never got to sell Bruno’s,” he said. The small cafe he leased in the McDonald Avenue neighborhood went up for sale in 2020 at a price he couldn’t make work at the 38-seat cafe. It stood idle for many years but is now a marijuana dispensary.

During the 2019 wildfires, Bruno operated a food truck in the parking lot at Skyhawk Village, providing a gathering spot and haven for neighbors, he said. During the pandemic, Ricky’s pivoted to a takeout model that sustained the restaurant for over a year.

Bruno’s wife, Linn, has headed the Warm Puppy Cafe at Snoopy’s Home Ice for several years, and he hopes to help her occasionally. “If they’ll have me,” he added.

“I’ve met a lot of great people in this industry and this town, and I thank them all.”

Restaurateurs Mark and Terri Stark have never been afraid to take a chance on unusual restaurant spaces.

From their first Sonoma County restaurant, Willi’s Wine Bar, on far-flung Old Redwood Highway to the once-crumbling Railroad Square complex where Stark’s Steakhouse now operates, the couple have a knack for seeing possibilities where others don’t.

Now, they’re rolling the dice on a historic downtown Santa Rosa restaurant location shuttered since 2020.

When the Starks announced that their eighth restaurant, a French bistro, would open on Fourth Street, many asked why they’d take a risk on what’s been a graveyard for many restaurant concepts — especially after long construction projects and Covid-19.

“We don’t see what other people see downtown. It’s time for a rebirth with all the new housing and hotels,” said Terri Stark, sitting in the upstairs office of Augie’s French restaurant, slated to open Oct. 12 after nine months of renovation.

As sconces and bright butterfly wallpaper go up, along with a new zinc bar, reoutfitted kitchen, and Easter egg details that are a specialty of Terri Stark (watch for the dog portraits near the back door), the couple is hopeful about the future of the restaurant and downtown.

“This building is the reason we’re here. It just says ‘bistro’ to me. It was this building first and then the concept,” Terri Stark said. “Augie’s” is a nod to Auguste Escoffier, the father of modern French cuisine. Like many diners, they saw a need for a bistro concept after the closure of Chef Brian Anderson’s Bistro 29 in 2020.

According to Mark, Augie’s French will officially be their last restaurant opening.

“Each opening takes two to three years off your life. Eight is enough,” he said. The Stark Reality Restaurants operate Willi’s Wine Bar, Stark’s Steak and Seafood, Willi’s Seafood, Bravas, Grossman’s, Monti’s and Bird and The Bottle.

Augie’s is also a full-circle moment for the 63-year-old chef who began his career in French fine dining in Washington, DC.

“This menu is very familiar. I started with French and will end with French,” he said.

A preview of the opening menu includes bistro classics Salad Lyonnaise, Onion Soup Gratinee, Beef Cheek Bourguignon, Steak Frites, Dover Sole Grenoblaise, Grilled Boudin Blanc with morel mushrooms and Salmon Paillard. He’s incredibly excited about a menu section devoted to escargot (snails), a French delicacy. Augie’s will also feature baguettes and breads made at nearby Grossman’s bakery. Chef Quincey Sanders, formerly of Portland’s Le Pigeon, will head the kitchen.

The Starks say they’re excited to see the renaissance already begun in downtown Santa Rosa.

“We started walking around Santa Rosa, and every time we did, we found something new. We sat on the patio at L’Oro di Napoli and saw so many people we knew. We’re super excited to be downtown. And there’s plenty of parking,” Mark Stark said.

A limited number of soft-opening reservations are available by emailing info@augiesfrench.com.