With summer just around the corner, it’s been a busy time for catching up with favorite restaurants and checking out some new ones. Click through the above gallery for some of the best things I’ve eaten recently.
When the 2023 James Beard Award nominations were announced in January, you could almost hear a collective sigh rise from the Sonoma County food world. Maybe it was more of a sad gasp—like a stopper pulled from a two-day-old bottle of sparkling wine.
Did we do something to offend the culinary trophy gods? No love for Animo and chef Joshua Smookler? There may be no signage in front of the popular Sonoma restaurant tucked between a McDonald’s and a smog shop, but had the program’s restaurant scouts not heard about the innovative, wood-fired mashup of Basque and Korean cuisines?
Or what about a best new restaurant shoutout for Stéphane Saint Louis and Steven Vargas at Table Culture Provisions? With their nightly multi-course tasting menu getting tons of buzz, they were hoping this might be the year. “Our ultimate goal is to get a Michelin mention,” Saint Louis told a reporter at the end of 2022.
And what about emerging chef Fiorella Butron at Edge and pioneering pastry chef Melissa Yanc at Quail & Condor?
To no one’s surprise, Kyle and Katina Connaughton got a nod at SingleThread in Healdsburg for “Best Chef: California.” It’s well deserved, but there they sit all alone—the only nominee from Sonoma County across all categories.
So much for the everybody-under-the-tent mantra of recent years. There’s a backstory there:
Two years ago, the James Beard program faced a backlash after an audit found too few nominees and judges of color. The program was put on hold in 2020 and 2021, partly due to Covid, and relaunched in 2022 with a promise of more inclusivity, more BIPOC judges, and more transparency. After all, nobody wants to be the Hollywood Foreign Press of the foodie awards circuit.
James Beard Award nomination rules are notoriously tricky. Read the fine print and you’ll see that a nominee for Outstanding Restaurateur “must have been in the restaurant business for at least five years and they must not have won a James Beard Foundation chef award in the past three years.” Another new rule states “a restaurant and its chef cannot be nominated in both restaurant and chef categories in the same year.”
Just think of what’s at stake. With a win, or sometimes even just a nomination, the trajectory of a restaurateur’s career is forever altered. Cue the book deals, cookware endorsements, maybe even a spot on Food Network’s next mega battle royale.
That’s why El Molino Central owner Karen Taylor’s response to awards like these might be one of the best we’ve heard. “We’ve had a James Beard, I think. I don’t know,” she says. (The seasonally focused Sonoma Mexican restaurant was nominated as a James Beard semifinalist in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, but has yet to win.) The only way she finds out about a nomination, she says, is when the list comes out, “a friend will text me.”
El Molino has also garnered a Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition. “We finally put it up—a medal thing they give you,” Taylor says. “We just rest it on the back of one of the counters, behind the wine.”
Taylor’s thoughts on Michelin stars? “I remember when Betty’s Fish ’N Chips had the same number of Michelin stars as Chez Panisse.”
But who decides? Whether we’re talking James Beard awards or Michelin stars, we’re wading into a murky world that seems run by secret societies and hush-hush handshakes.
No one knows this better than Jil Hales at Barndiva in Healdsburg. When the restaurant won its first Michelin star last year, nearly two decades after it opened, it was a total shocker.
“They are notoriously mysterious,” Hales says of the Michelin review process. “Anybody that tells you they know things is telling a porker. You know they come out more than once, and you don’t know what they look at.”
Hales admits she’s a little apprehensive talking to me about the subject. It’s easy to understand why: He (or she) who bestoweth can also taketh away. Look what happened at Terrapin Creek in Bodega Bay. In 2012, they won a Michelin star, only to lose it in 2018. At the time, according to Michelin’s international director Gwendal Poullennec, top-secret Michelin inspectors thought the food was missing its previous “spark and quality.”
Short of a decoder ring, here’s a theory about this year’s nominations: many believe that Sonoma County restaurants have become exceptional at what has become known around the world as “Wine Country cuisine”—i.e. what’s fresh and seasonal, farm-to-table, grape to glass, seed to hash—all summed up in a kind of omniscient terroir that you can apply to nearly every menu and every ingredient.
And maybe that’s not what judges are looking for anymore. Bay Area restaurants scoring James Beard nominations this year included Jo’s Modern Thai from chef Intuon Kornnawong in Oakland, the Moroccan flavors of San Francisco’s Mourad, and the Indigenous roots cuisine of Café Ohlone in Berkeley. There’s a thought—wouldn’t it be nice if Sonoma County had a restaurant that paid homage to the foods of the original inhabitants of this region? In Sebastopol, Heron Shadow Farm manager Redbird Willie grows Indigenous crops for Wahpepah’s Kitchen in Oakland. Imagine if a local restaurant bought his crops.
But maybe trying to make sense of any awards process is futile.
“Good luck cracking that code,” says Barndiva’s Jil Hales. “If you do, you’ll win a Pulitzer.”
In other words, we’ll have to wait until next year. When maybe, just maybe, the Michelin gods and James Beard acolytes will rain down upon us in such glorious benevolence that all will be right in the pantheon of foodie awards again.
Until then, let’s be happy with what’s on our plate. In the words of parents everywhere, you get what you get, and you don’t get upset.
Championing a favorite taqueria is a popular pastime for Sonoma County residents. It’s all about the perfect spit-grilled al pastor, the best salsa bar, the heftiest burrito or the crispiest carnitas. And if you dis someone’s quesabirria spot, be ready for a fight.
El Fogon is my newest obsession. It features the epic Machete, a forearm-length corn tortilla filled with meat (al pastor!), cheese, sour cream, tomato and cilantro. A Mexico City street food, the blade-shaped Machete can easily feed two.
El Fogon’s salsa bar is stocked with spicy sauces for dipping or dousing that add kick to the Camarones al Mojo de Ajo (shrimp in a creamy garlic sauce). The biggest winner, of course, is the crispy, cheesy quesabirria.
623 Fourth St., Santa Rosa, 707-575-0574, elfogonca.com.
For more than a decade, chef Mark Malicki’s underground-ish dinners at the Casino Bar & Grill (17000 Bodega Highway, Bodega) have been a coastal secret. On Fridays and Saturday, the longtime Sonoma County chef cooks up simple but flavorful dinners that reflect the coastal waters and seasonal bounty.
In February, he expanded his weekly routine to include a new location at Petaluma’s Tea Room cafe (316 Western Ave., Petaluma) on Tuesday nights.
Octopus-like, Malicki manages to cook multiple dishes at the same time, his arms deftly moving from one pan to another. A recent dinner was a feast of broiled scallops, charred eggplant dip, tuna tartare, lemongrass quail, beef shortribs and a banana tiramisu for dessert. Prices range from $10 to $27, and payment is cash or Venmo only.
Weekly menus at Instagram.com/malle.mal.
Trevor Gallagher knows his sauces. A veteran sandwich maker at Pacific Market in Santa Rosa, the 32-year-old realized the popular deli was missing something on its meat-meets-bun lineup.
So eight years ago, he developed the prototype for his Saucy Bubbs DTF (Downtown Fever) sauces, mixing up batches of the creamy, sweet and savory spread for his signature creation, the Downtown Fever sandwich. Also known as the No. 16 at the Pacific Market deli, it’s built on a soft roll with cheddar, Buffalo chicken, lettuce, jalapeno, bacon and DTF sauce.
“I like making food,” said Gallagher, a larger-than-life character who appears in cartoon form on the bottles of his sauces, now available in local stores. There’s the Original (showing him with his signature white pick in his curly hair), the Garlic DTF (Gallagher is portrayed with vampire teeth and a cape) and Spicy Habanero (flames curl around him). A friend made the logo and characters, he said.
With no formal culinary training, Gallagher learned the sauce business on his own, using a commercial kitchen to make large batches and sell them at local stores, including Molsberry’s Market (522 Larkfield Center, Santa Rosa) and Pacific Market (1465 Town and Country Drive, Santa Rosa and 550 Gravenstein Highway N., Sebastopol). His sauces also show up on the menu at Ausiello’s Fifth Street Bar (609 Fifth St., Santa Rosa).
As a Chik-fil-A sauce devotee, I can confidently say Gallagher’s sauce has a similar mustard-barbecue-mayonnaise essence. Still, there’s something more craveable about Gallagher’s fresh, unprocessed-to-death sauce. Squeeze it onto everything from macaroni and cheese, french fries and vegetables to grilled pork, pizza or even a Fig Newton cookie (maybe that’s just me). Like the perfect black cocktail dress, it goes with everything.
“This sauce is so versatile, it’d even go great on a toothbrush,” he said.
My hands-down favorite is the garlic version, with freshly pureed garlic that kicks up the sauce to 11. The spicy habanero sauce has a fresh chile flavor with a tingly zing.
Find more details and order online at thesaucybubbs.com.
It’s a bit of a rarity to find a happy hour that’s offered not just during the work week, but on the weekends, too. That’s why the (nearly) daily happy-hour menu at Seared stood out in our search for the best happy hours in Sonoma County. And a bonus: Their happy-hour menu maxes out at $9.50. How can you pass that up?
Seared is a beloved steak-and-seafood spot in downtown Petaluma, open every day but Monday. And, yes, every day they’re open, they have happy hour, from 3:30 to 6 p.m. You can make a reservation during this time or opt for a spontaneous walk-in. Don’t stress too much about waiting for a table or a spot at the bar, because the happy-hour menu is available throughout the restaurant.
Seared is also big on using locally sourced ingredients, which you’ll see on their happy-hour menu, with local beer and wine and bites with ingredients such as Valley Ford cheese. It’s clearly popular locally, having won the Best Steak and Best Happy Hour at the 2019 Petaluma People’s Choice Awards.
The happy-hour menu has a little something for everyone and changes depending on what’s available “to provide the freshest ingredients possible,” according to their website. They offer half a dozen cocktails ($8), a variety of house wines ($7), a handful of canned and bottled beers ($3.50) and plenty of draft beers ($6).
Some of the standouts among the happy-hour drinks are the Scrimshaw beer from Fort Bragg and the Lagunitas IPA; the Spiced Rum Punch with hints of passion fruit and orgeat syrup; the New Orleans classic Vieux Carre with Benedictine and Peychaud’s and Angostura bitters; and the Cucumber Martini, a cucumber vodka drink with elderflower liqueur. Additionally, they feature the classics like a PBR beer, margarita and Negroni.
We tried the Cucumber Martini, which had a refreshing and cool tang, and the Old Fashioned, a classically smooth sip. While sipping our spirits, we browsed the “Eats,” with a total of eight bites to try.
Of course, we sampled almost all of them: the Prime Rib Dip ($9.50), Mac ’N Cheese ($7.50), Mini Wedge Salad ($8.50), Deviled Egg ($5.50), Daily Tacos ($8.50), Filet Mignon Skewers ($9.50) and Kung Pao Prawns ($9.50). We added the Nueske’s Bacon to the macaroni ($3) and passed on the calamari ($8.50).
In true Seared fashion, the Daily Tacos featured a grilled fresh cod with a bright passion-fruit slaw. These burst with flavor with every bite and felt like a lighter option among the other food on the menu. The tacos arrived at the same time as the Deviled Eggs, which were stacked tall with the filling, chives and serrano ham. Both items come with two of each, so they’re easily shareable.
The Nueske Bacon makes an appearance on a few of the happy hour items, like the Mini Wedge Salad. Blue cheese lovers will love this salad, topped with Pt. Reyes blue cheese, watermelon radish, crispy shallots, cherry tomato and bacon. It’s pretty sizable, with a heaping amount of bacon, and it’s the main vegetable on the Eats menu.
Next came our more filling options, and we wondered if our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. Most portions on the menu were pleasantly large, despite low prices.
The Mac ’N Cheese was covered in perfectly gooey Valley Ford Highway 1 cheese, with hints of garlic and herb flavors. Any macaroni and cheese connoisseur knows the importance of diving your fork into the dish and pulling it away with the noodles attached by strings of hot cheese. This dish delivered.
The Kung Pao Prawns, atop soba noodles, packed a lot of flavor into every bite. The five large shrimp were perfectly crispy despite being covered in sauce and lime juice. Seared does a fabulous job balancing their dishes with spices and citrus flavors, and this dish exemplifies that.
The Prime Rib Dip came on excellent toasty baguette-style bread. Soggy bread is always a worry with a prime rib dip sandwich, but this bread kept its integrity of crunch. It comes with a subtly spiced horseradish aioli, Jack cheese, caramelized onions and shaved prime rib, with au jus to dip, of course. It’s large enough to share and packed full of tender and juicy prime rib.
The star of the show, in our opinion, was the Filet Mignon Skewers. Herbivores, we apologize, but if you order anything on this happy hour menu, let it be the skewers. Three skewers are stacked with flawlessly cooked filet mignon soaked in a soy marinade. A ginger aioli is drizzled across the dish, which lies atop a papaya salad. The meat is filled with flavor so good you want to savor every bite.
With low prices and plenty of options, you’ll be impressed by the portions as well as the punchy flavors in each dish and drink at Seared. The atmosphere is ideal, too, with high-top, booth and bar counter seating.
Happy hour from 3:30 to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Seared, 170 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma; 707-762-5997.
You can reach intern Lonnie Hayes at lonnie.hayes@pressdemocrat.com.
Most travelers will enjoy a room with a view. But how about a room with a brew?
At Petaluma’s newest hotel, Home2 Suites by Hilton, guests can stay just a half mile away from Lagunitas Brewing Co. and 10 minutes from downtown. Though catering to business travelers, the hotel will no doubt attract beer-lovers and leisure travelers, too, with its proximity to one of Sonoma County’s most popular taprooms, along with its reasonable room rates: mid-week rates start at $169; weekend rates at $200.
“We’re really excited. We’re seeing a really strong uptick in bookings since we’ve opened,” said General Manager Ken Murakami.
Guest rooms at Home2 Suites are large by Wine Country standards. All 140 rooms come with either a king bed or two queen beds and a kitchenette that includes a full-size refrigerator, dishwasher and microwave. (Portable induction cooktops can also be delivered to rooms upon request.) Pops of color, including pink, purple and yellow, are a refreshing contrast to the typically neutral color scheme of big brand hotel rooms. Although the hotel is located just off the busy Highway 101, rooms are notably quiet.
Home2 Suites has no onsite restaurant but has two barbecue grills that guests are welcome to use and breakfast is included with every stay. It features a variety of choices, from breakfast sandwiches and muffins to yogurt and Belgian waffles.
Hotel amenities include a heated saline pool, hot tub, two fire pits and 24-hour fitness center with Peloton stationary bikes and other assorted workout equipment. (Hotel guests can also buy passes to neighboring Active Wellness Center at a discounted rate.)
Parking is complimentary and a handful of electric vehicle charging stations are available for an additional fee. Dogs are welcome for an additional $25 per night and get their own dog bowls and treats.
Click through the above gallery for a peek inside the property.
Home 2 Suites by Hilton, 1205 Redwood Way, Petaluma, 707-992-4900, hilton.com.
A combination ice cream parlor and burger bar is coming to 109 Plaza St. (formerly The Brass Rabbit) in Healdsburg. The two-for-one space will house Angela’s Ice Cream, owned by Angela Pryor, and the startup concept Iggy’s Organic Burgers, owned by Mendoza’s son, Iggy Garat.
“It’s a well-balanced equation,” said Garat, who was born in Argentina and whose grandparents brought the McDonald’s franchise to the South American country in the 1980s and stoked his passion for American hamburgers. “For me, the perfect meal is an incredible smash burger with chutney-like ketchup,” he said.
At Iggy’s, burgers will be served with condiments like homemade ketchup, spicy Thousand Island dressing and mint chutney, Garat said. The burger bar and ice cream parlor is slated to open in early June.
Angela’s Ice Cream, previously Lala’s Creamery, has three additional locations in Sonoma County — two in Petaluma and one in Forestville, which opened in early May.
When Alfie Turnshek sleeps, he often dreams about cocktails—colorful, deeply layered cocktails in rainbow fantasies. He keeps a notepad by his bed, so when a drink recipe visits him, he stirs awake and writes it down.
“Sometimes they work, but sometimes, I’ve had an idea I thought would be absolutely delicious and it turned out awful,” he muses, with a smile. “Any bartender who says that they haven’t ever made a mistake is lying.”
Still, after decades in the business, even his oddest sounding creations can be fantastic. His menu at new Petaluma destination Luma features a “Changeling” that marries aquavit, gin, pineapple and vanilla infusions, lemon, fennel liqueur—and a dollop of Skyr Icelandic yogurt.
“The yogurt is so creamy, refreshing, and really tangy, so it provides a good deal of acid backbone to the drink,” he says.
In my work community, we differentiate between bartending and mixology, and we prefer the term bartender.
Mixology is the technical acumen of knowing how to work with ingredients and ratios, and how they perform together. But for me, bartending is the connection with people. We are surreptitiously watching guests on that first sip and seeing what their faces do. When my drinks are done right, they breed delight.
I try to centralize the offerings to what I think the bar vibe is saying. Are we a dive, or fancy, like Luma? On one end, there’s alienation with unfamiliar ingredients, and on the other end, there’s complete accessibility for everyone. I’m trying to find the sweet spot, where I’m pushing people maybe a little bit out of their comfort zone. It’s not necessarily a dare, but I’m asking them to try something new. I’m always looking to drive the conversation forward.
I do advanced culinary techniques, like sous vide water baths to make infusions and get cleaner, more direct flavors. Certainly working for Daniel Patterson at Plum Bar, I was in the height of the molecular gastronomy boom. Collaborating with the chefs to develop novel ways of putting ingredients together and using these advanced culinary techniques was the big part of what I do now.
Everybody wants them. Certainly for sober people they’re awesome, but it’s everyone who likes really delicious fresh juice, herbs and such. An anecdote: These four guys came in, early 20s, very bro-y, and one ordered a non-alcoholic drink. I always confirm, ‘You know, there’s alcohol, because you’re in a bar.’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve been drinking a little bit, so I still wanna keep hanging out, but I wanna take a drink off.’ When I was 23, if you had said that, your friends would have called you something not nice. This is awesome, I love this development in our society.”
It’s a bit of an unlikely location for a sweets shop, that’s for sure—an industrial park along Santa Rosa’s Dutton Avenue right next to a sewing and alterations business. But for entrepreneur Maricruz Sanchez, the brick-and-mortar store is a dream come true.
Sanchez launched her business, The Real Chamoy, three years ago, selling her housemade treats at local pop-ups including SoCo Market, The Yard, and Mitote Food Park, and opened her retail spot earlier this year.
Chamoy is a thick, sweet-tart Mexican paste made from hibiscus flowers, prunes, and apricots.
It’s often served with fresh fruit or used to coat chewy candies or set around the rim of fruity drinks. Sanchez began making her own chamoy after falling in love with the flavors on a trip to Los Angeles and realizing there wasn’t anyone locally making a version of the confection.
Her Santa Rosa store offers chamoy syrups, chamoy-covered candies, and kits, and she hopes to expand into bottled micheaguas — fresh, fruit-infused waters with a chamoy rim. Her bestsellers are chamoy-coated watermelon Sour Patch Kids, Skittles, and peach rings.
Sanchez plans to continue selling her candies at local events and pop-ups and expand into additional retail locations. Her chamoy-dipped candies are carried at The Pink Nopal in Petaluma, and she’s in talks to sell at stores in Rohnert Park and Cotati.
“I don’t want to say it feels like I made it— because I feel like I haven’t made it… (I’m) not even 25% of where I want to be. But it makes me so happy to be here,” says Sanchez. “To this day, I love what I do. I can be here all day, every day. I still go home and make stuff after here, because I still enjoy and love what I do,” she says. “The sun comes out for everyone.”
The Real Chamoy, 1040 N. Dutton Ave., Santa Rosa. therealchamoy.com
