Halfway through 2025, I’m ready to go out on a limb and name one of the year’s best Sonoma County restaurant openings: Poppy.
The newest branch on The Girl & The Fig’s family tree, the restaurant is the culmination of founder Sondra Bernstein and John Toulze’s 25 years of travels through the backroads of rural France.
And though Sonoma County is newly awash in French cuisine — with the additions of restaurants like Petaluma’s Bijou and Brigitte Bistro, Healdsburg’s Lagniappe and Santa Rosa’s Augie’s — Poppy captures the fresh, honest simplicity of French countryside cooking, using seasonal ingredients and classic techniques.
While that may sound like a familiar refrain, I find that too many American chefs tend to overcomplicate things, layering sauces, seasonings and garnishes instead of just letting a perfect strawberry, stalk of asparagus or piece of fish stand on its own.
Gobs of good butter don’t hurt, either.
Time to change
“It’s a return to where we started. Simple, ingredient-driven food,” said Toulze, managing partner of Poppy and The Girl & the Fig restaurant and catering.
For more than 25 years, the groundbreaking Cal-French Sonoma restaurant Toulze and Bernstein established in 1997 has reliably served their signature fig and arugula salad, moule frites, flounder Meunière and destination-worthy peach panzanella with pork belly.
These days, The Girl & The Fig practically runs itself, Toulze explained. Locals and visitors have their favorites and the menu rarely changes outside of seasonal specials. Toulze has handed over the kitchen to longtime chef Jeremy Zimmerman and Bernstein stepped back from business operations in 2021.
The duo has also launched several spinoffs over the years, including the Suite D event space, the Fig Rig food truck, the Estate restaurant at the former General’s Daughter and the Fig Café, which has now been transformed into Poppy.
“It had a wonderful run,” said Toulze of the Fig Café. “It was time to change.”
The new vibe
During a brief closure last winter, Toulze and his team refreshed the space, opening part of the kitchen to the dining room, installing cozy window banquettes (the best seats in the house), painting the molding a smoky gray and adding natural elements like bamboo-patterned wallpaper.
Though I’m rarely wowed by restaurant art, Bernstein has created stunning AI-assisted illustrations of wild California poppies that reinforce the restaurant’s sense of place in Sonoma Valley.
The Fig Café’s eclectic menu of mussels, pizzas and burgers has been replaced by dishes like crispy roast chicken, sumptuous seasonal salads, and fresh poached eggs with morel mushrooms that feel deeply rooted in both Southern France and Sonoma County.
Toulze is now a constant presence in the Poppy dining room, greeting longtime customers and carefully directing the flow of service during these formative early weeks.
“This is what keeps you going after 30 years — it’s being motivated by creativity, food and creating an experience for guests,” he said.
Not everything is perfect yet — and that’s to be expected. The menu is evolving constantly, shaped by customer feedback, seasonal ingredients and how each dish lands with diners.
“One customer says it was the worst trout they ever had, and another says it’s the best,“ Toulze remarked with a shrug, taking it all in stride.
A bold statement
I’m going out on a limb to call Poppy a top contender for Best Restaurant Openings of 2025 (the list comes out in late December) because of a handful of dishes already defining it as a restaurant to watch — a perfect spring salad, a crave-worthy roast chicken and a standout bread service.
I visited twice (with a third trip planned) and was surprised by how much the menu had evolved in just a week — a mix of tiny transformations and major improvements that felt exciting and unexpected.
With a clear mission, a strong team and a passion for ingredient-driven French cuisine, Poppy is off to a promising start.
Best bets
Lean into the Pain: A good baguette isn’t hard to find — but a great one, with shaved Parisian ham, is my personal grail quest. Poppy’s Service de Pain, or bread service, fills my cup and then some. The wheat stalk-shaped pain d’epi ($5 half, $9 full) is a natural pull-apart for dipping into housemade cultured butter, creamy duck liver ($8), bone marrow ($6), country pate ($8) — or all of the above. The housemade ham ($16) is worth the splurge for its delicate, fat-laced ribbons of meat.
Asparagus Salade ($18): Spring on a plate. Mild asparagus spears, tart-sweet Watmaugh strawberries and lemon curd dressing form a color wheel of flavor that checks every box for me. The ingredients will change with the seasons, but this visual stunner will be a favorite food memory for years.
Poulet Rôti ($32): “I can make better chicken at home” is a familiar diner refrain — and usually true. Not here. This airplane cut (boneless breast and drumette) comes with crackling skin, juicy meat and a rich jus made with nutty vin jaune (yellow juice from Savagnin grapes). Perfection.
Short Rib Confit ($54): This one is worth a conversation. It’s not the fall-off-the-bone braised short rib you’re used to. Instead, the rib is slowly cooked in a water bath, then finished in fat — or “confit.“ The addition of bone marrow and red wine sauce amplifies the beefy, fatty richness to borderline excess — it almost felt like nibbling on a stick of butter. I didn’t hate it, but after an appetizer, bread and wine, it felt like too much of a good thing.
Oeuf aux Champignons ($18): Anything with morels gets my attention. This simple poached egg, served with a ring of parsley, fat morels and mushroom cream sauce, didn’t disappoint. Save some bread to mop it all up.
Poisson Cru Frais ($22): This dish may look like a wallflower, but it’s a flavor bomb. I’m usually against defiling delicately flavored raw kanpachi with anything but a bit of sesame oil or thin grapefruit slices. But here, the addition of chili-citrus crema enhances rather than overpowers the fish. Diced fried pumpkin seeds and ice plant leaves give a satisfying crunch.
Truite du Mont Lassen ($33): Tender Mt. Lassen trout trumps salmon every time in my book. The tender pink flesh mimics the texture of ocean-raised salmon, but with milder flavor and perfect flake. This version is served with nutty romesco sauce, plump Romano beans and fingerling potatoes.
Choux au Craquelin ($10): We all have that extra dessert pouch in our stomachs, right? This baseball-sized puff pastry is filled nearly to bursting with velvety espresso mousse. Just, yes.
Coming soon: Poppy will launch weeknight prix fixe dinners in the coming months, offering a three-course meal with wine for $65.
13690 Arnold Drive, Glen Ellen, 707-938-2130, poppyglenellen.com
You can reach Dining Editor Heather Irwin at heather.irwin@pressdemocrat.com. Follow Heather on Instagram @biteclubeats.