Zin Restaurant & Wine Bar serves deviled eggs without apology. Potato and fried onion casserole without flinching. A Blue Plate Pot Roast every Tuesday to a packed house.
Here, comfort food rules and no one walks away from the table hungry.
Riffing on American regional favorites, (Chicken-N-Dumplings, spaghetti and meatballs, Mac-N-Cheese) Zin Chef Jeff Mall feeds the need for dishes just like mom used to make. Only a lot better. But that’s just part of the story.
Mall also throws some solid Wine Country curves on his seasonal lunch and dinner menus–like the Mexican beer-battered green beans with mango
salsa; the Dungeness crab salad with avocado, mango and chili-lime salsa; or the unmistakably Left Coast-y roasted beet & orange salad with frisee, toasted walnuts, fresh goat cheese and Meyer lemon vinaigrette.
Somehow Mall makes this weird mix of comfort-meets-California work. One day you’re
eating wild mushroom Chile Rellenos with goat cheese, the next you’re gobbling buttermilk fried chicken. Red bean cassoulet followed by Carolina pulled pork.
What ties them all together are fearless flavors and Mall’s nearly fanatical interest in using hand-picked ingredients from his own farm, Zin Garden. Chances are those tomatoes in your spaghetti came from one of his thousands of plants. The jelly in your Zinfandel doughnuts? Yep, he crushed the grapes himself. You get the idea.
Ultimately it comes down to this. There’s Healdsburg’s whole tie and cheese cart thing. Or there’s Zin, where you can throw on your jeans and order up asmoked pork chop and warm jelly doughnuts. The choice seems pretty obvious.
Zin Restaurant and Wine Bar, 344 Center Street, Healdsburg, 707.473.0946
Best Bets:
Menu changes seasonally, so ask your server what’s new. However, the beer battered green beans are a staple ($8), along with the pot roast ($16) and applewood pork chops ($21). The hangar steak is another can’t miss ($24), topped with (in the winter) wild mushrooms and thyme. Oh and don’t miss the wine list, which features an extensive list of by-the-glass local Zinfandels.
Very long awaited “date night” (8 months in the making due to a having a wonderful daughter) – I took my fiance to Zin and was absolutely satisfied by the food and service. Our server was attentive and although our food took just a bit to cook (due the the well done steak) – the beer battered green been appetizer with mango sauce and salads that we ordered kept us at bay. Food was fantastic!! My Fiance had the steak with super buttery collard greens that just melted in your mouth and I had the baked curry chicken with coconut rice – YUM!! Will definitely go back there again and try the duck and other appetizers.
Will Chef Mall share his recipe for Mexican beer-battered green beans with mango chutney? They are to die for!