A week has passed now since Barndiva closed its dining room and lights went off all over town, state and country. It felt as if the entire world took a collective deep breath and held it, as everything we had filled our lives with for work or pleasure seemed to evaporate around us. Life as we all knew it has left the room, like Elvis its absence is something we can't fully appreciate yet. But we’ve got to breathe, folks.
The decision to shift to a pick up and delivery operation was made by balancing our desire to keep ourselves and remaining employees working, safely, while trying to honor our relationships to suppliers both in and just outside the immediate food shed. We hope the rest of our staff is faring okay, and that congress will do the right thing by them. Health and safety must take precedence, but the repercussions to the local and global economy, and within the food, wine and hospitality industry specifically, is frightening to contemplate in full right now. So if there are threads we can tug at to keep the embroidery whole, tug we will. The only thing that seems abundantly clear is that mourning what was once our ‘normal’ way of going about our lives is a crucial waste of time.
The point of this blog is twofold. Firstly, to let you know the Barndiva family will continue doing what we do best at the Barn: serving terrific food and drink. If you are in Sonoma County within safe braying distance from the Barn, we’ve got a lovingly packed bag of hot food and a cool drink waiting for you. If you live in Healdsburg or Geyserville, Lukka or Isabel will happily deliver to your door, for one or two or however many diners you are safely sheltering alongside.
No one I know is surprised, given our current leadership, that we are as a country woefully unprepared for this pandemic. But even as present events seem about to outstrip our ability to deal with them, we need to put partisan politics into a different context and with our differences aside find a way to reflect a respect for life while keeping our economic viability in focus. We need to stand together – as we did during the fires – as one community. We are looking to the wine industry whose connection to quality dining experiences is profound, to help in any way they can. But even here the smaller operators are in financial peril. As are all the workers male and female who diligently keep the wine country machine going, animals thriving, fields harvested, artisan food products manufactured and delivered.
Social distancing is crucial, but so too is eating comforting, healthful, beautiful food, while engendering support for local, local, local. We are blessed to live in a remarkable landscape; keeping it strong, keeping the businesses that support it strong, is what we must all try to do.
Our menus will be offered continuously from noon to 8:30, Wednesday through Sunday. If our smaller artisan suppliers offer retail options at this time, we will include that information so you can purchase directly from them as well.
These first menus pull from Barndiva dishes like our whole roasted chicken with fried herbs, handmade rigatoni bolognese with burrata, roasted beet salad with ricotta, citrus, chicories, and hazelnuts and what we believe is the best damn burger and fries in town (on Sarah’s house-made buns and Chef Jordan’s secret sauce). You read that right - gauntlet thrown down. We won’t spare the vegetable entrées and sides on the menus, but these, as the season dictates, will change often. Our first week we offered roasted asparagus with grana padano, braised collard greens in Barndiva Farm apple cider, and - food lover’s crack of the spud world- salt baked potatoes. There are our infamous croquettes, a Hoecake baked in cast iron and drizzled with maple butter. Sarah’s desserts will change up often, but we hope to keep chocolate pots de crème and Valrhona brownies on, as well as her transcendent coconut macaroons. Everything on the menu can be ordered in greater numbers if you are in a service industry that is still in operation. We only ask that you place larger orders a day ahead. There will be daily specials, and meals you can re-heat starting with spring soups this week.
Providence - and Lukka - has brought to our kitchen the most talented chef we’ve worked with in many years - we can’t wait to introduce Jordan Rosas properly to the community. It has certainly been a trial by fire. But while it’s already abundantly clear he has chops and imagination to soar when the dining room re-opens, there is an honest and delightful immediacy to the food he’s cooking right now.
All wines from our award winning list are 20% off, and Chappy will be showcasing local wine we love on every menu . This Thursday we will start delivering classic Barndiva libations starting with the infamous Why Bears Do It. A series of popular past elixers, Lift, Flirt & Slide, will follow. All libations, spirit laced or not, will arrive at the perfect temperature in half pint or pint jam jars.
The story of how we’re going to navigate the next few months is also being written in Philo, at our farm, where the other half of the family is sheltering now with Daniel, our extraordinary farm manager. As Chappy and Chef Jordan post images and videos of dishes for the To-Go menu, Dan and I will document what we are up to on the ridge. It is spring, after all, and quite a beautiful one at that, and we’d love to share it with you. Dahlias dug up last fall that have been stored deep in the barn are now drying out in the greenhouse before planting, plum and cherry trees exploding into bloom, new grass and wildflowers carpet the fields and orchards. We are usually very private with this part of our lives but it is our hope that you might be inspired to seek projects outside, where you can plant something, build something, or just spend time in this glorious season. We all have more time suddenly, which always seems in short supply. In Philo we’re pulling out the rare seed packets Dan has collected from his travels, accelerating starts for vegetables and microgreens, rototilling extra beds.
Whatever your experience level, it’s not too late to cultivate something in your front yard, fill a pot or two, try to get on the list for a coveted space in a community garden. Farm supply and hardware stores, qualified as essential services (which they are!) are open. If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, visit a beautiful working garden like Dragonfly here in Healdsburg which is welcoming a limited number of guests, or order a field guide online about wild plants or birds, anything that gets you outside. We are lucky to live in a spacious and gloriously bountiful landscape in Sonoma and Mendocino. As we take care of ourselves right now, as we navigate how best to care for our families and loved ones, its important to remember that Isolation and solitude are very different states of mind. Nature is a great antidote to worry and doubt. In its ability to soothe and heal it reminds us that it is still an extraordinarily beautiful world out there.
We all need reminding of this, that there are still moments even during the most challenging of times when we can stop and just marvel at the world around us. Early one morning in a light rain we burned two piles of small brush from last fall, watching as the smoke made thick braided columns that floated up over the redwoods – a revelation as columns of smoke have come to mean something else the past few years, something quite ominous. On this morning the smell of wood smoke in the air was a solace, a psalm.
We know for many finances will start to feel tight - if they haven’t already - and we will cut margins as closely as we can as our aim is to provide Barndiva To Go without losing a whit of quality and delight. What we need to be eating right now must satisfy on so many levels. We hope you will find a way to support Barndiva and all the other restaurants in town who are exploring creative ways to bring the best of Sonoma and Mendocino to your home while our dining rooms stay dark. Know that wherever you are as you read this, we are grateful for the ongoing support extended to the Barndiva family, which we have been blessed to receive over the years. Near or far, you are part of that family. We write this next chapter together.
Our good friends At the Chapel in Bruton, forced to close as England heads into the worst of the pandemic, sent an inspiring message in their blog this week that eloquently captures what we too are feeling now and want to impress upon our patrons near and far. “Now we can rest, look at the stars, listen to the birds, breathe and give nature and ourselves a chance to recover. We will find creative ways to stay in touch virtually, to reassure and inspire each other. The story will end at some point and we will emerge stronger and with a new way of being together.”
Amen to that hope. Stay Safe.
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