Last Bite out of 2015

A few weeks back I found myself on a ridge straddling the Pacific Ocean and Tomales Bay. It was one of the last gloriously sunny days of autumn before heavy rains were due to arrive, and I wanted to capture the moment. No camera - but I had my iphone with its nifty pano option. I began to shoot but quickly found that no matter where I stood, or how fast or slowly I turned, I could not get all that I was seeing into the frame.

If I started at the ocean, where the sun was setting over a vast opalescent sea and moved across the small herd of Elk placidly grazing on the undulating mountaintop, I was just able to include a hawk perched on a stump a few feet to the right of the path we had just traveled, but no Bay. If I began on a speck across the Bay I thought to be the old Marshall Store and panned over the grassy ridge with its stone outcroppings, I managed to get the setting sun, but missed the elk, my dearest friend, and the road ahead, which looked fetchingly mysterious in the gloaming. The thought that I was simply trying to take in too much was not lost on me. Alas, it is a feeling quite familiar, but there just wasn’t anything I felt I could leave out of the shot and consider it complete.

Nor was it a case of information overload, which we are all vulnerable to these days. My (unproved) theory is that the current obsession with selfies is really just a pinterestic way of fixing ourselves to a landscape to claim and define our space (if not necessarily our place) in this increasingly frenetic world. We crave boundaries. Even the disingenuous selflie - a fake vignette that apes famous people who themselves are faking onscreen lives, while boring in the extreme, stems from a natural impulse to connect with a moment in your life, to be part of the flow of history. You don’t need Everest or a Moon Landing to want to say “Look at me. I was here.” Who really wants to be a Waldo in this one life?

From the cave paintings forward the desire to mark our time on earth has been sacrosanct. I wasn’t picking up a paintbrush or a chisel, or even trying to put myself in the frame, but the truth is that every time we aim a lens we are creating a decisive moment of our choosing. To celebrate the fact that while, yes, the present is fleeting, as long as memory stays, we'll have proof of the journey we've made. 

I’ve had a great many New Year's resolutions over the years, most of them repeats. Some are specific (drink more water, less gin) some are hopelessly optimistic (seek the good in people) some seemingly impossible (control your temper). This year it finally struck me I could well be going about this all wrong. The impulse to start fresh every year is a good one, but all these pejorative declarations do little more than set us up to fail.

The hospitality business is all about engagement. People come to us in all different states of mind, moods, desires. Reading what they want and giving it to them, to the best of our ability, in a manner that will be fresh but satisfying doesn’t just happen when we design the menus or create the drinks or pull a cork. It’s a dance we get paid to do well, but interaction takes two to tango. Which is where the distance we are to the actions we take comes into play. Immerse yourself - and this goes for the seemingly smallest of actions - and your perspective changes from outside in to inside out.

It’s the difference between looking at a lake (beautiful... now focus and snap!) to jumping in, feeling it envelope you with all the sensations you can’t get from just looking: temperature, weight, smell. The sense that without the ground beneath you, without gravity weighing you down, you have no choice but to give yourself up to the act of floating. Immersion is easier if you start with the things you love to do, or think you might love if you only gave them a bit more time. I lose myself gardening and designing but it doesn’t have to be a self referential act - some of the best moments I had this past year were entering into the creative worlds of others - Ivo van Hove’s staging of View from the Bridge, Clio Barnard’s film The Selfish Giant, Helen Macdonald’s memoir H is for Hawk, Charlie Musselwhite at the Navarro General Store, The Miró Quartet at The Green Music Center, Christina and the Queens video Tilted. Even sitting on stage in NY watching 'View,' surrounded by strangers, I was able to have a complex personal connection to this inescapable thing called the Human Race.

Shifting your view a little from where you think you should fit into a moment is sort of like a meditation, it’s a small, gentle, seemingly benign action that doesn’t hold out any promise to make you thinner, smarter, richer. It does nothing about all the challenges we must face in the greater world - hatred, hunger, abuse - all those things we will need to engage with, care about, make our voices heard. But it affords you a calming, copacetic perspective. And it’s a movement you can practice doing with grace.

These are truly exciting times for food and drink in Healdsburg, and 2015 held some big moments for the Barndiva family. We opened BD Bistro without any fanfare in Studio Barndiva to unanimous - and happily, mostly local- applause. Without taking his eye off the main kitchen in Barndiva, and with the extremely talented help of Andrew Wycoff, BD Bistro gives Ryan the chance to re-visit and expand his deep love for classic French country cuisine. Our lightening rod daughter Isabel Hales joined the family enterprise behind the main bar, bringing along a talent for incredible soundtracks and film montages that add to a dining experience here like no other in town. Scotty Noll, with us when we opened Barndiva 12 years ago, made a triumphant return to lead our pastry program for both restaurants and private parties, while at the farm, Lukka and Daniel began to expand our greenhouses on the ridge and fill the Barn with yet more barrels of aging apple cider. I am blessed to be able to wander through the kitchens and gardens at any hour and see beautiful food in all stages of preparation and plating. And while it is not lost on me that Ryan’s consistency, the foundation of any successful restaurant, is a hallmark of his training, his greatest talent flows from his ability to immerse himself and engage fully with any task at hand, whether he's done it thousands of times before or it's a first.  

Hands down, of the thousands of images I shot over the year, my favorite is this one of Geoffrey and the beautiful Fancher girls. When Rebekah went into labor very prematurely with Reese we had a nail-biting few months. Resilient and somehow confident all would be well despite the weeks in hospital that followed, Bekah's courage made it possible for us to carry on - in fact she insisted on it. Reese is thriving now. In a year where it was impossible to look away from hardship and unfolding tragedies all over the world, here was a lesson that sometimes, with faith and resolve, great struggle can reward with great joy.

Happy 2016!!

Barndiva Cheers the Holidays

We will be celebrating the Holidays in both the Barn and the Bistro this year with a la carte and prix fixe parties on Christmas Eve, a Boxing Day Brunch, and two distinct menus on New Year's -  the penultimate meal of the year. 

Our Holiday calendar can be found HERE and on the homepage. We invite you to join us for one, two or even three remarkable services. We have much to celebrate this year and we hope you will allow us to show you our appreciation for your continued patronage by raising a glass with us in the run up to 2016.

The Holidays for Barndiva is all about extolling the virtues of luxurious comfort - celebrating cherished traditions in our version of grand style. The epitome of what we mean by luxurious comfort can be found in a deceptively simple dish that started life when Ryan decided to re-conceive the loaded baked potato. Humble in origin - like the best traditions often are - Chef takes a single potato and transforms it into an elegant dish that celebrates what we love about holiday fare.

It starts with a plump Yukon Gold he sous vides in duck fat. The tender spud is then top and tailed, cross hatching the soft inner slice which is then pan basted in butter, garlic and thyme. Last step is under the salamander where the top surface forms a salty, peppery crust, the encircling potato skin blistering to a deep golden brown.

Kendall Farm crème frâiche, a handful of tiny chopped scallion tops, and a holiday crown of Ryan’s pickled red cabbage complete the dish. Flavors are earthy and bright green, with a vinegary punch from the cabbage and a deeply satisfying contrast in texture as you bite through the crust into the smooth confit aromatics of the long cooked spud. The perfect accompaniment to an entrée of herbed sole, you can order it 'off the menu' as the first act for a winter meal that delights. Welcome to the Holiday Season. 

While on the Cocktail Front....

We are blasting through cocktails right now as recent tastings have expanded our artisanal spirit collections in both bars. In case you haven't discovered by now, Barndiva and the Gallery Bar have distinctly different personalities. Cocktails in the Barn are layered and mysterious, while the Gallery focuses on nailing the classic cocktail (3 ingredients or less) in all its forms.

By far the most most popular new cocktail we are shaking this Holiday in Barndiva is The Crystal Ball - the first night we made over 20 of them. It's a collaboration with our new friend Erin Hines, the talent behind Bitter Girl Bitters, a wonderful range of Bitters sourced and made by Erin right here in Sonoma County. We fell in love with Erin's Batch 1 and immediately thought of pairing it with Barndiva's Apple Syrup, made from 20 varieties of our heirloom dry farmed (county fair winning) apples. Blood Orange Vodka turned out to be a perfect meeting place for these two intriguing ingredients. Barndiva and Bitter Girl don't just partner up in this wintery, citrusy libation, we dance the light fantastic. You don't need a crystal ball to know this cocktail will become a  Barn classic. 

You can find the whole range of Bitter Girl Bitters at Bottle Barn (no relation), K&L Liquors, or jump onto Erin's website, bittergirlbitters.com. 

And as a special Christmas treat, Barndiva has bottled some of our precious 2014 Barndiva Farm Heirloom Apple Syrup - so conceivably you could try this cocktail at home. Here's an idea: pick one up when you come in for a Barndiva Gift Certificate, the perfect last minute gift. Good for replenishing the soul next year with great food and drink - and unconventional art - in the Barn, the Bistro and the Gallery. 

why grow apples?

Why grow apples? This is not a trick question, it’s one I ask myself every year about this time, when I start to wonder what in the hell we’re going do with tons and tons of them. Ours are dry farmed on a remote ridge far from any marketplace. Organize picking, transport, press, I think. Then what.

Because even after you’ve learned how to extend an apple’s life into juice, jam, cider, vinegar, syrup, and balsamic; after you’ve built dining rooms that produce beautiful salads, glorious tarts, elegant cocktails; long after you’ve fed the bears and fed your neighbors, and fed yourself, the question is still not rhetorical. 

You don’t do it for the money, though shame on that. It just doesn’t work with a farm as small as ours. We’ve done the math.  

The very first time I faced this quandary I bribed laborers away from the vineyards to pick, rented a U haul and drove south to my food co-op in Santa Monica where thanks to well earned nepotism, I was paid top price for them. I lost money. The next year I set up shop in the old barn and made jams and apple butter, listening to Puccini (etymology of the name Barndiva) drinking til dawn, designing labels, cajoling boutique food shops to sell them at a (then) astronomical price. I made just enough money to cover our groundsman Vidal’s salary. So frustrating was this yearly rebuke I was in fact relieved when we moved to England and I had no choice but to let the apples fall. Relieved but miserable. We had luckily handed off the nuts and figs to a dear friend and my goddaughter, but every fall I could hear my apple orchards lowing.

Challenges abound with farming: they are non-stop. But there are quiet moments that stretch across a lifetime. When you look over the orchards in the full bloom of spring, or at the end of summer when fruit hangs heavy on the boughs you just feel good about life. Proud of this beautiful organic product you produce, content you are doing your small part in keeping traditions (in our case over 100 years of them) alive. Farming introduces you to the best people - mentors, employees, and neighbors, who in our case became life long friends. People as crazy as we are. 

So it was on the last Tuesday of September that Geoffrey, Lukka, Daniel, Isabel and I met at the lower barn where Vidal (still with us, thankfully) had stored our apples. We loaded up and headed down the hill to the Apple Farm where Rita, Jerzy and Mark waited to help us press this year's batch of cider vinegar. They had been hard at it all morning, still in incredibly good spirits. The fragrance of fresh juice mingled in the crisp Fall air with the heavier scent of apple syrup bubbling away in the cooker. The old press sits on a lovely old deck overlooking the Navarro River. Standing there inhaling, the only thing closer to bittersweet heaven is the perfume of our orchards a few weeks after harvest, late afternoon, when the sweet rot of sun soaked fruit shimmers up from the ground in a lazy bee chorus. 

On Tuesday we laughed about our combined blue ribbons from the fair, smiled up into leaves turning red to gold, sipped cider, yelled at the dogs to get out of the way of cars coming and going to the fruit stand. Then we got down to work. A few hours later we had this year's batch of juice which will rest alongside the eight barrels of vinegar already aging in the lower barn.

Last year's apple syrup figures in Barndiva menus and cocktails. It will have a special place on this week's Bistro Sunday Supper menu.   

 

Bistro Sunday is friends night, family night, totally relaxed,  incredibly delicious.

Here are some snaps from last Sunday's Supper:

 

And here is the rest of our October Menus. Join us! 

The Jolie Laide Sauce Brigade *video*

Ok, so these lovely people are probably not talking about sauce at this particular moment, as Liz flies across the room bottle aloft, but it's not an exaggeration that at some point Sunday evening everyone in the Gallery feasting on the Boeuf Bourguignon took note. Even if just monosyllabically. More than once.

Ryan will be the first to say that the many steps of labor isn’t what he wants our guests to think about when they take that first bite of a dish and oooh, ahhh or just go silent. Nothing should impede what you smell and taste in that instant. Knowledgeable sourcing and classic European technique is certainly at the heart of what we're cooking in the Gallery kitchen these days, but this is comfort food that doesn't ask you to think. Just enjoy.

Most of these recipes are centuries old. They come from a time women had good reason to hang around the kitchen all day when it was easy enough while stoking the fire to give a stir or skim the fat off a soup on the way to the potager, the chicken coop, the barn, all the interconnected arteries through which flowed the lifeblood of the farm. I often wonder things like this: at what point did the marinade come into play? What enterprising woman decided it was a shame not to roast those aromatic vegetables? In what restaurant did the man in the white toques decide to steadily increase the number of times he deglazed and cleaned, filtered and reduced his sauce, adding additional stocks to deepen the flavors? What a long road to creating the sauce we call Bourguignon.  

Marinating beautifully marbled short ribs in red wine is day one. After that aromatics are added for another day. Then the ribs come out of their bath to be glazed, the aromatics roasted, then all the elements meet again in the pan and off they go into a low oven overnight. After they come out, the sauce is cleaned and put back on the heat for constant skimming and reducing, fresh chicken stock is added, more skimming and reducing until, just before service, Andrew achieves the viscosity, the clarity and most importantly the rich flavors in the sauce that Chef is after.

Sunday's Supper began with a crispy Salad de Laitues, slivers of our Mendocino County Fair award winning apples, crispy bacon, soft blue cheese, and a light but creamy cabernet vinaigrette. It ended with soft golden crêpes Scotty made that morning, which Drew filled with frothy fromage blanc and topped with a bright blueberry coulis.

Great meal, great energy in the room, Isabel's sound tracks and fantastic short films streaking across the Barn wall. My fork touched the shortrib and the meat fell away from the bone, a good sign. There was a savory but bittersweet mouthful in the tiny mound of late summer tomato coulis (summer is really over), but a devil may care crunch in the tempura hericot vert. That was the moment I cast my eye on the sauce, which I'd seen through all its jolie laide, ugly yet beautiful stages. In the candlelight it glimmered, like a necklace of dark purple jewels. On the tongue it had the consistency of honey off a hot spoon, but it was not sweet, it was earthy, rich, vinous. Virtuous to a fault. I like this food and the care and love that goes into the making of it.

Reserve Sunday Supper by calling the restaurant (707 431 0100). If you reserve online make a note it's French Sunday Supper you want to book. We're capping the number at 50 to ensure lots of room to move around, but if you miss out, not to worry, many of the dishes Ryan and Andrew will debut at Sunday Supper will most likely find their way onto the à la carte menus in the gallery. For now Barndiva bar+bistro is open for drinks and bites Wednesday through Sunday, but stay tuned for expanded hours. 

Cheers.

Salade Cresson, Poulet Rôti, Crème Brûlée...oui!

Supper in the gallery this Sunday begins with SALADE CRESSON with sliced red Jonathan dry farmed heirloom apples from Barndiva Farm on Greenwood Ridge, which hopefully will be one of our apples that medal at the Mendocino Apple Fair in Boonville this weekend. Walnuts, bacon and blue if you want them.

Next up is POULET RÔTI, whole roasted chicken for 2, with sautéed spinach, natural jus. CRÈME BRÛLÉE for dessert! 

If you're just joining us reading the blog, French Country Supper is a weekly prix fixe dinner served until it runs out in our beautiful art gallery. Killer sound track, a montage of very old film snippets projected on the wall, classic cocktails and great wines by the glass. We're putting these menus together slowly, month by month, picking favorites for winter.  

To reserve call the restaurant and specify you are booking Sunday Supper in the Gallery. This week's 3 course menu is $42. Mention the blog (eat the view) and this week FCD comes with a glass of bubbly on the maison. 

Paillard or Schnitzel? You Decide

Sweltering 100 degree weather is still very much with us but as we head into the last few weeks of the summer's bounty, new menus that speak of fall continue to multiply. This Sunday’s prix fixe Country Supper in the Studio features two classic dishes that would find a welcome home on any bistro menu - a mixed bean, gloriously colored Soupe au Pistou, and a succulent, golden crusted Paillard de Porc.

But was it a Paillard or a Schnitzel, as both Dawid, who is Polish, and Lukka, schooled in France, made the case it be called. Here’s the skinny: The official dish of Austria, the Wiener Schnitzel, is a pounded and three step breaded boneless veal chop; while Paillards, also pounded, can be chicken, pork, veal or even reindeer (depending how far north you travel) and are not traditionally breaded. Both dishes gained popularity across Europe in the early 19th century when expeditious use of a mallet became the rage... tenderizing meat by breaking down its fibers, equalizing the thickness to allow it to cook evenly and thinning the protein to cut down cooking time from skillet to plate.

The focus of our Sunday prix fixe dinners has been decidedly French, and the addition of a lemon caper butter sauce which brightens each rich mouthful, the little raft of butter with garlic, rosemary and thyme used to baste the pork in the pan, are decidedly Gallic. What’s in a name? I’m with Shakespeare on this one.

The finished Paillard de Porc (aka Wolfie Schnitzel in honor of the redoubtable Wolfgang Puck who may be Austrian by birth but a California culinary genius in spirit) will be followed by a Scotty Noll Mousse au Chocolat. Our pastry chef may not be French, but when it comes to chocolate, C'est trop bien!

Cheers!

(View all Barndiva’s menus here.)

Fabulous Fall Salads & Sept Menus for FCD

beets and brie

Fall is upon us, and with it comes glorious salads and decidedly autumnal dishes like crispy skin Mt. Lassen Trout, Brandade, Lamb Rillette, and the last colorful hurrah of indelible heirloom tomatoes. These show up in a rich soup with Bolognese Ravioli, baked into a Ricotta Tart served with herb roasted Filet Mignon, or dressed in nothing but a light Spanish Sherry vinegar with burrata and fresh basil. We can’t get enough of our tomatoes in September, especially when we know their season is winding down.

All Hail Kale Caesar

White Anchovy Niçoise

While the Barn rocks it with long leisurely lunches and elegant dining in the main garden, Ryan and Andrew have put the finishing touches on September's Sunday menus for the Studio’s French Country prix fixe dinners. Many of these classic dishes also appear on the gallery bar’s bistro menu from Happy Hour on, but Sunday is the day we want to carve out for meeting up with old friends and making new ones over re-interpreted classic dishes served alongside great soundtracks and another new video from Isabel Hales. Last week's Coq au vin Sunday sold out, so call the restaurant to get your name on the list, or sign up in the Studio when you come for a drink and bite.

Our next blog will detail the exciting Fall cocktails list which makes good use of Barndiva's dry farmed apples and pears, but make haste while this incredible weather lasts and visit the Barn while we are still enjoying the gardens and the incredible bounty from Sonoma and Mendocino County. Cheers!

FRENCH COUNTRY DINNERS
September Menus

Sept 6
TARTE de TAMATE puff pastry, fresh ricotta, arugula, heirloom tomato
CROQUETTES POISSON POMME de TERRE fish cakes, kale salad, creamy dill vinaigrette
TARTE TATIN aux HÉRITAGE POIRES de BARNDIVA FARM

Sept 13
SOUPE au PISTOU white bean soup, cherry tomato, garlic toast, basil pesto
PAILLARD de PORC grilled pork loin, gnocchi, lemon, caper
MOUSSE au CHOCOLAT

Sept 20
SALADE CRESSON watercress salad, barndiva farm asian pear, walnut
POULET RÔTI whole roasted chicken for 2, sautéed spinach, natural jus
CRÈME BRÛLÉE aux FRAMBOISE

Sept 27
SALADE de LAITES au FROMAGE BLEU butter lettuce, blue cheese, bacon
BOEUF BOURGUIGNON red wine braised beef short ribs, pickled red onion marmalade, haricot vert
MACARON au CHOCOLAT

 

French Country Dinners in Studio Barndiva

Ryan Fancher is one of those rare talents that can cook pretty much anything he sets his mind to with a level of passion and consistency that will blow you away, day after day. But when it comes to what he loves to cook “best” anyone who knows him will tell you it's probably going to be French. Not fancy French with all the bells and whistles (though he has that down to an art form), but Country French, those soul-satisfying flavors that are imbedded in the part of our DNA that spells comfort. I’m convinced that in another life Ryan was a French grand-mère living on a farm in some great food town like Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, cooking incredible dishes that pulled from centuries of tradition, using every part of the animals the family raised, churning butter and cheese, pickling vegetables and herbs straight from a huge potager only a few steps from the kitchen door. 

In the interest of brevity when people ask we usually call the style of food we serve at Barndiva “Modern Country.” 'Modern’ refers to the clean elegant flavors and vibrant colors of Ryan’s palette, ‘country’ to the bountiful landscape that surrounds our restaurant, where we live and work and source ingredients. Hence the name of this blog: Eat the View.

So, it was no surprise when Ryan and star sous chef Andrew Wycoff started to play around with ideas for Sunday Dinners in Studio Barndiva they began to dream of menus you might have found in a French family cookbook 100+ years ago. This is the food they want to cook. More to the point it's the food they would love to eat on Sunday evening as the sun gets low, winding down from the weekend, mentally getting ready for the week to come. 

Last Sunday we invited a few friends for the first of what we hope will be many Sunday Dinners here in the Studio. Surrounded by French wine and food antiques that fill the Gallery, fueled by great conversation and a not inconsiderable amount of Rosé, we joyously ate through heaps of pencil thin frites and bowls of moules marinières with an incandescent broth that had us groaning with pleasure. The first course was followed by Mt. Lassen cold water trout with perfect crispy skin, served over haricot beans smothered in caper butter sauce. For dessert, there were old fashioned glass jars filled with silky dark chocolate mousse Andrew had topped with dollops of Bavarian cream and sugary light financiers. 

The wonderful a la carte menus Ryan creates for Barndiva will not change on Sunday, where weather permitting you can dine in our candlelit gardens. But if some Sunday evening you find yourself craving something a little more down home, easy on the pocket, sublime in the way it leaves you feeling just plain happy to be alive, join us for our spin on a Classic French Country Dinner in the Studio. Menus for the month will be posted on the website; book by calling Barndiva. Be sure to tell them you want to snag a seat for French Country Sunday. We will happily offer Vegetarian and Vegan options. 

French Country Dinners - served every Sunday in Studio Barndiva

August Menus, from $35

Sunday August 9th
SALADE DE BETTERAVES beet salad, hazelnut, watercress, blue cheese
STEAK FRITES kobe flat iron steak, hotel butter, fries
CHOCOLATE POTS A CRÈME valhorona 70%, financier

Sunday August 16th
SOUPE A TOMATE, CROQUE MONSIEUR tomato soup, ham & cheese panini
SAUMON AU SALADE OIGNON wild salmon, greens, shallot vinaigrette
CRÈME BRULÉE almond florentine , candied citrus

Sunday August 23rd
SALADE NICOISE greens, egg, green beans, olive d'agneau pistu
SLICED LEG OF LAMB white beans, basil pesto
TARTE TATIN barndiva dry farmed gravensteins, vanilla bean ice cream

Sunday August 30th
FRISÉE LARDON salad of frisée, greens, bacon, garlic crouton, quail egg
COQ AU VIN roasted chicken, red wine jus, mushrooms
PROFITEROLES (chocolate sauce, coffee ice cream

Sweet Reprise

As a diner, I love dessert. Whether a simple celebration of the fruits of a season or a high wire act that astonishes the eye with its technical artistry, what I'm really looking for in those last few bites of a great meal is a blissful way to ease into the rest of my day or night sated with more than food. A bit of sweet to balance the savory, something to amuse or dazzle... dessert is more than the last course of a meal. Sitting in a beautiful restaurant with a full stomach, steeping in the sounds of conversation and music and cocktail shakers firing in the distance, dessert is the time you drift. Life is good. 

But as someone who owns a restaurant which aims to deliver no less than what I expect when I dine out, desserts are a frightening endeavor. Even as part of a tasting menu they are the course you always lose money on, yet must pull off to perfection or risk leaving the wrong lingering impression in the minds of your guests. Add to that, and I’m not sure why (though long term exposure to sugar may have something to do with it), most pastry chefs are temperamental in the extreme, and not always in relationship to their talents. At Barndiva, where we have two dessert programs ~ one for the restaurant, the other for events ~ it has been one of the most difficult and tenuous positions to fill. We need a pastry chef with the nerves of a high platform diver, the back of a stevedore, the patience of a saint.

Scotty Noll, who returns this month as Barndiva’s pastry chef after what must be one of the longest hiatus’ in Sonoma County restaurant history, is the first to tell you he is no saint. But even at his most stressed out, more often than not in the final stages of decorating an eye popping wedding cake, he nails it. When he left, shortly after Ryan arrived, the Barndiva kitchen was like the wild west, with Scott the sheriff. He returns to a well oiled machine with a consummate master at the helm. We are thrilled to have him back.

Like most great pastry chefs he’s part dreamer, part alchemist. Like Ryan, he holds an incredibly high standard for every plate that leaves the kitchen. What I love is that he "gets" the importance of those last moments of a memorable dining experience. But don’t take my word for it. Come in and taste Scott Noll’s extraordinary desserts. You can enjoy them after a sumptuous lunch and dinner in Barndiva or with a cocktail, coffee or tea service in our beautiful new Gallery Bar.  

Welcome home Scotty. 

Our good friend Sofia Bates wants me to invite anyone out there looking for a “rich experience of local people sharing their expertise in rural living” to the wonderful Not So Simple Living Fair which is fast approaching. Held July 24-26 at the Boonville Fairgrounds, this is a mindful and truly inspirational opportunity whether you are a farmer just starting out or an experienced hand that seeks answers to specific questions in soil management, permaculture and animal husbandry. Hell, it’s fascinating for anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of what it should mean when we throw around the word sustainable.

 More information: http://notsosimple.info

We have just returned from NYC, where the family clan gathered to celebrate a beloved 1st cousin's birthday and, as it happened, dine quite merrily across Manhattan. We especially loved the  long "farmer's lunch" in the cool portico that floats above the Union Square Market, a brief repast on the roof of the new Whitney Museum, and a wonderful dinner Café Boulud in The Surrey, our hotel of choice when we crave proximity to the park and the Met. (This was after we had eaten and shopped our way across Nolita, Tribeca and Soho, where we stayed at The Crosby Street Hotel, also highly recommended).

As it turned out, our last night in the city coincided with the 11th anniversary of the opening of Barndiva. Though we wanted to celebrate with Ryan and Bekah, they were 3,000 miles and a new baby away. Happily, the 11’s aligned, and as we slid into a banquette in the utterly gorgeous dining room at Eleven Madison Park, the feeling was one of elevation, and abandon. We were welcomed back with a sparkling "champagne" made in upstate New York that was the beginning of an evening that did not end until almost one. It is astounding that EMP still delivers at the levels it does, not just with Daniel Humm’s remarkable talents in the kitchen but through an attention to detail in every aspect of a service that is masterful yet never pretentious, always genuinely informed.

Eleven Madison Park is heaven if you love the elegance of fine dining. From the perfect stem for every wine to the antique ice shaving machine used to churn a palate refresher enjoyed on a coveted visit to the kitchen, every component of this ingeniously customized dining experience shines. This is a crazy business we're in, with layers and layers of labor before you get to the love. But when it comes, there is no greater sense of pride. So here’s a shout out to everyone at EMP from your country-mouse cousins in Healdsburg, especially Maitre D' Zac Fischer and the very talented SOM Dev Ranjan. Thank you for a truly memorable evening celebrating our #11, at yours.

Cheers. 

A Sumptuous Alternative to Immortality

The most delicious lobster I’ve ever eaten arrived on my plate a few minutes after being plucked from the sea, cooked over a wood fire with nothing to dress its succulent white meat but a little lemon and a little salt. In the hands of the right chef lobster is umami heaven, but it’s notoriously difficult to cook to perfection. Once they leave their natural habitat every minute, and how it's spent, counts, lest you lose the fragile delicacy of their flavor.

Lobsters have a metabolism that does not degrade with time - theoretically those that do not perish through mis-adventure can live forever - but providence plays a bigger role around taste than how old they are when “mis-adventure” lands them on your plate. Even with the right ecosystem, one rich with algae, minerals and salt, technique and speed are paramount.

Ryan’s Lobster Risotto, a signature dish with legions of fans this time of year, is in a constant state of play throughout the day here. Live lobsters move from wet burlap bundles to boiling pots filled with lemons and laced with paprika to ice water baths to halt the cooking process while the laborious cracking and picking of all the meat commences. Shells and empty legs go back into another pot of boiling water, this one vibrantly colored with saffron and fragrant with fresh tarragon. Cooked down, the resulting blond fumé will eventually be used to cook the risotto. Tiny jewels of carrot, celery and tomato are prepped, fresh favas shelled, chives and society garlic flowers come in from the garden. Shavings of lemon zest are gathered into little mounds. Fingerling potatoes are made into tiny chips, sprinkled with fennel pollen while still warm from the deep fryer. 

And then we wait. When that first order comes clanking through the printer the dish must come together in a matter of minutes. After the risotto absorbs the fumé to an al dente stage, the mire poix is added, then the moist chunks of lobster meat. Off the heat, there is just enough time to sprinkle the dish with the dusky pink agapanthus and the zest before a crunchy nimbus of fingerling chips crowns the dish and it is rushed off to the dining room.

I love everything about this dish - not least its glorious summer colors, the contrasting texture between the pillowly richness of the lobster risotto and the crunch of the chips, the hide and seek of citrus and edible florals. For all its OMG satisfactions it is a very subtle dish, nowhere more apparent than in the bouquet, which brings with it a faint echo of the sea, taking you all the way back to where its story began.

Our fascination with the concept of immortality - be it a lobster's or our own - will always be with us, but if I’ve learned one thing watching Ryan and his brigade work through every hour of the day, it is what we do with the time we have that matters.

I especially love how we spend time making this dish. 

Calling All Dads ....

Speaking of time well spent, nothing is more important than the time we spend with loved ones. But if you ask most hardworking dads what they'd really like to do on Father's Day (as we have) the truth is most of them would like nothing better than to put their feet up and kick back. We get it. If you are joining us to celebrate, Ryan has  a classic special on the menu- we’re talking Grilled Rib Eye on the Bone, Lobster Twice Baked Potatoes, and Asparagus with Hollandaise.

We will also be celebrating Father's Day with after-dinner cocktails and sensational Scott Knoll desserts in our new Gallery Bar in Studio Barndiva, whatever your earlier plans, a great way to end the day in style.  

Happy Father's Day! 

 

Remembering Myra Hoefer

Photo: Lukka Feldman 

None of us has a truly indomitable spirit as it turns out, though from what I knew of Myra Hoefer these past twelve years, she was a woman who gave the idea a good run for its money. But the heart beats, until it doesn’t, and our elegant friend who lived down the street behind the white rose arches of Ivy House in ever changing au courant rooms of perfect white is no more. The loss of her presence will resonate for a long time here in Healdsburg, a town she put on the design map and loved for over four decades, a town that in her inimitable style she never stopped trying to improve.

Myra was a formidable and much loved mother and grandmother, but to the outside world she will be remembered as a famous designer whose career will no doubt be the focus in the weeks to come, as her role as progenitor of “wine country design” is parsed and lauded. Two books were already in the works when she took a last health spiral a few weeks ago, and they will be welcome, because her talent was in fact prodigious. It deserves to be celebrated.

But it is not the doyen of design who will be missed most here at Barndiva, where her very close friendship with Lukka and her support of all things Barndiva afforded us front row seats to this vibrant woman’s operatic life. Myra had genuine star quality in an age where insipid selfie projections masquerade as talent. She was a Rabelaisian figure, always on the hunt for the joy to be found in any given moment, with a bawdy sense of humor and a relentless desire to unmask hypocrisy wherever she found it hiding. When she entered a room in those brilliant silk ensembles, huge costume jewelry and that beautiful smile, a deep throated laugh just this side of mischievous was never far behind. Crossing the Plaza a few months ago behind a family of tourists, we all caught sight of Myra zipping along Center Street in her white linen upholstered motorized wheelchair at the same moment, and they literally stopped in their tracks. “Now that,” said the father, “is what I call style.” 

He was right of course, it was all about style, whether the perfect chair, painting, or overflowing vase of single color flowers - but it was never style where price alone gave you bragging rights. Myra could walk into a room, any room, and break down exactly what she thought was wrong with it, but she did so with a generosity of spirit that was most uncommon in the insular world most designers protect as if it were a birthright. She would then proceed to tell you what she thought you needed to do to make the room “work,” with envisioned changes lavish or inexpensive, depending on your budget.

That she wasn’t overly precious about design, which she often called  "the art of smoke and mirrors,’  is not to imply there wasn’t great nuance to her signature rooms. We all made jokes about painting the town Pashmina, but it takes more than a few oversized couches and a chair with goat feet to make a room truly comfortable yet visually stunning, which hers always were. Her “smoke” wasn’t a slight of hand so much as an intrinsic understanding of how to value atmosphere, calibrate what really happens in the rooms we live in, how they should change with us. Her “mirrors” were the reflected glow of all things beautiful. Which she wanted to share. I’ve been designing all my life for the sheer joy of it, and while we never collaborated (our styles could not have been more different) I knew a fellow traveler when I saw one. 

A number of years ago Geoff and I stopped over in Paris and wanted to stay in the studio Myra kept in the heart of the Marais along the Rue de Tournelles. Because she and Wade were in residence she offered us instead the little apartment farther back in the building that looked down on a nondescript courtyard. She had decorated it for herself as a bolt hole with mismatched antiques and not a yard of silk in sight, yet the room was a master class of graceful lines, comfort as the ultimate expression of form, and the judicious use of color (though the rooms were white, of course). One night we met up for early drinks then went on our separate ways, returning very late. Geoff and I were worse for wear the next morning, creeping gingerly down the stairway in sunglasses, but there was Myra and Wade, sitting on the sidewalk like they were taking the sun in Biarritz, sipping coffee from little demitasse cups a waiter from Chez Janou sprinted across the street to deliver. Myra was dressed in a flowing silk and perfectly pressed linen, a St. Laurent Bedouin. She looked up, I rolled my eyes, we laughed. “Give me a few hours and I’ll be raring to go,” she said.  And she always was.

What I remember most about that flat was the way the planks of the polished old wood floors slanted, ever so slightly, just enough so that without consciously realizing it every step you took tilted you toward the boulevard, and the life outside that courtyard. Myra Hoefer may have been a designer of exquisite interiors but it is the life she brought outside those rooms, to a world that was never too big for her to try and wrap her arms around, that made her a singular human being. She will be sorely missed. RIP My. Healdsburg will not be the same without you.

“Life is the fruit she longs to hand you
Ripe on a plate”

— Phyliss McGinley

Go Big for Mama

The energy in Barndiva on Mother’s Day is electric. At Brunch we have two, three and sometimes four generations of moms being feted in a joyful commotion of laughter, family stories, dogs in the garden, babies passed around until they’ve had enough and let you know it. Dinner is a quieter, more elegant affair with love-you-mom bouquets leaning this way and that on the banquettes and candle lit tables, beautiful plates of food fueling reflective conversation.

 While we always expand the champagne list and offer Barndiva’s Seasonal List as well as The Gallery Bar’s Classic Collection, Special Cocktails have always been an integral part of Mother’s Day for us. A Mother’s Day cocktail should be celebratory, not too alcoholic, and deliver a few surprises with a soft punch. Don't worry,  Mom can take it.

Go Big For Mama is classic Sarah Cleveland. Here, our lead bartender has taken the idea for a sparkling cocktail composed around a soupcon of brandy, the spicy notes of ginger canton liqueur, fresh lemon juice and a favorite bitters of late...grapefruit hibiscus. The gorgeous nose comes from variegated apple/pineapple mint we grow here in the gardens.  I do believe the mama of this plant came from one of the wonderful Occidental Arts and Ecology plant sales. "Big” is a reference to the Magnums of Roederer that finish the cocktail, and to big love, of course. 

Our other  new cocktail is a first from bartender Chris Wright, who, when not studying opera for an advanced degree at SSU is the Barn’s go-to for devising incredible non-alcoholic libations for Dealer’s Choice. NAs are the vegetarians and vegans of bar world, and feared for as many silly reasons. Get over it.  Building a drink around a base spirit is not always your entry to the ideas you have for it. I've had (and we've created) a great many great drinks that work exceedingly well with, and without alcohol.

For Mother’s Day I asked Chris to update an NA classic handed down from his Mum, Patricia, and see if he could make it work with Vodka. He choose Organic 360 but the resulting dark ruby red cocktail, summer shimmery from the first sip, took its incredible flavor from the combination of thyme infused huckleberry jus and fresh grapefruit juice. A surprising delicacy you notice on the second or third sip rises from a hint of rosewater, and a lingering scent of the St George Absinthe Chris sprays inside the glass before building the drink, with or without the vodka. An exotic bouquet that has you at hello, with a curious familiarity.  While photographing him making the drink, I watched as he rubbed a thick slice of fresh lime peel against the inside of the martini glass. We’re calling the cocktail “Whatever It Takes.” 

Start out in that state of mind this Mother’s Day as you celebrate and you can’t go wrong. Go Big for Mama cause she does Whatever it Takes.

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Take a peek at what we're serving up for Mom on Sunday.

And if you can't join us on the date, give us a ring to grab the perfect gift certificate for your perfectly wonderful mom. 

707 . 431 . 0100

The Gallery Grows Up

No telling what Roger Chevalier would say upon seeing his old school chalkboard being used as a tray for martinis in an art gallery in Healdsburg, California, 75 years after he was rebellious or dumb enough (or both) to carve his name on the oak frame encircling his scribbled math problems and conjugations. If he's still alive I hope Roger would see the humor in this homage to the art of coloring outside the lines. Because it pretty much sums up what we're trying to do in The Gallery Bar in Studio Barndiva. Cheers Roger.

Our split personality at 237 Center Street is, by now, well known: Art Gallery by day, fabulous dining and dancing by night. Now we're adding yet another personality to a historical mix which once included a skating rink (1860, burned to the ground) and an auto body shop (segued into a head shop). We have benefited greatly from Healdsburg's growing popularity the past few years, but we miss the oddball irrepressibility which first attracted us to this town. We miss the custom of neighbors drifting into the Barn after work for a few drinks with friends, groups that would exponentially grow by dragging a few tables together without worrying about the noise or someone with a reservation needing the tables. 

The first bar I ever frequented with any regularity was in Westwood, just off the campus from UCLA, where Professors in the graduate Film and English departments would go to drown their sorrows proving the adage if you can't write, teach. Then drink. The Algonquin it was not, but they were heady political and cultural times and the combination of elevated conversation fueled by glass after glass of wan liquids in cold glasses was catnip to me. I was old enough by then to have lifted a glass in more than a few grand hotels bars where the cocktails arrived on silver trays, the lighting was sexy, the floral arrangements large. I was also no stranger to the seedy dives filled with great jukebox soundtracks and cracked leather booths that flourished along Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevard. To this day I still have a fondness for both swank and dive; more elusive to find is the camaraderie  of  community. There's something to be said for those rare drinking establishments that put bonhomie before the booze.

Because the space is still very much an art gallery, a crazily eclectic collection of antiques, painted and sculptural stories, we wanted the spirits in the Gallery Bar to reflect a keenly curated selection of artisanal spirits. All the popular brands will be on hand, but to make it into one of the framed vitrines we've built on the back bar we're sourcing smaller batch spirits made by inspired and passionate distillers. A higher calling that's really never gone away, distilling is suddenly resurgent in virtually every part of the country right now. Happily, many of the best distillers are working right here in the North Coast.  

For ten years Barndiva Restaurant has been proud to create nuanced cocktails with layers of complex flavors meant to compliment the exquisite food coming out of Ryan Fancher's kitchen. For the Gallery Bar, we are going in a different direction, not re-inventing the classics so much as putting our spin on them. These are simpler cocktails, elegant but spare, three ingredients or less, that come up cold and fast. Combine the practiced insouciance of Nick and Nora in The Thin Man Movies and the exacting standards of James Bond and you'll see where we're headed.  

As for the food, it's still all about our farmers, but while the way we prepare each dish in the Barn is necessarily time consuming the bites at the Studio are designed as lounge dining, easily plated to share with friends. To come up with the opening menu we spent a few months reaching into the walk-in and pulling out whatever struck our fancy, cooking the kind of dishes we crave after a hard service or on our days off. This is what came out of the kitchen: juicy pork meatballs redolent with fennel and red pepper; perfect baby radishes with sweet butter and salt; a tricked out Cuban sandwich with extra pickled peppers; an artisan platter with enough fixings to last through a bottle of wine. Geoff wanted fish and chips, Lukka voted for bone marrow tater tots. I wanted everything served on olive wood platters, no utensils necessary (though if you want them, we are happy to oblige.)

Andrew Wycoff, Ryan’s oh so talented protégé, is leading up the new studio kitchen, bringing incredible focus and a sense of mischief we're going to encourage. Their initial menu is briny, salty, crunchy. Think ‘bistro small plate specials,' which balance the local heart of a blue plate with a more manageable size that leaves room for more than one dish. Manageable pricing too. 

So here it is: The Gallery Bar in Studio Barndiva. A no reservation policy, with expanded hours five nights a week. Liz from Oklahoma will steer the evenings, with Dawid, from Poland, whom many already know as our charismatic Gallery Manager, now shaking a mean Manhattan when he's not showing off the collection. Continuous food and drink from 3 o'clock on. 

The brilliant film montage installations will change monthly, curated by Isabel Hales. Given how many of these cinematic nuggets come from movies I first saw on those long days that ended in that bar in Westwood, there is a sweet nostalgia to working on this project with my daughter. We'll no doubt expound more on the entertainment front as we find performers we want to see and hear in the Gallery, but for now Isabel says to tell you everything will change because everything must change. Words to live by. 

Come and see us!

Cheers

drink the view

A  few welcome showers blew in and out of the North Coast on Sunday, but not nearly enough to assuage the ongoing fears this drought continues to exert over us, which have become an inevitable topic in every conversation. The farmers and wine growers we depend upon to build a restaurant like Barndiva - or any restaurant in town that supports the local food shed - can't thrive without water. A good amount of it. We have been conserving water sensibly here at the restaurant, but running out of water is a constant worry now. It's going to take a concerted effort on everyone's part to navigate the next few dry years.

And yet, driving through what we literally know as 'Dry Creek' Valley this week on my way to the farm, winding up 128 through Boonville where Anderson Valley opens its arms wide, climbing further still up to the Greenwood Ridge, I was struck by how lush the world felt. Cool sea breezes roll over the mountains every night from the West drenching our gardens and fields with fog - an incredible microclimate that burns off into long hot days when you can almost hear the fruit ripen. To water the gardens and vegetable beds we rely on an aquifer hundreds of feet below the ground. Food is paramount, of course, but in these first days of Spring right before the dry farmed orchards burst into bloom, all eyes and thoughts turn to flowering things for the sheer joy found in them.

It isn't a simple matter to understand the fascination civilization has always had with flowers, long before the historical event known as Tulip Mania in the 17th Century. For thousands of years horticulturally obsessed Kings and Queens collected floral rarities as they explored and conquered the world. Kingdoms rose and fell, but when the imported plants managed to survive their new climates, they thrived, becoming part of a richer, more diverse landscape which we eventually inherited. 

But even in the most humble of gardens our desire to collect objects of unsettling beauty is also the chance to watch the life cycle of plants as they move from bud to blossom to decay. Just knowing after they disappear that they return again makes for a fascinating uplifting story - one you helped write.

Many years ago when for reasons I've never completely deciphered I decided I would be a gardening woman, I planted formal English borders up here in the remnants of Victoria Cassinelli's rose gardens. Over the years they have all gone a bit native, as I have, but pedigree stalks smuggled from England when Isabel was a baby still burst forth to take their place alongside Hellebores the color of burnt sugar Daniel planted only last year. Chartreuse Euphorbia thrive alongside pale pink Camellias (which I love) and purple Azaleas ( I do not.) Trailing Banksia Roses climb old wood walls, night blooming Jasmine huddle over the entry on the new house, scenting the evenings as we come and go. The gardens do not end so much as disappear into a Gertrude Jekyll Maginot Line of naturalized meadows that creep up toward the highest point on the ridge. fey Tulips and Wild Lilac. Sweet Clover and Hyssop Loosestrife. Beneath the apple trees on the west slope sun loving Ixia flout their color like saucy chorines dancing with abandon in the wild grasses. Even the despised contingent of birds we call Fatsos (yes you can file them under birds we would like to kill) whose uncontrolled gluttony in the Queen Anne and Bing cherry blossoms leave us fruitless every year contribute to the moment, sending wedding showers of white petals that catch in your hair, hide in the folds of your clothes, sprinkling the bathwater as you undress, exhausted, well after dark.

Flowers are the poetry of the natural world - as enduring as Eliot's Four Quartets in a garden you've tended most of your life, as short and bittersweet as an Issa Haiku the moment you step into the forest and see a wildflower so thin and delicate and alive it takes your breath away, knowing full well it will be gone by morning.  

“Don’t weep, insects
-lovers, stars themselves
Must part.”

Whatever the future holds, it feels right to luxuriate in this wet green wonderland right now. Its mad floral frenzy of color and fragrance and perfect natural form feeds the soul just as surely as the food we grow fills our stomachs. 

Mendocino, 2015 

The official guidelines released by the California Water Authority last week set forth new water service regulations for the hospitality industry - we can now only provide customers with water service when asked. It may seem a hassle, you may wonder if there aren't bigger and better ways to save water right now, (less alfalfa anyone?) but it makes sense to consider that every little bit counts. Bottled sparkling water is an alternative, but even when we know its sourcing is sustainable, the measurable energy it takes on its journey to the table itself involves another sort of compromise. 

 The one thing we know for sure is that we're in this together - chefs, farmers, all BOH and FOH staff and crucially, you, our customers. 

 

 Next Week: The Gallery Bar in studio barndiva

The Guilty Joys of an Precocious Spring

In a week that saw unseasonably glorious spring weather we spent much of our time inside finalizing design, drinks, music, films, and a sweet little bar menu in anticipation of opening The Gallery Bar in Studio Barndiva this week - finally! 

 We did make time for walking the length of West Dry Creek (above), biking to Cloverdale, trenching and pruning at the farm, and surviving the first of two busy Barrel Tasting weeks.  We even ended the week eating succulents (yes, succulents, see below), but hats off to Chef, who in the middle of all this delicious, madly beautiful din also managed to preview a brilliant dish that takes a beloved old classic out for a new spin.

Though they seem to exist at opposite ends of the comfort food spectrum pork belly and microgreens make an indelible pairing. If you have a jones for a compact package of protein and saturated fat that can be soft and crunchy, rich yet lean, you gotta love pork, especially the belly. If the clean earthy taste of leafy greens gets your blood flowing, then the Lilliputian world of microgreens is happyville. Both are delicious but curiously, both lack the hallmark that makes the other so special. Enter Ryan, with an inspired move to pair them with only the creamy yolk of a perfectly poached quail egg binding their disparate but delectable flavors together.

For me, most pork belly dishes lose it at the crust. The trick is to make the most of the fat cap, cooking it so you render a perfectly golden crust sprinkled with Maldon salt flakes. Satisfying crunch needs to easily give way to a rich moist layer below of meat - we use Niman Ranch - that has all the fulsome flavors of good breeding and sustainable husbandry, grass and sunshine. 

The real surprise player in this dish was a fantastic new microgreen our friends at Mix Garden are growing called Spreen, a gloriously colored forest green and magenta tipped leaf that looks like it's been sprinkled with fairy dust. Seriously, if you said elves grew this stuff I would not be surprised. I call Spreen’s flavor buttery, but the good folks at High Mowing Seed Company describe it as nutty. Close enough, it's a brilliant addition to our ever expanding microgreen shortlist which in this dish plays off the sharply sweet edges of Red Russian kale and amaranth. The dressing was appropriately light - Cab vinegar, crème frâiche, fines herbes from the garden. 

If you want to try growing Spreen this spring - they only takes 12 days - High Mowing Seed Company would be glad to help by supplying the seeds. They describe Organic Magenta Spreen (Chenopodium), as "A beauty in the field with sparkly green leaves and a pink powdered center. Known not only for its densely packed nutritional value but also for its ability to color the lips pink."  To taste it quicker, buy it fresh right here in Healdsburg, at Mix Garden where they are about to expand in-store retail sales to include the microgreens, vegetables and roots they contract plant for Barndiva and some of our more discerning chefs in town, notably Campo Fino and Diavola.

My recommendation? Come on down to the Barn, grab a glass of wine, snag a table in the sunny garden and order this wonderful first course on what we’re provisionally calling an “early spring” menu.  What else can you say when you look out the window and see all these flowering trees? Is more rain on the way? While we certainly only hope so, it seems downright churlish to deny how beautiful the weather’s been, and not celebrate what’s coming through the kitchen doors every day now.

As for those edible succulents, they were the sublime creations of Pâtisserie Angelica, enjoyed by all who were lucky enough to attend the incomparable Bonnie Z's Birthday Party at Dragonfly Farms on Sunday. Angelica's Deb said she had more fun making them than any confection "in years," and given the extraordinary range of cakes she and sister Condra produce in their bakery and custom cake studio in Sebastopol, that's saying a lot. Even the giant "terracotta" planter was edible, filled with chocolate beet "soil" that was knock your socks off delicious. Pâtisserie Angelica is a county treasure for its artistry and impeccable sourcing. But then so is the lady we were all celebrating, Bonnie Z. Great news -  Dragonfly is expanding its wonderful schedule of classes this summer in a new studio on the farm. We are truly blessed to have such dynamic women around. Enjoy.

The Gallery Bar in Studio Barndiva, hitherto used only for our private events, has now "officially" opened to the public!  Expect classic cocktails, a very special curated selection of hard to find spirits, fine wines and unusual beers, and a delectable bar menu from Chef Ryan Fancher and Drew Wycoff. The Barndiva aesthetic, as well as our commitment to sustainable sourcing, stays the same, but in The Gallery Bar we've amped up the music, thrown our favorite old films on the wall, and filled the gallery with lounging sofas. Kick back without reservations (seriously, you do not need reservations). Hours will be flexible but we will start stirring and serving at 3:30 and stay open late.

Drop in for a drink after work or just before heading off to bed. Here's looking at you kid.

#barndivaabroad: what defines fine dining?

Happily, EAT THE VIEW just completed an inspirational voyage out, eating and drinking through London, Paris, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. It was, without doubt, a very entitled journey. Travel by choice is always a privilege; the opportunity to appreciate the fullness of hospitality performed at its highest levels is a gift indeed, especially if you also have your head and heart in the game.  

It's a complicated, messy world right now, even when you can afford to rest that head on a feather pillow after a night of dining in the best a foreign city has to offer. I landed in London to meet Mr. Hales the day of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo - Europe was reeling, with all eyes on Paris where we were headed in two days time. Many called it a 9/11 line in the sand for Europe, and while I could not quite see that, the assault on freedom of expression alongside an alarming rise of anti-semitism was frightening. Profoundly sad. But if anything, it spurred us on. Hospitality is commercially driven but at heart it's just a meta version of the decency that should transpire between human beings all the time. When expressed with talent and passion through food, drink, and design, hospitality can be an art form.

If you live in the countryside and follow traditions handed down from your grandmother, chances are you eat pretty well. But running a restaurant that is committed to sustainable sourcing and cooking in tune with these traditions, whether in a large city or small tourist destination like our town, is a constant challenge. From my humble perch in Healdsburg like everyone else in the food world I've watched the rise of Noma with great curiosity, wondering whether in style and substance it might be a game changer in ways that really matter. The fact that René Redzepi had moved Noma - chefs, spouses, children - to Tokyo for three months did not effect our itinerary though. To really count, food movements must resonate. 

From London to Paris, Amsterdam to Copenhagen, it did seem like something had shifted. The restaurants we enjoyed most all had what the French call esprit de corps...a feeling of pride and fellowship aimed at contributing, and in a few cases dramatically extending, new definitions of hospitality. Each restaurant we admired had fashioned a distinct ontology built to survive its own mutable landscape of diners that could be as fickle as the weather, but all shared a commitment to excellence that more often than not went beyond the talents of a single vision. 

In London and Paris there was greater emphasis on old world cooking traditions - doing things the way they had always been done but selectively choosing aspects that could be cohesively reinterpreted for 2015. In London, at the century old RAC Club this was as simple (and elegant) as cutting wild smoked salmon off the bone from a rolling cart brought to the table. At The Clove Club, housed in what was once the Shoreditch Town Hall in East London, one early mid-course in a wonderful tasting menu had the Sommelier arrive with a tray of wine glasses and a bottle of  1908 Madeira, which he 'rinsed' the glasses with before filling them with Mallard consommé poured from a cut glass decanter. The beautiful way this was served, the fragrance of fortified wine lingering on the nose, spoke both to the restorative nature of broth and the thoughtful direction the Chef was taking his menu. 

In Paris, at Chez Georges, when I ordered Maijtes herring as a first course a half dozen plump whole fish submerged in brine were presented in a huge porcelain bowl, as if instead of sitting at a table for two I was suddenly at a family dinner at Grand’Mere’s house by the sea. I only managed one, but they left the bowl on the adjoining table, just in case. Even at the tony Le Coq Rico, one of four restaurants "directed" by Antoine Westermann, where a small fortune affords you a choice between a whole “Cou-Nu” yellow chicken from Landes or the infamous Bresse, you are also served a beautifully succulent plate of roasted giblets from the same bird. Even from the old guard, a nod to 'nose to tail' (in this case, beak to tail feather) dining.

 At Caffè Stern in the historic Passage de Panoramas the dining experience prompts its particular magic from the setting with Philippe Starck, channeling Fellini, setting the stage with bejeweled wolf and lynx in the windows, a winged white rabbit behind the fireplace, miniature Murano chandeliers encased in bubbles. Somehow it all works. Every corner of the 18th century Stern's Engraving workshop is an enchantment that refers back to various points in its history, an exquisite frame for old world style service, a memorable wine list, perfectly sourced and executed classic Italian dishes. 

In Amsterdam, whether at the humble Marius, the elegant Brasserie van Baerle, or the knock-out De Kas, where you dine in one of a set of greenhouses that date back to 1926, emphasis is sourcing, sourcing, sourcing. At play here is allowing flavors to sing but keeping them honest, with simple plating that ensures food arrives at the table minutes after it leaves the stove.

Dead winter there is only so much one can grow in Amsterdam, even for a greenhouse restaurant like De Kas, with farms in nearby Beemster. This meal in particular celebrated its immediate landscape thoughtfully, with grains and fruits preserved from the summer, controlled portions of proteins. I was so impressed with the food as it began arriving I broke a hard and fast rule and walked into the kitchen, unannounced. Surprisingly, they let me stay, not dropping a stitch as they plated 6 and 8 and 10 tops, even inviting me to shoot them "so long as you get our good side."  As far as I could see, there were no bad sides in that kitchen.

Nor any in Copenhagen, as it turned out, where I had managed to book two restaurants bound to be fantastically busy: BROR and Amass. (When I invited them to go online and check out Barndiva to see if Mr. Hales and I could score a table, on the weekend no less, both responded graciously, with Julie and Matt Orlando of Amass - who many are calling the next Noma- going so far as to make space for us prime time, Saturday night.)

Nordic cuisine is not adaptable to many parts of the world, but Noma's style of foraging and sourcing oddities from their own landscape - to seriously eat the view - has been considerable, especially in the city it calls home. First day out we wandered off the tourist path along the docks at Nyhavn (New Haven) and on a hunch descended into a shadowy candlelit basement inauspiciously called Gorms. Gorm turned out to be a Jamie Oliver styled TV chef/personality whose absence from the kitchen didn’t seem to effect surprising combinations, all fresh and delicious. The joyful mood in this little place - at least that afternoon - was infectious. Ditto lunch at the Torvehallerne food and spice market and again with a simple cold lunch of smoked salmon, fennel and black whole grain Danish bread at the Copenhagen Design Museum. All were spot on, enjoyed by appreciative crowds of all ages. With a gorgeous new waterfront development that will eventually encompass more theatres and parks next to the stunning Det Kongelige Teater, Copenhagen is hot right now, accessible but not overly precious. Go before it turns into Brooklyn.

Our first port of call for serious dining was BROR, (or Brother. Lille Bror, with only ten seats, opened to great press a few months ago). There would be significant differences in the level of our dining experience at BROR and Amass, but they had one thing in common which again came back to Noma. Beyond inspired sourcing there was a concerted effort to dissolve the hard wall that almost always exists between BOH and FOH….the place where you dine, and the kitchen. The word teamwork doesn’t do justice to what this lends to the dining experience: you can get teamwork in spades at any Whole Foods. This was a schema with purpose and passion, serious food that didn’t make you feel a ‘holier than thou’ headache coming on every time a dish is placed in front of you. It's hard to fathom how chefs involved in split second timing decisions can move away from the line to deliver a course to your table (usually one they cooked) at all, much less converse, then calmly walk back into the kitchen. A different chef delivered each course to us at Amass (Matt delivered two, but more on that in a minute) and while there were designated servers and a sommelier who performed excellent wine duties, they too seemed to know as much as the chefs about the smallest details that went into each dish. Though BROR was more freewheeling, like a talented rock band was cooking in the semi-open kitchen, both of these dining experiences stood out because they had a vibrant, informed vibe at play throughout the meal that worked like connective tissue between the food and the experience.

Mind you, we had indifferent service in Copenhagen, at a Michelin starred restaurant no less, which shall remain nameless. I’m not saying the city is nirvana. Nor do I want to piss off Michelin, whom we respect greatly, but the two most uninspiring meals I had on this trip were at one and two starred Michelin Restaurants. Go figure.

I had broken my only lens in Amsterdam, so did not have a camera at BROR, and while I took a few iPhone images for #barndivahealdsburg they really don't capture the food the way I want to remember it. Course after course, all served on old faience plates, was an artful jumble of beautifully cooked vegetables and well chosen proteins. I’m not confident, even if I’d had my 50mm that I could have made the Cod Sperm dish look appetizing, but hell if it wasn’t an (excessively) creamy few mouthfuls of delicious. The meal started with large Jerusalem artichokes that looked like they had been foraged from the moon, dark and blistered on the outside, split to reveal a soft mash of ground hazelnuts, bone marrow and yogurt-butter finished with pine salt. (note to self: we have pine trees at the farm! This salt was delicious!) This was followed by a sour milk and parsley broth with crisp tapioca, soft ling cod, roasted celeriac and a single nasturtium leaf. We’d already come across crispy chicken skin dishes in Copenhagen - must be trending- but BRORS was the best, with baby cabbage and red kale leaves floating in a broth of ramp flavored chicken stock with a delightfully unexpected kick of horseradish. Pickled garlic and a grilled chicken heart “garnished” the dish. The dessert that really stood out was an ethereal floating disc of toasted buckwheat ice cream you broke through to reach a mound of fresh lingonberries on lingonberry purée. I felt like Bambi eating it, standing in a snow covered glade. I later found out the ice cream had been dipped in liquid coconut butter, thus allowing it to form a thin carapace that melted the minute it hit your tongue.

Actual snow started falling the next morning and continued through the day as we shopped for a new lens and spent blissful hours at the Design Museum. Sunset found us crossing Sankt Annae Plads (St Ann’s Plaza), trying to working up a world class appetite for Amass.

Located outside the center of town in the open industrial part of Christianshavn, Amass is a huge converted warehouse where you climb concrete steps, walk through a dim candlelit entry, then descend again into the main dining hall. Julie, Matt Orlando’s beautiful Danish wife, greeted us- though we did not know who she was at the time - saying she’d saved a table next to the kitchen. No sooner had we sat down and checked out the gleaming open kitchen when a huge flame shot up in a snow-covered field just beyond glass walls at the opposite end of the dining room. We’d had innovated bread service this trip in London, Paris and Amsterdam, where all kinds of heirloom grains are being used with various butters and fragrant lard but this was the first time (ever?) a bread course- crunchy, billowy fermented flatbread - was bonfire baked moments before arriving at the table.

Because of its size and the amount of floor to ceiling glass that wraps the dining room, Amass could be coldly overwhelming but the minute you sit down the experience is a warm one, with no pretensions whatsoever. Polished concrete floors glow in candlelight; one entire wall is covered in graffiti, a modern hieroglyphic that sets the stage for an evening of discovery. We went for the tasting menu, paired, which leaned toward biodynamic. None were from vineyards or producers we had ever seen before. All were uniformly excellent. This was new cuisine for us, but even things like cod, (called simply, ling) or buckwheat, (which appeared in different courses, starting with that fantastic bread) or a simple potato, tasted and often looked different. 

For a start, the potatoes were not simple, not by a long shot. They were dried, looking as pale and soft as ballet slippers, redolent of an earthy creaminess that took on flavors both green and nutty as you pulled them through streaks of almond and parsley cream. In the next course, soft pieces of pumpkin hid beneath a cool disc of cultured cream, a layer of burnt honey and buckwheat holding the two soft textures apart until your fork drew them together into a surprising tango. One course paired tiny bullet shaped onions with teardrops of pistachio cream and delicate rose petals. I remember thinking the rose petals would be floral, surprised upon finding them vinegary and bright. 

A tangle of squid and pickled pork fat shaped like pasta was another dish about indulgent texture, until you crunched into the sea lettuce - our bright eyed Portuguese server called it "scurvy grass" because that's what it prevented once upon a time when sailors took it to sea. Brussels sprout leaves in the next course floated over a foam of virgin butter while your spoon led you down gently into a loose custard-like substance of creamy egg yolk and lemon peel.

Ling was paired with bone marrow and young cabbage leaves from the greenhouse, wild ramp greens and hazelnuts, while in another course, one of my favorites, lamb neck, pink and divinely fatty, met a hillock of sculpin roe. The salty whitefish eggs played against the unctious richness of  lamb, Angelica seed brought herbal notes while raw leaves of Icelandic red and green kale were sharp and wonderful. So too the creamy acidic butter, the color of Meyer lemons. These were complicated dishes, yet seemingly executed so simply they made you wonder why you'd never thought to pair these elements before.

At this point in the meal we were asked if we wanted a short break before desserts, but we didn't, what we wanted was the Aged Danish Beef, not on the tasting menu. A few minutes after ordering it I looked over the low embankment separating us from the kitchen surprised to see Matt cooking, one of the few times he'd left the pass where he oversaw or plated every dish with a serious young woman. All of the sous and chefs de partis were heads down throughout the evening "Yes Chef!" rings out across the dining room every time a new table's order is delivered), but Julie and the sommelier, Bo Bratlann, a big fellow in suspenders with an impish grin, strode in and out throughout the evening, updating information on guests, cracking wise, lightening the mood.

The beef was the best dish in a remarkable dining experience - ribeye cap, loin and shoulder, all with great crust, perfectly cooked inside, smothered with hot smoked bone marrow pearls that popped and melted into the meat as you chewed. Turns out ordering the beef had been a litmus test, which we’d passed. Aged Beef is a particular passion for Matt, one of many. “What did you think of the beef?” was the first question he asked when he came striding over to the table just as we’d finished the dish and were busy licking our fingers. “Pardon my French, but fucking A,” I replied. The ex-surfer from San Diego smiled. “That’s exactly what I said when you ordered it.”

A dessert amuse of "beets, chocolate, coffee, condensed milk" was followed by a salty, sweet swoop of soft caramel ice cream over a crumbled chestnut cookie. The menu Julie printed out for us says black trumpet mushrooms figured somewhere in the dish, but I have no memory of how, just that the balance of sweet to earthy (which could also have been the chestnuts) was the perfect end to the meal. Except it wasn’t. A small basket of hot golden muffins arrived wrapped in linen with a pot of comfiture. How could we not?

As soon as the last order went out every member of the kitchen brigade got to work scrubbing and washing, which I know from Ryan is integral to the training you get working with Thomas Keller. In addition to time spent at Per Se, Matt Orlando's impressive resumé includes working under Eric Ripert at  Le Bernardin, Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saison, and Heston Blumenthal at Fat Duck. This was all before his two stints at Noma, the last, just before he opened Amass, as its first ever chef de cuisine.

With Matt in little more than a T shirt we traipsed across the snow to the small greenhouse where he explained how starts are inserted into vertical metal channels stacked with earthworms, then consistently sprayed with 'juice' from the compost. Upstairs we saw the fermenting fridges and peered into cool meat cabinets, which he is about to expand behind a glass wall which will face the private dining room, flanked on the other side by the impressive wine cellar. The joints and ribs looked almost prehistoric beneath thick layers of cracked fat, which, if memory serves (I’d had quite a bit to drink by this point) was the result of a cider (apple?) and VOO mixture he sprays on to seal the surface. Mr. Hales remains dubious well heeled diners will embrace a wall of raw meat looming at them in the private dining room, even flanked on the other side by a wall of wine, but I'm betting on Matt's belief that the more real the experience of dining is made, the more dramatic the connection to where the food we eat comes from, the better. Besides, his boyish energy for everything he’s doing at Amass is contagious. Dining there was an unmitigated delight, inspiring and incredibly delicious. It was also surprisingly sexy food. 

So what did I learn on this journey, or needed to be reminded of?

Solidarity in the workplace has many faces, all of them essential. The closer servers get to understanding what chefs do...not just the what but the how, the better. Interactions with diners must be informed, not pretentious, never rote. Pride starts at the source - where food is grown, animals raised- it must radiate from every member of the brigade through every member on the floor. Look, unless you are Nobu bound, intent on world domination (and hey, I had the worst meal at a Nobu in Perth last year) this is not a career you go into looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The rainbow is in the pot, or should be. You will eat and drink well, love what you do and the people you work alongside, feel a real connection to the sea and the earth and what we grow in it and raise on it in a way most folks won't, though you’ll never give up hoping to share it with them so ultimately, it resonates.

We ate in many other restaurants, drank in many bars this trip: by no means is this Eat the View post a comprehensive overview of dining in the four cities we visited. Some restaurants, like le Caprice in London, we return to only because of fond memories. Others, like Summer, in a gorgeous setting in Somerset House, because we believe in the talent of the chef whose vision it is supposed to represent - in this case Skye Gyngell who cooked up a storm (and lit a firestorm when she regretted being awarded a Michelin) at Petersham Nursery a few years back. We had a wonderful dinner with old friends one night at Palomar, a packed Palestinian restaurant in the heart of Soho - the only one, I might add, that had women cooking front and center. It's not included here because while the food was full of flavor,  the service and the experience in general was frenetic, so loud you could not hear yourself think, much less talk to dining companions or truly enjoy what I hope will become a more popular cuisine. 

We had gone in search of fine dining that was exciting and meaningful, both in its approach to food and to service, which extends to what's happening in the kitchen. Fine dining with or without the bells and whistles, though we love the bells and whistles, especially when they come in the form of flowers, soft lighting, an artistic attention to detail. At the end of an evening what we hope to convey at Barndiva is that fine dining is an ideal that cannot, should not, be separated from where food comes from. Having that knowledge in the glow created by genuine hospitality and beautiful surroundings the experience of dining moves to a higher dimension. Tall order, I know. But appetite is all about expectation followed by fullness, of both the literal and metaphorical kinds. Beyond being sated, you should walk away from a great meal with the memory of time well spent. If we can honor healthy food systems while we're having a whaling good time, so much the better.

Cheers.

LINKS:

Amass
ASA Spices
Brasserie van Baerle
BROR
Caffè Stern
The Clove Club
Copenhagen Design Museum
le Coq Rico
Gorm's
de Kas
det Kongelige Teater
Marius
Torvehallerne
 

A Ghost of a Chance: Pressing Sorghum Syrup at the Philo Apple Farm

Sweet Sorghum Syrup is another name for molasses, but it’s a far cry from the acrid stuff you may know as Black Strap. Grown from organic seed, harvested by hand and fed through a century old steel press, this is sugar that comes on like a funky blues tune, the smoky bad ass cousin to honey. The world's fifth most important cereal crop, sorghum is second only to corn for feeding dairy cattle and a big player in the ever expanding demand for ethanol, but as a sweetener it doesn’t rate a place in your local supermarket where burgeoning shelves for sugars and sugar alternatives run the gamut from Agave to Xylito. Shelton's, our favorite little market here in Healdsburg, sells four grades of brown sugar alongside coconut nectar, rice syrup and barley malt. But when I looked the other day, no Sorghum to be found. 

Which is interesting. Before things that sweeten our lives started being sourced from every corner of the world or synthesized in laboratories, hand-pressed molasses from corn and sorghum cane comprised most of the sugar in America. Labor intensive, its decline in popularity was assured with more delicious and cost effective alternatives you could pluck off the shelves. But beware the words “simply" and “pluck” next to each other in the same sentence. Which brings me to Sophia. 

The first time I laid eyes on Sophia Bates she was seven, dressed head to foot as an Indian princess in a hand stitched soft leather skirt, beaded vest, and knee high moccasins. A single elegantly placed feather was braided into a lock of very blond hair. Mike Langley, our builder, had dropped her at the front gate before he tore off up to the house, an hour late as usual. She and her brother Joe stood looking around for a minute before Joe ran off with Jesse, my youngest, but Lukka and I stood rooted to the road, taking in her full visage. I finally managed, “What a lovely outfit, where ever did your mother buy it,” to which she gave me the steely look I’ve since seen many times - Sophia even at seven did not suffer fools - before replying, “I made it. You shouldn’t buy things you can make.”

Since that day I would have followed her anywhere just to see where she was going, such has been my admiration and curiosity watching her journey, so when she wrote to say everyone at the Philo Apple Farm had fled to Mexico for the holidays, while she still had a crop of sorghum cane in the fields with a small window to harvest and press before the first frost - did Team Barndiva want to have a go - Daniel and I immediately wrote back “yes!”  It was an opportunity to hang out with Soph, and to see what it would be like to make our own sugar. 

Before you get to the point of reducing sorghum cane to syrup though, you need to get the juice out of it, which is where our learning curve started. By mid afternoon we had only harvested and filled one pick-up truck full of cane. Time had been expended cutting down only those canes with popped ventricles, avoiding those still tight with seed, which Sophia hoped to sell to The Sustainable Seed Company. More time still had been spent slipping, quipping and sliding around the waterlogged field in one of the apple farm's lower orchards, where the cane had been sown. Which was fine. The towering old forest of Hendy Woods runs just the other side of the Navarro River along the Apple Farm's south property line, framing the orchards, which were blanketed with grass from the recent rainstorms. The air was crisp but the sun warm on our backs.

The next step was to inch the truck up the hill and park it near the press, unload, sort and top the ventricles before stripping the leaves, taking care because caught the wrong way they are sharp as knives. Then the real fun began: feeding the washed cane into the press, where three calibrated wheels with serrated teeth crush the cane as it's pushed through, extracting the juice which free flows into a bucket with a cheesecloth over it to catch any random cane fibers (and keep the bugs out). Feeding the cane in three at a time at just the right angle so the wheels don't clog or sweet juice hits you smack in the eyes proved a bit tricky, but even when you get the hang of it you can only feed cane as fast as the wheels turn. Which is where the role of beast of burden comes in. The effort here doesn't involve skill - just strength, and it is monotonous or, as we found, peaceful, depending on the temperament of your ox. Isabel quickly grew frustrated, Evan, a friend from Germany we'd roped into "a day at the farm," held out a bit longer, but it was Daniel who carried the day, pacing the circle with a soporific grin, like he'd just discovered a new religion. 

The Chattanooga Sorghum Press we used had been making its rounds in the Anderson Valley - anyone willing to pass it on in good condition (which basically means washing the wheels thoroughly to break down the corrosive effects of the sugar) could get in line to borrow it. I’ve since learned from blogs like “My Home Among the Hills,” that there appears to be a small sorghum revival going on in a number of sustainable communities across the country.

The press was antique, a beautiful piece of machinery with an incredibly cool font spelling out the words Chattanooga Plow Compy (the word company compressed to fit). Originally from Tennessee, Chattanooga made their name forging horse driven single foot plows in the late 1800’s, expanding into cane presses in the 1920’s, about the time rum from the Caribbean was becoming a popular libation in America.

 Even if we'd been more adept, the ratio of juice to cane with sorghum is not considerable for the work involved; we ended up with five gallons of juice, which Sophia thought would probably only cook down to one. While a gallon of syrup goes a long way if you are only planning on using it sparingly in cocktails, as we were, this might seem a ridiculous amount of work for a gallon of anything.

Not so.

Should you find yourself on some sparkling fall day working alongside people you love at something new, providing you don’t run out of mule jokes, you’re way ahead of the game. 

We drank fresh green sorghum juice straight from the press, marveling at its light grassy notes and lack of cloying sweetness. I’ve tried fresh cane juice in Jamaica and Cuba; a few sips and your palate dulls from the heavy sweetness. While my plan for the syrup had been focused on creating a variety of bourbon cocktails for the studio, the idea of experimenting with fresh juice and gin was a no brainer. Exhausted and sticky, we headed up the hill to make dinner, jug in hand.

Many a great Barndiva cocktail has started life with St. George artisanal gin as the base spirit; I keep all three on hand at the farm. At first I went in the wrong direction, trying to use their fragrant Botanivore; its delicacy was overwhelmed by the sorghum, which had already begun to deepen in color and flavor. The stronger aromatics of Terrior along with a wedge of lime and a sprig of crushed mint from the garden was a perfect match, fragrant and bright, with a sweet roundness in the mouth, just like the day we'd just had.

Tommy, Sophia’s beau, finished his work at Acorn Ranch and made it up to the ridge just in time for a last round around the fire; Lukka arrived with delicious patés; I heated up a pork stew. The fog rolled in, we switched to wine and our favorite subject - why it's so damn hard to survive at sustainable farming - but we called the night pretty early. Team Barndiva had aching muscles; Tommy and Sophia had to check on their animals. 

All day long, trudging through muck and dodging sugary sprays with my camera, my thoughts kept returning to the generations of farming families who had used that old press to provide a little sweetness in what must have been pretty hard lives. Then Evan sent me an image he'd taken of Geoff, sitting in the little cut we’d left in the grass which suddenly felt as enigmatic as a crop circle. It brought me back to the present.

Turning dirt into soil, every farmer's mantra, is a long slow process with many setbacks and seemingly more hardships than rewards, especially of the financial kind. But if there was even a ghost of a chance our labor that day around the old sorghum press had channeled a better understanding of farming in a like-minded community, in any way which could be played forward, the experience we'd just had couldn't be measured in gallons and pints. At the very least it was a great way to end one year and head into another, learning new ways to connect farm to table.

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If you've been following our dining and drinking Euro journey on Instagram and Facebook, you'll know we fell in love with some pretty fantastic restaurants. Next up for the blog we are headed to London, Paris, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Stay tuned!

Rock'n Both Houses

We had TWO elegant NYE dinner parties last night, followed by a rock'n dance party that rang in 2015, Barndiva style. It was the first New Year's Eve we dined in the Studio Gallery thanks to finally finishing the build-out of our second kitchen. In both the Barn and Studio we felt especially blessed with incredible guests... romantic deuces, four and six tops who always celebrate NYE together, some great groups from NYC, DC, and the very cool Toronto. Everyone was primed to party. Our little group of 11 camped out on the new couches, drank, ate, and (I know I was not alone) drank some more. Then we started dancing. NYE is about creating a great din and ours grew louder still when diners from the Barn wandered over. I try to keep bragging at a minimum, but food and service were incredible, no two ways. Hats off to Chef Fancher and our entire staff.

Ever wonder why it's so easy to party with strangers on NYE? Doesn't matter if you've had one of those years you are just happy to get out of alive or you're genuinely looking forward to a new year, new projects, renewed optimism for something... partying with other people in rooms decked out to show off your finery and your cool moves (be they actually cool or not) can feel so good. Now is the time to say thank you to everyone who dined with us, or entrusted us with your special event this past year  -  NYE was reflective of a year of great patrons who have helped us become better at our jobs. We actually love working together, which makes earning your continued support resolution #1.

Glasses raised for an interesting, forgiving and fortifying new year.

Clockwise from 11:00: Chris,our musical prodigy/ bartender with New Orleans moves; the lovely Sarah, shining star of the main bar with two new cocktails on the list; the one and only All Night All Dave; Andrew, who with Pancho, crushed it in the Studio Kitchen

“So I say it quickly; whoever is in your life, those who hurt you, those who help you, those whom you know and those whom you do not know- let them off the hook, help them off the hook, Recognize the hook.
You are listening to Radio Resistance. ”

— Leonard Cohen

Decapod Heaven for the New Year

Beautiful Northern Lobsters from Maine are back in the kitchen this week, and really, what odd extraterrestrial looking creatures they are. Hard to believe that beneath that foreboding carapace, gleaming with extraordinary color, is the softest most succulent white flesh in the Crustacea kingdom. The work to get at what’s inside is well worth it, even if all you end up doing is gobbling it off a small fork, sea water dripping from your chin. Ryan’s plan for them was a bit more evolved however, Ryan being Ryan. Imagine a tower of freshly cracked lobster meat gently mixed with lightly pickled red cabbage, mascarpone, tarragon and lemon zest, gently tucked inside a giant saffron ravioli. Delicious. I especially loved the dish being paired with cardoons glazed in brown butter in an al dente mirepoix of vegetables as a bed for the ravioli. 

Cardoons, another beautiful freak of nature, look like they come from ancient times, which in fact they do. Often mistaken in the garden to their cousin the artichoke (also known for its pairing with lobster), they have spiky celery-like stalks topped with thistle flowers that bloom a gorgeous imperial purple. The expressive geometry of the cardoon flowers look like something designed by Rei Kawakubo, but are all but inedible. The stalks on the other hand, if harvested before the flowers bloom, are delicious. Like celery, cardoon leaves and stalks need TLC, trimmed carefully to render them string less. I've never seen them sold in supermarkets and even around here they disappear from farmers markets this time of year. We usually get beautiful cardoons from Preston, but this week they arrived from Knoll Organic Farm in Brentwood. 

Pancho, our consummate pasta guy, was entrusted with making the saffron pasta, then enclosing the lobster filling in perfectly air tight ravioli so the shellfish and herbs steam through without any water slipping in. Slide a fork through one of these heavenly bundles and a heady perfume of sea and garden inundates the senses for a brief few seconds. What you taste picks up the theme from there, and for a few perfect mouthfuls you could be facing the sea, dreaming of a trip to Italy.

We are serving this luxurious dish as a winter starter. Elegant and surprisingly light, it's a perfect first course before a heartier stick-to-your-ribs entrée. It will also be one of the choices on our NYE menu. I have no idea if any seats remain for the 31st but Natalie tells me the response to us scaling down the price and opening the gallery to a midnight dance party for guests dining with us has been impressive. We have a few surprises up our sleeve - the more Eat the View readers present, the better. (always the case, of course).

Enjoy!

Our Cup Runneth Over

I’ve been drinking wine and loving it for more years than I care to count, but in the unique way wine manages to be both celebratory and sustaining, I’ve always thought of it as more of an art form than a simple entertainment. Wine is one of the few things in life that can be either playful or serious, sometimes, depending on the occasion (or the vintage), both at the same time. But from a restaurant’s perspective, building a cellar can be an ongoing conundrum. Even a lot of money invested towards creating a stellar list doesn’t ensure the final product will have heart, must less integrity.

For a start, you need to remember that no two customers will look upon your list (and judge it) through the same eyes. Some diners come in hiding their preferences, or not knowing them, while others wear their new found expertise like a badge of honor, or use it like a high powered flashlight.

A few years back, hoping to address this diversity of interest, we created narratives for our wine book - with chapters titled Local Heroes, Hands Across the Water, Off the Beaten Path. We even called one 97+, because while we held the opinion Robert Parker’s rating system was deeply flawed, if that’s what customers came in looking for, we wanted them to have it. We were happy, if not relieved, when diners gravitated to Local Heroes, followed closely by the foreign entries on the list, but we had to admit we still hadn’t cracked the code. 

Though we live in the heart of arguably the best wine growing region in America, our list has always had a healthy percentage of foreign inclusions. It was our hope that the vintners who might become regular customers (they did and thankfully still are) already had plenty of access to local expressions of terroir and style. What they sought when they dined out - what we sought ourselves - was expanding a life-long love of the grape and the almost mystical way it transforms itself - with a little help from the human hand - in the bottle.

Figuring out the secret of what drives an exciting wine list is a conversation we’ve had with every wine director we’ve ever hired. Our litmus test was never how much ego they brought to the job - too little and the list floundered, too much and we soon parted ways - but how creatively they tapped into a hunt for gems, how closely they wore humility next to prowess.   

Which brings us to our new list, and the talented woman now guiding it. 

I can give you Alexis Iaconis’ impressive achievements  - she was Head Sommelier at the Restaurant at Meadowood, and has reached level three in the four level Court of Master Sommeliers - but a careful reading of her résumé does more than shout accomplishment. To command respect in what remains the still very cliquish, male centric world of wine takes hard work, long hours, and incredible focus. It takes mastering the ability to communicate what you know with elegance instead of verbosity. She worked as a food runner at Cyrus to get her fine dining knowledge, and before that was the brains (if not the heart) behind the still much lamented Green Grocer in Windsor. Once upon a time, after art school and the CIA in New York, she had thought work behind the scenes in the kitchen was the future, but life had other plans. These now include, in addition to being Barndiva's Wine Director, the demanding full time job of Hospitality Director at Copain Winery where she manages the tasting room, direct sales, a huge wine club and all their events, while raising two great kids with new husband Matt Iaconis. Who just happens to be a terrific winemaker.  

In the course of getting to know Alexis I’ve learned that it’s not the bragging rights of having an exquisite palate that is her favorite part of the life she’s chosen, it’s sharing her excitement for wine and its flavors, passing on the story behind the region, the history and culture that cross-pollinates wine and food. I don’t just love the fact we have a woman now managing our wine program, I love the fact it's this woman. One who cares about how grapes are grown, and every step they take after they leave the vine. Because it’s the same way we feel about food.

 It's early days in knowing what lasting changes Alexis will bring to our cellar, but we’ve already seen an end to the line of rolling suitcases that used to form on tasting days. There is a sharper focus on balancing new winemakers with revered ones, with special care taken to bring back old friends. With Lukka and Cathryn’s help we’ve introduced a single page “snapshot” of wines-by-the-glass, splits and specials treasures for those who don’t want to peruse the book. And for those guests who have longed to taste a glass of a precious vintage without committing to a whole bottle, Alexis has instigated a Coravin program where single glasses can be extracted from bottles without pulling the cork - a thin hollow needle is inserted to withdraw the wine before the cork reseals, with argon gas preventing any oxidation in the bottle.

Perhaps the art of curating a discerning wine list is allowing that it is an organic document, and so, by its very nature, will always be a work in progress. Therein lies the fun and the challenge. I look forward to growing the list in more ways that fully reflect the diversity of talent possessed by the growers and vintners we are so fortunate to know. And most especially, with Alexis' help, to revitalizing our commitment to creating a cellar with a personality reflective of the multi-faceted Barndiva experience.  

For the look at our complete current wine list,  click here. 

For a look at how Alexis is pairing our wonderful menu for New Years Eve , click here.