Studio Barndiva 2025

This is Bea, the ‘angel’ in our holiday ‘angels and bears’ cocktail made from crabapples we harvested with Misha, our extraordinary farm manager and her daughter, Ara. Bea and Ara, ethereal creatures, are not that much smaller than our extremely old crabapple trees, the ones by the road which have somehow managed to escape the woozy ire of the ‘bears.’ My guess is our ursine neighbors are put off by the smell of tannin in the apple skins, which also happens to be why they are such a great apple to macerate, in this case, in Armagnac and aromatics.

I love end of year best lists, the books the movies, the art shows, but when it comes to dishes - especially those we served - it’s not so easy to choose. Each season has its standouts. This is our second year serving dinner in Studio Barndiva where we have room for dining couches and cocktail high tops, better sound, a big wall on which to play Isabel’s silent film compilations. The feedback from returning guests and new customers has been, thankfully, incredible. When the mood of a space is just right, the drinks and dishes arrive as a blessing, which is how all food should be received.

Long before we learned to make an art out of cooking & dining, we gathered in tribes and then communities to celebrate harvest and the seasons, and I am of the belief that the time we spend dining at brick and mortar restaurants - the experience itself whether perfect or flawed - is at the heart of the definition of what it means to share the experience of being human. Of course we can and should participate in fostering the health of our community in many ways: going to the theatre, galleries, music venues, but something quite unique happens when you lift a glass in a comfortable room or garden surrounded by other fellow humans. You replenish, physically and emotionally. If the experience is authentic, if there is care in the sourcing, labor that honors the food chain, you also pay it forward, you contribute. And you don’t have to know a soul sitting in the room around you to share a social covenant which is irreducible.

I had a friend who grew up in Oklahoma, and I have never forgotten his description of how his family knew a tornado was coming. It wasn’t the growing darkness on the horizon, which seemed to move closer by the minute, certainly not once the furniture started flying. “It was something in the air, not quite a scent, but you could definitely smell it: a chilly premonition it was time to prepare.”

It would be disingenuous to say that for those of us practicing hospitality in wine country right now - Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino- at the end of a year as precarious as this one, that while the furniture is not flying, premonitions abound. With the wine industry in transition, diners (we are told) drinking less wine and spirits, the general tightening of the family budget and - not least for a town like Healdsburg - a possible downward shift in tourism - we may be in for an interesting new year. People will always thankfully celebrate the momentous moments of their lives - a good thing as Barndiva moves into our 21st year as a bespoke wedding and special event venue - but it’s as a restaurant we find our deepest connection to the Healdsburg we’ve been a part of for two decades, and its surrounding food and wine sheds all the way up to our farm in the Anderson Valley.

Our last blog post was a photo album of Sparkle Party, which we hosted with Stay Healdsburg to launch the Holiday season in Healdsburg on November 15. Sparkle drew close to 250 people from across the town’s spectrum of locals and visitors, farmers and artists. What was extraordinary about that evening? I’d like to think the Misha Vega’s green mum floral wall, the vinyl playlist, the bites which showcased food grown a few miles away, the many glasses we raised of singular sparkling wines also grown and made only miles from where we gathered. The images tell the story that there was something else at play on the night as well. Just being in the same space together, the conversations we didn’t realize we needed to have, the unbridled laughter. The energy at Sparkle wrapped its arms around a truth we will be holding close this coming year: we are strongest and happiest when we come together. It’s not a euphemism. It is the truth.

We send this blog out with heartfelt thanks to all who patronized Studio Barndiva this past year, especially Barndiva’s local friends and neighbors who returned again and again, as well many visitors to Healdsburg who came looking to see what we’ve got up to in the intervening years. Never a dull moment, that’s for sure. Its all still so beautiful and delicious, for which we are grateful.

We hope to see you soon.

dishes we enjoyed serving the most in 2025

1. Now on the winter menu, the layered flavors of mixed greens and chicories dressed in a fragrant orange flower dressing, Barndiva farm apples, grana padano crisps, pecans, pomegranate, delicata squash chips.

2. The Basil Gimlet, made with Reyes Farm basil, finished with drops of nasturtium oil, resplendent with the scents of summer.

3. Erik’s sweet corn soup made a brief appearance at the height of corn season, poured table side, the better to see the Jimmy Nardello pepper and sherry vinegar jam with a hint of Presto VOO. Finished with a flash grilled pouf of corn silk.

4. Whipped mozzarella with Barndiva fig vinaigrette beneath Barndiva farm figs, peak tomatoes, peeled and marinated toy box tomatoes sheltering beneath fresh basil. A moment in time - figs at their ripest, tomatoes at their juiciest.

5. The dish people come back for again and again - our Tikka Masala. Yes, our menu in the Studio is eclectic - these are dishes we most want to eat which we are honored to share with you.

6. Three dynamic FOH Diva’s in action : Liz, Lisette, Lynn.

7. Trout tartare in a pool of green tomato aguachile, with avocado, radish, garden florals. The perfect, and sexiest start to a meal here. (There, I've said it)

8. Erik’s Fava bean and fresh mint pea soup with Boonville’s piment d’ville pepper flakes as photographed by Liza Gershman for her upcoming Healdsburg Farmers Market cookbook - for publication early 2026. It will no doubt be for sale at the Farmers Market in the spanking new Foley Family Community Pavilion on North Street.

9. Simon’s Barndiva Farm Apple galette was the hit dessert this year. Initially made with our heirloom Gravensteins, it went through the apple harvest with different varietals, served with his Tahitian vanilla ice cream. Now offered with Persimmons, in the run up to Christmas it will return with apples we harvested just last week.

10. Lift, Flirt & Slide lower alcohol apéritifs will make a return in 2025, as will Isabel Hales to lead our cocktail program with Danny Martin. We can’t wait!

11. The Studio Barndiva Ice Cream Social changed weekly showcasing Simon’s insane IC and sorbet flavors. Mango, Strawberry and Orange pictured.

12. We were honored to once again receive recognition for Studio Barndiva from Michelin in 2025 - a show of their continued support as we have navigated the food, wine, and cocktail world, ‘eating and drinking the view.’ Michelin’s understanding that passion and care in the kitchen and on the floor extends to sourcing and sustainability - the foundation of truly ‘fine’ dining - is a lodestar.

Photos Chad Surmick; Jil Hales

Barndiva Farm’s floral program is overseen by Misha Vega, @philo.flora, weekly arrangements by Jil Hales. It is guided, from the Costwolds, by Daniel Carlson, @Daniel.james.co.

Mid-Summer delights

Mid-August and while we are well aware the living ain’t always easy for much of the world, truth be told our cocktails, salads, cold soups and fruity desserts are exploding with summer’s juices and gorgeous life affirming color in our little corner of the world. Dining in the gardens is always wonderful to see - especially for families with children and couples with dogs.

Early in the evening more than half our guests still opt for Studio dining - cool tunes, air con, flooded with farm florals - but as the sun drops the best place in Barndivaland for a drink and a shared snack is on one of of the couches in the garden next to the edible flower beds we grow for the bar program, for scent, and guest delight.

We are a casual fine dining restaurant with the emphasis on fine dining. This means we truly prefer guests reserve for dinner so we come to every service on point. We welcome walk-ins for dinner - you just risk a wait without a reservation. The bar fills up nightly - and have also designated two Jordy Morgan sculptural hi-tops for drinkers. Even when the dining room is rocking we can manage shared plates - Our house made white bean hummus with garden crudites and a fresh green herby citrus oil, mounds of onion baji crunchy with salt and served with a coriander and mint chutney, and our notorious goat cheese croquettes- a barndiva favorite since the day we opened can always be ordered alongside a cocktail or a glass of wine.

The whole point of our move back to the Studio was to be able to accommodate this style of dining, inside and out; being able to offer dinner parties to larger groups; playing our B&W silent films on the barn wall, sharing our playlists, lighting the candles. Celebrating every season in our inimitable style and- for you as well as for us - just having a bit of fun enjoying a night out in Healdsburg.

By the time you read this the farm figs served the past few weeks on the heirloom tomato salad will be gone -they are fragile, and their season short. But tomatoes this year? Not to be believed. And Erik’s and David’s whipped mozzarella salad with fresh basil and crunchy croutons is the perfect carrier for all that summer tomato goodness. Barndiva farm fruits up next: comice and asian pears.

Brief too will be the fresh corn season and we celebrate it with a wonderful Erik Anderson chilled golden corn soup. The bowl arrives with a dollop of glorious Jimmy Nardello pepper jam made with a hint of sherry vinegar. The soup is poured table-side, and you just give it a stir -the better to re-discover the piquant ‘jam’ with every velvety spoonful. This is a dish that truly resonates with the season. It is topped with a tangle of crisped corn silk and a few petals of sweet garden thyme.

As for sweet endings: we’ve known Simon Mendoza since he was a boy. His father, Abel is one of Barndiva’s most valued chefs who has been with us for many years. Abel (and for a time his talented wife) have navigated every stage of our journey, while the kid, it turns out, was watching and if not taking notes, taking note of the parts that intrigued him. Turns out he has the talent and the chops for pastry. Simon is now turning out some of the best sorbets and ice creams in town - which I know is saying a lot. He’s baking as well: we were dreaming of a galette this summer and Voila, Simon has delivered. It’s a peach galette for now, soon to shift into pears and apples as they ripen here at the farm. His sorbets this week: raspberry, mandarin, mango. Ice Cream flavors will come and go with the season, except for vanilla which is sublime. Leave room for desert and celebrate young talent! Eat the view!

New Year New Opportunities for Studio B

Healdsburg is justly famous as a mecca of fine dining these days, and Barndiva is proud to have been a part of that evolution, just as we are truly honored to have been awarded a Michelin Star for a second year. But this community has always been about more than fine dining for us. It is also a motherlode of single owner shops and galleries, makers and creators, neighbors, and friends – all of us surrounded by magnificent, verdant countryside.

If the past few years have taught us anything about keeping this landscape truly healthy so we can all thrive, we need to gather more to talk and listen, the better to protect what we love about this singular community. And who knows, these conversations might eventually have a ripple effect.

So it is that one of our resolutions this New Year is to focus on extended use of Studio Barndiva to foster more ongoing community conversations. First up in the newly branded Studio B is an afternoon celebrating four remarkable women whose food journeys have a great deal to teach us.

Tanya Holland is a new friend of the barn, a restaurateur, magnetic TV & podcast host and cookbook author of bestsellers like “Brown Sugar Kitchen.” She has just released a fabulous new cookbook called “California Soul,” something she has in abundance and is gracious enough to share.

Jennifer Reichardt is the winemaker/owner of Raft Wines always a star at The Pink Party and Fête Blanc – and she also has a new cookbook, “The Whole Duck,” which draws its recipes from her family owned business Liberty Duck – a valued purveyor of Barndiva’s since the day we opened.  

We have admired Elizabeth Falkner since her Citizen Cake days, long before she went on to open four more acclaimed restaurants in San Francisco and New York and became an international presence as a TV personality and consultant. She now adds filmmaker to her impressive resume with the release “Sorry We’re Closed,” a timely film she directed about how the pandemic has adversely affected small restaurants throughout the country.

Healdsburg’s Duskie Estes hardly needs an introduction — the former owner of beloved restaurant Zazu and The Black Pig Meat Co with husband John Stewart, she is an iron chef, a brilliant speaker and mentor to many. Duskie has transformed Healdsburg’s non-profit Farm to Pantry in ways that are having a profound impact across the state on how to address food insecurity by strengthening our faltering food distribution systems.  

That these four women are successful business owners, Top Chefs, Iron Chefs, Food Network Stars, winemakers and authors isn’t beside the point – the take away for us is how they are all using their considerable personal successes to fuel conversations about definitive ways to support farms, restaurants, and organizations that care as much about people as the food they source, serve, and distribute.

In the final days of December, we hosted a sold-out dinner for the late Sally Schmitt’s Six California Kitchens with Sally’s family, friends of our Philo family for many many years. Winemaker Phil Baxter gave a toast that night I have thought about often since. It was after a cooking class with Sally in 1999 that his parents decided to uproot their lives and come live and work in the Anderson Valley. “That single experience, Phil explained, “that connection to the Schmitt family, is the pure reason why I am living in Anderson Valley and doing what I do today.”

We are all looking for pure connections, especially those that provide direction to our lives. We all know they are rare. But as we try and build our businesses around meaningful lives in these most difficult times, trying to feed necessary personal notions of success that will keep us going, it is essential we form more inclusive, expansive definitions of what it means to be part of a “family.”  Cooking and serving food and wine to the public we are ever mindful of farming practices and conscious sourcing; we try to honor connections to our purveyors and our work force. But you, our customers and clients, are the other side of that equation. Taken altogether, in good faith, in an environment where kindness matters, this is the family we have chosen.

We hope you are able to join us on January 22nd in Studio B, and meet these four remarkable women. We will be sipping Alma de Oakland cocktails and Raft wine, nibbling bites Chef Erik Anderson has prepared from California Soul. The authors will be talking about and signing their cookbooks, we’ll hear about and preview a bit of “Sorry We’re Closed,” and Duskie will inspire us about the vital mission of Farm to Pantry and what they have planned for the new year. If you are unable to be with us we encourage you to go out and purchase ‘California Soul’ and ‘The Whole Duck’ cookbooks at your local bookshop, seek out Elizabeth’s Film “Sorry We’re Closed,” and to find and support – with whatever resources you can manage – a non-profit food distribution network where you live.

FOOD NEWS: Chef Erik Anderson’s Winter Prix Fixe Menu

Maine Lobster from our January 4 menu

Photo: Chad Surmick

We are thrilled to present prix fixe menus this winter the better to showcase more of Erik’s prodigious talents. The menus will also enable us– including our chefs – to spend more time with our guests. The prix fixe will reflect exciting seasonal changes every week*, and can be enjoyed by vegetarians from start to sweet finish. Wine pairings are optional – a chance to dig through the cellar for gems and wines we love from lesser known vineyards. This week’s pairing from Barndiva’s (and soon to open Maison Healdsburg Wine Bar) Jade Hufford.

Starting this Janurary there will also be Bar Menus ~ come in for a Scott Beattie cocktail and share something unexpected.

We’d love to see you.