How sleepy Healdsburg became a dining destination

By Carolyn Jung

Updated 4:28 pm, Monday, February 13, 2017

Chef Dustin Valette is a third-generation Healdsburg native whose downtown restaurant Valette is proudly housed in his great-grandfather’s former bake shop. A quarter century ago, he remembers the plaza as sleepy, with a vacant lot where the Hotel Healdsburg now stands, a funeral parlor across the street, empty parking spaces galore and just one restaurant of any distinction.

How times have changed. In just 15 years, this once languid farm town has evolved into a destination dining scene propelled by such influential establishments as Dry Creek Kitchen, Cyrus and now the much-heralded SingleThread Farm-Restaurant-Inn, which just opened in December, offering a $294 Japanese-inspired tasting menu and overnight accommodations that start at $800.

“Healdsburg could have been more of suburbia like Windsor. It could have been more industrial like Santa Rosa,” Valette says. “We’re fortunate that because of our fantastic wines and growing regions, we became a tourist town.”

This 3.6-square-mile town now boasts 12,000 residents and throngs of visitors who come year-round by car, limo and tour bus. Healdsburg swells with 29 tasting rooms, according to the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce, and more than 40 restaurants.

It was Charlie Palmer who perhaps first elevated its culinary status when the nationally known chef of Manhattan’s glamorous Aureole moved with his family to a 36-acre spread 4 miles from the plaza.


Photo: Peter DaSilva
Hawaiian ahi, poke style, at Valette restaurant. Chef-owner Dustin Valette grew up
in Healdsburg and established his restaurant in his great-grandfather’s old bake shop.

The irony is that Palmer never intended to do business here. Like others, he simply fell for its agrarian nature, and thought it the perfect place to raise his children. But his plans changed when he was enticed to become a partner in the Hotel Healdsburg and owner of its Dry Creek Kitchen restaurant, which opened in 2001. That restaurant ushered in a new sense of sophistication with its contemporary dining room and glassed-in kitchen. Palmer has since become a partner in the nearby H2Hotel with interests in SpoonBar and Pizzando restaurants. In December, he’ll add to that stable with the 39-room H3 Guesthouse, just steps from H2Hotel.

“I always look for opportunities,” Palmer says about opening Dry Creek Kitchen. “In this case, it was a chance to be part and parcel of a project that could establish a really new and important part of town.”


Photo: Peter DaSilva
Chef Charlie Palmer in the dining room of Dry Creek Kitchen.

When plans were taking shape for Hotel Healdsburg, Bill Konrad, a certified public accountant, purchased the historic Madrona Manor in 1999. Raised in Sonoma County, Konrad converted the 1881 former residence into what is now a romantic inn with a Michelin one-star restaurant that serves a $165 tasting menu.

But in the beginning, the food was quite basic. When chef Jesse Mallgren came on board shortly afterward, tasting menus were added, and a garden planted to grow much of the produce. When the gilded Cyrus opened nearby in 2005, Madrona Manor stepped up its game even more, adding courses, premium ingredients such as caviar and a world-class wine list.

“We had no crystal ball. I didn’t see that people in this area would welcome fine dining and the check that came with it,” Konrad says. “Cyrus paved the way.”

At a time when the plaza was full of vacant storefronts, Chef Doug Keane wasn’t worried about opening Cyrus, a restaurant so swank that servers would circle each table before setting down plates in unison as in a choreographed ballet.


Photo: Peter DaSilva
Diners sample food and wine at Cindy Daniel’s popular Shed restaurant, which
bustles with Healdsburg locals during the week and packs in tourists on the weekend.

“Everyone thought we were crazy. They thought no way are we going to make it here with waiters in tuxedos and a caviar cart,” says Keane, who lives in the Alexander Valley. “In fact, when we did open, people would come into the kitchen and thank us for taking a chance in Healdsburg.”

After a seven-year run, Cyrus closed due to a landlord dispute. Keane hopes to reopen an even more opulent version of Cyrus in the Alexander Valley. He’s a big believer that businesses can’t thrive here with only locals as patrons; rent is just too high.


Photo: Peter DaSilva
SingleThread Chef Kyle Connaughton and his wife, Katina, who oversees the
restaurant’s farm.

Chef-owner Kyle Connaughton of SingleThread is sensitive to those concerns. But he and his wife, who have lived all around the world and moved here in 2011, say they were drawn to Healdsburg for the same reasons longtime residents were: because it is a close-knit community still rooted in agriculture, affording his wife, Katina, the opportunity to oversee SingleThread’s organic farm 2 miles from the restaurant-inn that has the air of a modern-day Japanese ryokan.

“We take great pride in representing Sonoma Wine Country in a thoughtful way,” Connaughton says. “We’re not an outside agency. We live 300 feet from the restaurant, and our daughter goes to school here. We are part of the community, as well.”

Cindy Daniel also felt some apprehension from the community 3½ years ago when she opened Shed, a restaurant and gourmet mercantile. A 20-year resident who moved from San Francisco to start a 16-acre farm here, she felt that the town had grown too wine-centric. She wanted to focus on its agriculture.

Shed’s concept seems to be paying off, with weekends crowded with tourists and weekdays bustling with locals, who come to sip kombucha at the fermentation bar, buy house-milled flour, peruse French cheese knives or dig into a dish of halibut in smoked tomato broth. The upstairs event space has hosted 91 community groups. Shed just added 16 dining seats and increased hours to seven days a week. It also started a new take-away service. Each day after 4 p.m., Chef Perry Hoffman brings out just-cooked porchetta or roast chicken that can be purchased to bring home.

Hoffman, former chef of Etoile at Domain Chandon in Yountville, is excited to be cooking at such a different venue. “I came from fine dining and cooking for destination diners,” he says. “I will never forget my first day here in this beautiful modern building, when a farmer in filthy jeans with shears in his pocket sat down with his wife and baby for coffee. Their bill was $12. You would never see that in Napa because the farms don’t exist there. It was important for me to see that and to keep that going.”

As long as scenes like that can play out, Hoffman isn’t worried that Healdsburg has reached its tipping point. Neither is Keane.

“I get why people who have been here forever think it’s changed too much,” Keane says. “But I don’t think Healdsburg will lose its charm. Not until you start seeing Gucci and Polo stores here.”

Bay Area freelance writer Carolyn Jung blogs at www.foodgal.com and is the author of “San Francisco Chef’s Table.” Email: food@sfchronicle.com

If you go

Dry Creek Kitchen, 317 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg, (707) 431-0330. www.drycreekkitchen.com. Dinner nightly.

Madrona Manor, 1001 Westside Road, Healdsburg. (707) 433-4231. www.madronamanor.com. Lunch and dinner, Wednesday-Sunday.

Shed, 25 North St., Healdsburg; (707) 431-7433. www.healdsburgshed.com. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, Wednesday-Monday.

SingleThread, 131 North St., Healdsburg. www.singlethreadfarms.com. Dinner Tuesday-Sunday. Guest rooms from $800, including breakfast.

Valette, 344 Center St., Healdsburg. (707) 473-0946. www.valettehealdsburg.com. Dinner nightly.