Dining at Barndiva this summer

We have never been as proud of the food we are sourcing and serving than in this moment. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Challenges across the hospitality industry are still being felt acutely, and building kitchen and front of house teams that have the desire to work with great skill and integrity has been a considerable challenge. All of which raises the bar on what to deliver when guests come in search of a great - make that gorgeous - food and drink experience. We get it.

Enter Erik Anderson, for whom every challenge is met with a nod and a wink. He and Thomas Noonan, the guiding force behind our hospitality, have built kitchen and Front of House teams that have both the skill set and the desire to be a part of something truly special. Erik's food has an elegant focus of flavors, subtly of texture, glorious color. We will savor the memory of the food we are cooking this summer for a long time to come.

Neidy Venegas continues to create deliriously delicious desserts, and she has expanded her heritage bread program for both dinner and brunch.

Here then is a snapshot of some of our favorite dishes on the dinner menu right now. Reservations are accepted one month out, but the bar, under the direction of Scott Beattie, is now serving dinner on a drop-in without reservation, first come first serve basis.

Barndiva serves dinner Wednesday - Sunday, with a later reservations policy of 9:30 on Friday and Saturday.

We are also pleased to present the new barndiva brunch menu, below.

We hope to see you for a meal, or a cocktail soon. Eat the view!

Dishes above: Nijimasu Crudo horseradish, buttermilk, smoked trout roe, english cucumber; Charcoal Roasted Squab medjool dates, coco nibs; Mount Lassen Trout saffron nage, Jimmy nardello pepper, grilled baby fenne; ; Grilled Spanish Octopus, pimenton caramel, pepper relish, salsa verde;

Our wonderful in house pasta program continues.. on the left: Brentwood Corn Snail Shell Pasta w/ sunflower yogurt, fresno peppers, perilla. on the right: Egg Yolk Dumplings w/ peas, onions, bacon, radish

Roasted Chicken green asparagus, morels, vin jaune, petit baguette

Red Currant Curd chocolate tahini crust, glazed Preston peaches, ras el hanout ice cream

Big News…

While Barndiva will no longer be serving lunch on Wednesday and Thursday, we have expanded our hours for Brunch with an exciting and completely new Menu.

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Barndiva Brunch will be served from 11-2:30. This collaboration between Erik and Neidy have created a big C Comfort menu that is surprisingly fresh and nuanced. Never to be outdone, Scott has upped the ante on brunch cocktails and every week we will be offering a new short list of the best wines to drink on an afternoon. Reservations are required, but as with dinner the bar will be open for diners on a first come first serve basis. And of course, If there are cancellations in the gardens on any afternoon, we will try our best to accommodate your party.

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all rights reserved Barndiva llc. Photography: Chad Surmick

Remembering Sally Schmitt

The Philo Apple Farm, looking towards Hendy Woods and Greenwood Ridge

We talk about farm to table a lot these days without understanding the back breaking, thoroughly unglamorous hours of work it takes to accomplish anything close to that profound connection. Or, for that matter, loom to sweater or clay to vase… instead we covet power and the goodies that come with money and recognition as proof of some notion of success that increasingly seems to come and go with the season. But the deeply felt rewards of following your intuition and putting in the time and work because you care was Sally Schmitt’s genius, and clearly something she taught her children. In her case it came in the form of taking honed traditional values and making them ‘true’ to her own time and her family’s ongoing needs. It’s very old fashioned to think of character in this way - in the sense that True North is philosophical as well as directional. Sally Schmitt didn’t set out to be a trendsetter for so many of the things we’ve come back around to valuing today - she lived those values. And it was bloody hard work until it became easier. 

Sally, who passed away peacefully at The Apple Farm on March 5, was the formidable mother of my good friend Karen Bates who moved to Philo with her husband Tim the same year, 1984, that we bought our farm on Greenwood Ridge.  Whenever I saw Sally after she and Don had sold the French Laundry to Thomas Keller and re-located to Anderson Valley, first to Elk and then the Apple Farm, I was still hopping on planes from London every summer to get my family back to our ‘work-in-progress’ farm. Always in her apron, moving slowly but with purpose, she’d stop and break into a beatific smile when she saw me and the kids. I like to think this was because she knew I loved her family, but it also just might have been that she knew I connected all my crazy dots about life in a way that also revolved around family, creativity, hard work. Our backgrounds could not have been more different except that I had a mother for whom nothing was impossible if you believed it was the right thing for you and your family. So. A kindred spirit. 

In interacting and observing the world Sally built with her children over the years, I saw how much it centered around family, and food. Specifically food that exemplified Brillat-Savarin’s ideal that all great dishes must ultimately come down to satisfying ‘le goût du revenez-y’ – the taste you come back to. Savarin never established where this longing started – in childhood perhaps – but it has always rung true. And Sally’s cooking nailed it.  

The last time I saw Sally for any length of time was at her granddaughter Rita’s splendid wedding to Jerzy. Never the social butterfly and moving more slowly by then, she was happy to watch her family celebrate around her - she did not move far from her chair that day – and I took the opportunity to keep her company. We talked about the whole pig we roasted per her recipe at Barndiva for Grandson Perry’s wedding and the extraordinary dancing at Grandson Joe’s wedding at The Apple Farm years before that – Joe’s sons now running wild in the orchards below us. At some point I remember her turning in her chair to look me straight on and ask how things were going “at that barn of yours in Healdsburg.” I shook my head, said something like “I may have bitten off more than I can chew,” expecting some pithy Sally response like “take smaller bites.” What she said, simply, was ‘You know what you are doing.’ I didn’t fully. Not that day, and not now – do any of us? We hope and too often our hubris allows us to think we know, but do we? 

But thinking back now it wasn’t that she thought I “knew” in the sense of planning for a tomorrow that might never come, especially in the crazy world of hospitality and restaurants, but in Montaigne’s sense that “the greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.” Staying true, somehow, to that indefatigable North Star even as it moves across the sky of your life, through loss and success, joy and sadness. Just willing to put the work in.  

There’s a wonderful line in Richard Powers The Overstory – one of many in that great book – that seems applicable here: “As certain as weather coming from the west the things people know will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.”

I’ve had trouble learning humility. My mother warned me of this. But as a woman in a man’s world, being fierce was – as I saw it and built my life – the only way forward without being compliant to anyone’s version of the status quo, or, crucially, becoming complicit in supporting values that were morally reprehensible. I am still learning to lean into humility.  But I do know it starts with looking. 

I am not in the habit of making predictions but here’s one I am sure of: Six California Kitchens is going to be a classic. Troyce, yet another talented grandson, has done a magnificent job melding the old photographs of Sally’s life with images of dishes she and daughters Karen and Kathy cooked and styled at The Apple Farm.  There is no spiffy cookbook artifice here - gorgeously photographed dishes you can’t hope to recreate - just wonderful recipes, and the story of one remarkable woman’s life.

If you find yourself heading up to Anderson Valley and can cage a reservation to stay at The Apple Farm to experience a real small family farm, do not hesitate, and try to talk to Tim about apples. The extremely talented Perry Hoffman, now working with his Uncle Johnny at the Boonville Hotel can cook you dinner there - the best Anderson Valley has to offer. And don’t miss stopping off first for some wine and cheese at Pennyroyal Farm, where if you are very lucky you may get a glimpse of granddaughter Sofia if she’s not off on some mountain above Navarro tending their sheep.

Life is not easy to get through unscathed, but the trait of character that gets one through it – at least to the extent you are satisfied with the life you’ve led at the end of it - is something I’m pretty sure Sally Schmitt figured out.

What a legacy. RIP Sally. 

Return of The Pink Party (and other stories you need to hear)

We hope this Eat the View finds you well, your spirit intact and exciting plans for gathering with friends, extended family, and co-workers gaining momentum. It is so great to be out together again, maskless, re-connecting. While It’s been beautiful here in Sonoma and Mendocino - cold, sunny, green - we need more rain and the News of the World continues to be challenging (to say the least). Call it the new normal - but all we know for sure living in these wonderful, confounding, delicious, too often heartbreaking times is that life is so much better trying to make sense of things with other people who are passionate about food and wine and design and gardens. we hope like us you are intent on rooting out genuine storylines that are ongoing and real, if slightly fantastical. We have been largely silent of late on the blog front for a reason, taking stock and getting ready for a spring… of emergence. We’re ready now.

This Eat the View contains three events we want to tell you about that capture what we’re feeling and planning right now: the first is a deep dive dinner party Wednesday, March 9; the second is a scoop for Eat the View readers; the third a temptation around libations unlike anything we’ve done (or seen) before.

Read on. And thank you for your continued support!

DEEP DIVE DINNER PARTY Our wine director the inimitable Sally Kim, formerly of the Delfina Restaurant Group will be curating a seasonal series of unusual wine maker evenings in the elegant Studio Barndiva this spring kicking off 9th March with a Deep Dive into the best of Sonoma Coast’s wines, starting with the legendary Littorai vineyards. Biodynamic grape growers, farmers, winemakers and educators Ted & Heidi Lemon will be joining us, pairing their wines with a dynamic five course menu created by Barndiva’s Chef Erik Anderson. $350 per person, all inclusive.

CLICK HERE FOR THE MENU, WINE PAIRINGS, AND A SEAT AT THE TABLE.

THE SCOOP: Tickets have quietly gone on sale, online as of today, for the long awaited return of The Pink Party on the 3rd April, 11am – 2pm. Our 40+ winemaker Sunday extravaganza (you know if you’ve been there) is a glorious collaboration and celebration of over 35 local wineries, with winemakers in attendance serving their finest local Rosé’s accompanied by delectable, Barndiva canapé & hors d’oeuvres. Served beneath the flowering wisteria and mulberries of our gardens- with Nick Gueli this year doing the honors of our instagram floral wall- you won’t want to miss this launch of the season. Be advised dear Eat the View Readers, tickets will disappear.

CLICK HERE

THE TEMPTATION:. if you follow us @barndivahealdsburg you may know that come April 1st - no fool he- the legendary mixologist Scott Beattie will be joining us as our Beverage Director. Future Eat the Views will no doubt have to be sub-titled Drink the View in future as Scott, after a short honeymoon, puts the finishing touches on an exciting new cocktail service to be followed with a return to dining at the bar.

And we are pleased to offer the very first series of Scott Beattie Cocktail Classes at Barndiva. These will be lively, full sensatory experiences where Scott will teach you how to make classic and original cocktails using the finest spirits, elixirs and organic fruit material, much of it forged from the Barndiva Farm. Classes start at $150 per person and can be booked for 6 – 24 ‘students’ in a spectacular classroom otherwiseknowas The Studio Barndvia Gardens.

Learn how to make great seasonal cocktails from the man who wrote the book on it.

DIRECT BOOKING ONLY: 707 4310100.

Reflecting on our Michelin star

We can’t help but smile when asked how it feels to have received a Michelin star. Especially as it’s a question that, after an incredulous pause, usually ends …."and after 17 years!”    

The simple answer is unequivocal: to be acknowledged in this way following the year our industry has suffered through is simply terrific. It’s a major, career-affirming event for our executive chef Jordan Rosas and pastry chef Neidy Venegas, both of whom moved to our small town from one of the biggest and diverse cities in the world only to confront raging forest fires and vexing pandemic closures. Forced to re-envision their approach to cooking, they pivoted from To Go, to Provisions, to an innovative version of ‘Safe Distance Dining,’ strengthening and even expanding our farm partnerships. To receive a star is wonderful for them - as it is for all of our cooks, bartenders, servers, and dishwashers, who immediately felt the wind in their sails when they came to work. Pride is an amazing elixir.

If you’ve read this blog at all over the many years K2 and I have been putting it together, you know how we’ve filled those 17 years. Keeping the farm and the mantra ‘Eat the View’ relevant. Constantly upping our game when it comes to sustainability and rewarding labor. Gathering wine and spirit makers, artists and designers of all stripes and finding new ways to incorporate their work into the quarter-acre we occupy in the center of Healdsburg. For all the perfect nights in the gardens, the cocktails shaken, the farmers laden with boxes shouting hello at the kitchen door, not a day has gone by when we haven’t faced obstacles, some pretty damn challenging. Restaurants are first and foremost a performative art. What you learn must be practiced, over and over, then re-enacted with split second timing night after night, without losing that spark of initial inspiration that makes a dish memorable. Fire isn’t the only thing that flares up; knives aren’t the only things around with sharp edges. People whose private lives are filled with drama seem drawn to this profession. But you don’t get into this life - certainly don’t stay - if you can’ t stand the heat in the kitchen. Because when it’s showtime, you just have to bring it.

So yes, we’re proud of those 17 years. If nothing else we’ve been consistent in our passion to figure out - to do more than just survive - this exasperating, exhilarating, exhausting but ultimately life-affirming business. Being able to interact with people who make delicious things, sharing with them the desire to tell compelling food and wine stories - connecting them and their stories to our guests - this is what sustains and guides us. We want to thank Michelin for keeping us in their sights and welcoming us into their community.

Chef Neidy Venegas’ dish above: Quince/ Verbena/Grains of Paradise + Tahini Manjari Mousse. Chef Jordan Rosas’ dish above: White Bass/ Broccoli Chowder/ Manila Clams/ fennel/ broccoli stems

A few weeks ago I wrote about how we hoped to come out of Covid in a manner that might embrace ‘dining out’ as more of collaboration, a commitment of time with delicious intent shared by both diner and host. It’s also very much a collaboration between chef and farmer, chef and purveyor, and each member of staff working together, showing care for every element of service, and, crucially, for one another.

But the further we get into society opening up again the more I feel the truth that the social zone we are re-entering - for all its old sheep’s clothing - presents a new paradigm. We are all looking for purchase in this new world, relevant experiences that will resonate, not just for an afternoon or evening but as a thread running through our lives.

Reading Richard Powers’ new novel “Bewilderment” a few weeks back a line jumped out at me that I can’t get out of my head,  “…if some small but critical mass of people recovers a sense of kinship, economics would become ecology. We’d want different things. We’d find our meaning out there.”  Whether this is an achievable goal or not isn’t the point. We need to try. And there may be no better place than the communal dining room, especially those that take their cues from nature and its seasons. With so much of life in the 21st Century spent dipping into virtual realities, there is great solace to be found in the fact that there is - as yet - no virtual substitution to sitting down in a room full of strangers and taking food and drink into your body to be nourished, engaged, and looked after in the pleasurable way humans have craved for centuries. To quote the last line of an Erika Meitner poem, “gather is a transitive verb.” To have the ability to work at what it means ‘to gather’ so it exalts this time, in this place, rewarding human endeavor, living our lives doing what we love, has been an honor and a privilege.  

To celebrate the year ahead, upholding traditions we think have always made Barndiva unique, we’re hosting special exhibits, parties, and collaborative events that speak to our interests, and, we hope, yours. The Pink Party, Fête Blanc, and Fête Rouge are back. Collaborations with other chefs who Eat the View. A ‘throw out the playbook’ series of parties, starting with New Year’s Eve. But first up a mixed media evening that combines the talents of three rising stars in the ceramic world with the work of Barndiva’s brilliant floral farmer. Up from the Earth is one from the heart for us. It elementally connects everything we do in Philo to everything we do here in Healdsburg.

Stay tuned and keep your calendars fluid. From Chefs Jordan and Neidy, and the entire Family at the Barn, we hope to see you soon!

Up from the Earth will take place November 12, from 4-8. It is for one night only. Barndiva’s Nick Gueli will be joined by Grace Khalsa, Ian Hazard-Bill and Miles McCreary from the Mendocino Arts Center to display work specifically made for the show that combines their Anagama wood-fired kiln vases and food safe vessels with florals Nick has grown and dried at the farm. Thanks to the wonderful Lulu Handley, we will be pouring wines from Handley Cellars, and the Gallery Bar with Isabel at the helm will be open for the first time since, well, you know.

Please note: all the work will be for sale, and range in size and price, with all proceeds going to the artists. Join us to celebrate these talented individuals.

Support the Arts!

Outstanding, indeed!

Even if you throw huge dinner parties for a living, as we do, it’s not every day you see a single table set for 220 people. On the top of a remote mountain surrounded by vineyards. But Jim Denevan, founder of Outstanding in the Field, does this for a living, traveling to remote, always stunning locations across America (and now Europe), outsourcing food and spirits to one night only partners. They rarely, if ever, visit the same location twice, or work with the same chefs and vintners.

We’ve always wanted to do an Outstanding event, and thanks to our good friends at Flowers Vineyards & Winery, we were afforded this opportunity on June 23. Outstanding handles all the logistics, from choosing the location to picking up the last dessert spoon, but the task of pulling off a remarkable, locally sourced menu that does justice to these truly outstanding locations falls to culinary talent working without a net, with no refrigeration and only the most basic cooking implements (think fire).

Camp Meeting Ridge Vineyards, where Flowers Vineyard & Winery is located, is on the Extreme Sonoma Coast on the top of a rolling mountainous range two miles above the Pacific. When an unexpected heat wave made their original choice of location, which Flowers had spent weeks grooming, untenable, they took it in stride, relocating a 300' long, single sinuous table to a graceful setting under an oak tree grove whose boughs dipped and dived over the heads of bemused, but now happily shaded diners. Earlier in the day, when the Barndiva team arrived at Camp Meeting Ridge (elevation 1150') in a refrigerated truck, Ryan, Andrew, Jordy, Lukka and Cathryn were met by a dozen or more OITF staff beneath two spacious tents, adjacent to four long charcoal grills. As the evening progressed it increasingly felt like the last night extravaganza of a foodie summer camp. If the group had broken out in song midway through the four hour dinner service (more Celebrate than Kumbaya) no one would have been surprised. It's obvious that for OITF pulling off a great event every time has to be, first and foremost, chill for all the participants. While that starts and ends with the guest list, it happily includes chefs and vintners who cannot help but be inspired by the hip professionalism of OITF's  team of expediters and servers. 

In honor of that spirit, here then is an album of the evening as viewed from BOH. From the oohs and ahhs reported by the servers who scaled dark hillocks loaded with groaning platters, I'm happy to report the food was a success; for anyone fascinated with the speed and timing and smallest details of food production,  the real action was down in the tents, redolent with grilled duck smoke, sounds of laughter, the pulling of numerous corks, low recitations of the ingredients and purveyors of each dish headed up to diners. 

First Up: As the OITF bus ferried diners to the tasting room lawn,  Flowers poured copious amounts of their Rosé, while Barndiva began the evening with a modern take on a precolonial cocktail, Fleurette @ Flowers, a collaboration with New Alchemy Distilling. Canapés consisted of lemon verbena infused watermelon cubes, Dungeness crab tostadas, deep fried goat cheese croquettes sprinkled with lavender flowers and honey, and Scotty Noll's caviar crème fraîche black pepper panna cotta cups . 

Fleurette @ Flowers featured New Alchemy's Arborist gin, pink grapefruit juice, BD Farms rosemary honey, In Pursuit of Tea's Jasmine Pearls, and clarified whole milk. It was finished with Fleurette gin and garnished with bachelor buttons from the Barndiva gardens. 

1st Course was huge loaves of toasted levain from Red Bird Bakery, Preston olives, pickled Barndiva Farms onions, Rancho Gordo white bean hummus and roasted garlic bulbs.

Following a 2nd course of Bernier Farms baby gem lettuce Caesar (plated in the refrigerated truck), the 3rd course was grilled "ratatouille," with rosemary brushed romesco sauce, green and gold squash, roasted tomatoes, garlic sherry vinaigrette, vibrant basil pistou and Pennyroyal Farm's delicious Laychee sheep and goat milk cheese (milked and made in Boonville, the heart of the Anderson Valley. Laychee is Boontling for milk.)

Rosemary basting 'brushes' soaked in Bernier Farms garlic butter

4th course was Liberty Farms grilled duck breast and legs, served on a mount of stone ground polenta, finished with Barndiva pickled ramp bulbs, fresh chives and a glistening stream of roasted Flowers Pinot Noir duck jus. Grilled halibut and vegetarian entrées were also provided.

All hands were on deck for the dessert course of Russian River Farms macerated strawberries, Scott Noll's brown butter financier cake, cream quenelles, and a light sprinkling of lavender, lemon zest, bachelor buttons and black pepper. 

A big shout out to the OITF staff, especially ace expediter Matt. To Chantal and all the folks at Flowers Vineyard & Winery, you rock it, especially Jake Whiteley (and I’m not just talking wine). To Ryan and Andrew, for the planning, organization, prep, cooking and presentation, wow, what a meal, accomplished with the same finesse you manage in the Barn and the Bistro. Caps off to Jordy, in charge of the fires, who remained extremely cool under Chef's steely glare while managing to keep four enormous charcoal grills to an exact temp before the “fire duck now!” order went down.

Lukka had the most arduous and greasy jobs of the event: driving the precariously loaded truck from Healdsburg up the 18% Meyers Grade without spilling the jus, then jumping into the heart of the smoke when Jordy and Andrew just could not handle the number of duck breasts and legs that had to hit the heat at the same time. Our restaurant manager Cathryn was everywhere, as she is here at the Barn: mordantly funny but a dead calm participant. Last but certainly not least, a huge thank you to New Alchemy Distilling's Jason and Chandra Somerby. When OITF asked us to provide a celebratory libation to start the evening we wasted no time roping them in to help. They not only devised the kick ass cocktail (a two day process to clarify the milk tea infusion until it was crystal clear, thank you Isabel!), they somehow managed to serve it chilled without breaking a sweat.

Chef Andrew Wycoff, owner Lukka Feldman, restaurant manager Cathryn Hulsman, artist Jordy Morgan, aka HOBO grill master extraordinaire

While I have only been a watcher to the entire process (not counting a 6am bachelor button harvest for the cocktail garnish), the OITF event with Flowers has been an unmitigated delight. There are so many complicated pieces to serving great food to large groups and family-style is not our usual approach, but oh how we love its abundance, and the joy of watching everyone dig in. While the beauty of each course did not suffer for the speed at which the platters needed to be assembled, the flavors sang a beautiful song of summer in this time and place.

We were all pretty exhausted by the time it was growing dark and we hauled out huge containers of macerated strawberries for a financier shortcake, but it presented a final perfectly syncronated moment for the Barndiva team: Andrew forming perfect vanilla whip cream quenelles, Jordy sprinkling lavender flowers, Ryan grinding black pepper, Cathryn grating lemon zest (lightly, no rind!), Lukka sprinkling blue cornflowers. It did not matter we were on top of a mountain, what I saw in their teamwork was analogous to what we do everyday here at the Barn. Great food is the product of great producers and chefs who are inspired and, yes, obsessive to every detail - wherever that food is served. The Outstanding in the Field event with Flowers on June 23rd was an Eat the View moment to remember. 

Wish you were there.

Chef Ryan takes a bow; gives thanks to purveyors, participants and of course our guests