Celebrating 20 years on July 14!!

On July 14 we will celebrate a Milestone it’s fair to say we never envisioned achieving - 20 years since the day we opened Barndiva. Over the past two decades we’ve been a local bluesy Bistro Bar, a fine dining Michelin Star Restaurant, hosted thousands of wedding related parties and significant community events, celebrated artists, and worked to strengthen the bonds between farmers and chefs (even helping create a web-site for them). We’ve worked through multiple fires and inventively and safely stayed open through the pandemic. We’ve had the joys of seeing many of our staff grow their families and cherished past employees go on to create wonderful businesses of their own.

It’s been an exhilarating, challenging, frustrating, marvelously engaging life… And on July 14, from 4-6, we're throwing a party to celebrate.

If you are able to come raise a glass with us we will fill it with new versions of the Barndiva cocktail classics, "On the Beach with Fidel" and "Steamy Windows," along with remarkable wines made by vintners who once upon a time polished a glass or two here at the start of their careers. The Chefs will be grilling and the soundtrack will be curated from a 20 year playlist of our favorites. And of course, floral arrangements galore from our farm and some of our slo flower friends.

We know this newsletter goes out to many who live far away, so if you cannot join us on the 14th, please know you have our gratitude. In some way, large or small, you have made this journey with us. Loyal customers, wedding families, farmers, vintners, artists, The City of Healdsburg, and most especially past and present employees - we simply wouldn’t be here without you.

It’s an elusive but significant connection we long to make over food and drink and when it works, that moment when everything comes together, it hits all the high notes of a diva moment . We have never stopped striving for that moment - but even when we miss, we’ve felt the love. Thank you.
 
Follow the link 🥳 to join us. The $10 ticket will go in support of a game changing new nonprofit that builds farm communities -- something that's always been close to our "Eat the View" hearts.
(100% will be donated to FARMpreneurs}  

We hope you can come! 

Of the thousands of images I’ve taken from the day we opened on July 14, 2004 of every aspect of this world we’ve created, at the end of the day what has meant the most to us as a family are the people we have worked alongside, through the good times and bad. This is a stressful industry, with hundreds of moving parts. It takes tremendous effort - physically and emotionally- to stay the course and be true to a vision, especially one as idiosyncratic as Barndiva’s. What has always pulled us over the swells when they got too high has been the dedications of relentless kitchen and front of house teams. When you see the joy of a food or drink moment that has truly landed, especially if that day is significant in a families life, you know why what you do matters.

This no means a complete rogues gallery, just some of the memorable moments we have shared on our way toward writing the barndiva story over the years.

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Coming July 5th ...
Cocktailing in the Gardens begins!

We are excited to be expanding our wine and cocktail menus
so they can be enjoyed in the gardens even if you aren't joining us for dinner

View the expanded cocktail and wine menu, here!

Studio Barndiva is open for dining Thursday - Monday from 5pm.
Walk-ins are welcome, reservations are encouraged.  

We book parties! 8+? Contact us here.

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Love thy Neighbor

80% of all species living on earth are anthropoids, they are the largest phylum in the animal kingdom. These include bees, ants, spiders, butterflies, and moths. Live on a farm and they are happily your daily companions, going about their business, as you go about yours. Though I was admittedly once a diehard city girl who would quickly default to ‘is this a predator?’ toward anything unknown (whether it walked on two legs or crawled on four) I’ve come to love the muck and tosh of farm life. Yes, it has taken me years to stop killing spiders – who for the most part do not bite – but I now marvel at the beauty to their balletic grace, the cunning in their designs for living.

And I am not squeamish. Or so I thought, until one sunny winter day just after the recent torrential rains when Dan, Nick and I began to tackle the ¼ acre of ‘treasures,’ aka trash, that had grown to fill a neglected corner by the front gate. A few minutes after we started, Dan lifted the edge of a rotting tarp and a family of centipedes scurried out, followed by a score of creatures, all webbed feed and slimy exoskeletons. I jumped back, fully creeped out. Dan, on the other hand, was positively joyful. He immediately set about transporting them, giggling like a child as he ran the ten feet to the edge of the forest where he deposited them to a new life.  It went on: Beneath a pile of warped ply from some long forgotten project he found blue tailed skinks “beautiful!”; in the grassy muck around an old stove, several alligator lizards. Then beneath a stack of rotting ply, for Dan, a treasure trove of “three species of Salamander!”

Revulsion is the act of stepping back from something, it is generally instinctive, rather than rational. Like all forms of prejudice, it usually comes from ignorance. As the sun crept beyond the canopy of trees casting us in shadow, it was hard to miss the difference between what Dan and I were experiencing. If I have learned anything in over three decades dry farming organically up here on the ridge it’s that while insects may make strange bedfellows, they make grand partners in building the layers of biodiversity our farm has needed to survive and flourish. Why then, do most of us treat things that crawl out from under rocks- arguably where we all started - differently than those that float from flower to flower? We anthropomorphize some creature and not others, easily finding connection to ‘anything with a face,’ but repulsed by slithering snakes and slimy bug eyed creatures. Even within a species most of us hold to established standards of coherent beauty. Why else do we more frequently ooh at the butterfly, ignore the dusty moth circling the porch light on a summer night?

Dan is still, happily, the director of our big farm programs in Philo, though he now delegates from London most of the year, coming back to do a big push in winter and again in fall. He is especially wonderful at reminding us to always take a closer look at the impact our lives up here have upon the surrounding ecology of this ridge; reminding us that as form often follows function, so too beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This trip he gifted us with the knowledge that its often the unseen life on the farm, that over time contribute essential layers necessary to healthy biodynamic structure. These creatures happened to be feasting in the dump, but it is the feces of arthropods which are the basis for the formation of soil aggregates and humus, which physically stabilize soil and increase its capacity to store nutrients. Ecosystem engineers.

As for all those piles of trash we’ve kept around that we no longer have hopes of someday using, we are going to take another look at them before we pay someone to haul them off to yet a bigger trash pile we just can’t see. Before he left he urged us to listen to a John Little Podcast - John, who founded the Grass Roof Company.Co.UK (@grassroofcompany), in 1998, has been a seminal force in both macro and micro thinking around fly-tipping (dumping) and how it adversely affects biodiversity.

If  you are in the least bit curious how to come to meaningful terms with all the junk that invariably surrounds us - how to cultivate your living situation in ways that encourage and protect wild life so it might thrive alongside you, how to cultivate plants that will more easily adapt to our changing climate, I recommend spending some time with this gentleman. Choose any podcast that strikes your fancy - and look at his website. John Little is a marvel rethinking how we live, especially in cities and towns, where every day we pass refuse in both private and public spaces that could be transformed to be pleasurable, have purpose. He grows things in unimaginable places, with very little resources beyond his ingenuity and vision - even top soil has a relegated place in his world. His work in the private and public spheres offers imaginative and inexpensive ways to create remarkable gardens and landscaped installations. So much to learn here.

And yes, upon much reflection, the skinks were pretty awesome.

There is breathtaking beauty everywhere you look in Anderson Valley this winter, and it’s easy to see while passing vineyards which are dedicated to cultivating more than grapes. Handley Cellars Vineyards, always a Barndiva Family Favorite, is particularly stunning. And check out a recent @barndivahealdsburg post about Navarro’s remarkable annual approach to sheep season, captured during a joyful visit with the incomparable Sophia Bates.

Finally, We’d be remiss in closing this newsletter failing to mention how pleased we were with the turn-out for our Book & Film Event on Sunday January 22, which launched Studio B in 2023. It exceeded our expectations. Thanks to the help of Copperfields Bookstore the authors sold a great many books and fully half the sold- out audience stayed for the end of Elizabeth Falkner’s documentary “Sorry We’re Closed” which resumed after a probing, and frank Q & A about the state of the restaurant industry. A difficult conversation at times, it was a necessary one for anyone who loves dining out and is having trouble getting their heads around why and how it has become so expensive. We were proud to have helped facilitate it. Hopefully, there will be more to come like this for Studio B!

Our thanks to Heather Irwin and the Press Democrat ( @pressdemo, @biteclubbeats) for advance publicity for the event; to @shoplocalhealdsburg, @heatherfreyer, @jillkd, and our good friend @alexisconis for their IG follow ups - which we are admittedly dreadful at - so many reached out to say they were sorry to have missed the event but wanted to attend the next one!

And of course Big Love to our incredibly talented divas - Tanya Holland (@mstanyaholland, #californiasoulcookbook) who started the ball rolling, Jennifer Reichardt (@duckdaughterjj, #thewholeduckcookbook), Elizabeth Falkner (@cheffalkner, #sorrywereclosed) and the inimitable Duskie Estes, who guided the Q & A so deftly. (@farmtopantry).

We’ll leave the last word to @shophealdburg and their succinct take-away from the afternoon: #eattheview!

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.

File under sad and beautiful

When we set out to build Barndiva 16 years ago more than one ‘advisor’ told us we were crazy not to build on over 200% of our commercial plot in the middle of town, which was allowed, if not encouraged. “The gardens are too big!” was the constant refrain. We did not listen and have never looked back. Sure, we’ve taken flack from guests over the years when upon entering and seeing a half empty restaurant inside did not believe we couldn’t seat them because we were fully committed for the afternoon or evening. The gardens are huge. Our kitchens not so much. But building spaces relative to the relationships you want to have in them is paramount for us, cue the vastly different (equally esoteric) DNA of Barndiva, Studio Barndiva, and especially the gardens. We don’t kid ourselves, what looks in retrospect like having the courage of your convictions was at the time more foolhardy than not. Build what you love. Serve what you would want to eat and drink. Treat people well. That we were also able to save two huge and ailing heritage black walnut trees our neighbors wanted us to cut down was a bonus.

We’re very happy we can now open the gardens to diners, especially as we are serving some of the best cooking we’ve ever seen come out of our kitchen, thanks to Jordan Rosas. But the goalposts for everyone in our industry have changed, possibly forever. The pandemic exposed to the world what we already knew - how fragile the restaurant ecosystem has been for far too long, especially if attempting farm to table as we are. If there is opportunity here to tackle better wage equity, offer full healthcare, and throw the net even wider over a locally driven economy, we’re there. But it’s also important for diners to embrace the change as well. This is a tango, friends. “There needs to be a new understanding between diners and the restaurants about the real cost of dining out,” Andrew Zimmern is quoted in “What Will Happen to Restaurants Now,” an article by Matt Goulding in this month’s Atlantic . “From that stems everything.”

Goulding’s article, like most of the dire predictions coming at us right now, is sobering. But even in calling what’s happening in our industry “An Extinction Event“ he leaves the door open for what might emerge for restaurants and diners if we get the steps of this dance right. “The restaurants we love most are never just restaurants. They are mirrors, reflecting the interests and imperfections of the society they feed. They are libraries, repositories of tastes and stories and ideas that catalog our culture. They are power strips, where civilization goes to plug in.”

Not a good year for cherries on the ridge - most of our Bing varieties did not produce at all. Happens. Happily, one large heirloom Queen Ann went bonkers and while the kitchens swiftly ran through what we sent down to Healdsburg, thanks to Front Porch Farm we are able to showcase three stellar dishes made with local cherries.

Jordan’s food, as many are finding out, is remarkable not least for its versatility. Below are two Liberty duck dishes that embrace the janus sides of his talent. He easily knocks out big comforting plates of food but it’s clear as we move more fully into his dinner menus that his passion is creating dishes which pull flavors from surprising combinations, delivering a swirl of intriguing flavors which can leave you saited but still curious. This is the food he moved to Healdsburg to cook. We can’t wait for you to try it -if you haven’t already.

Tale of Two Ducks:
On the left: Liberty duck breast glazed with honey, pink peppercorn, lavender. In this dish thinly sliced raw cherries are served with red Russian kale cooked in duck fat and a sauce made from the bones of the duck, infused with coriander, cherry essence and banyuls vinegar.

On the right: Liberty duck with poached cherries, red Russian kale, forest nameko, radish. Every ingredient on the plate was sourced in Sonoma County. A huge shout out to Liberty Duck, Jim and the lovely Jennifer whose pro-active voice on social media has kept our spirits buoyed through this difficult time.

our cherries ended up in the sprouts

To everyone’s delight…with Journeyman bacon in brown butter and parsley sauce. This side dish is on both lunch and dinner menus.

Big, proud shout out to our amazing staff in both Healdsburg and Philo - many learning to cover new positions right now, working with so many new layers of social distancing but doing so with dedication, diligence, and great care.

Before we leave you…We have been so grateful for all the support and feedback we’ve received on social media the past weeks…. We don’t usually do this, but here are a few reviews that made us smile.

2 (little) thumbs up from Barndiva on Vimeo.

@chef.jordan.rosas, @duckdaughterjj, @journeymanmeatco, @libertyduckman, @chefaz, @theatlantic, @mdgoulding @vinoforbreakfast

#staytuned #stayhealthy #stayhealdsburg #healdsburgchamber #stayhome #eattheview #shelteringinplace #barndiva #togo #healdsburg #thisishealdsburg #sonomacounty #sommtablehealdsburg #sonomastrong