Valette’s food is edible art and if you’ve never experienced it before, or find it hard to choose from the rich menu descriptions, you can order the “Trust Me” tasting menu and sample four or more courses in a single meal.
Line-caught local bass with espelette pepper dough; dining room, Valette Healdsburg; Tomato capresse soup.
Valette designed the clean, modern décor of the interior and had it built to his specifications. His own charcuterie is curing on display in a custom-built glass-fronted case above the open kitchen. Large mirrors reflect the light from the globe-shaped lighting pendants and gleaming wood tabletops (custom-built by Andrew Somawang and each inscribed with a “V”); cozy cream-colored banquette seating lines the north wall. The back bar is white Cararra marble. A 14-foot reproduction of an oil painting by William Monmonier that once hung over the meat counter of Healdsburg’s Sotoyome Market in the 1870s is a nod to his Healdsburg roots. But Valette’s creativity shines brightest in the food he prepares from the freshest of local produce. We sat at the massive new redwood bar where the name Valette is inscribed in cursive in marble dust and resin, and his eyes gleamed with anticipation as he described how he’d be using tomatoes this harvest season. His approach to food is transformative. A familiar concept (caprese salad, for instance) becomes something extraordinary when he reinvents it as Tomato Caprese Soup with Basil Pistou. He describes it as “a consommé of heirloom tomatoes—crystal clear, like water, with olive oil-poached-Sweet 100s cherry tomatoes, a house-made burrata mouselline (a light, fluffy burrata with whipped sweet cream folded in), and a compressed brioche pave.” The pistou is “pesto-ish,” he explained, “but just hot raw basil and oil—no cheese, no garlic.” Just hearing his description made me salivate. Along with the Sweet 100s, Valette is growing Lemon Boy, Teardrop, Black Beauty and Green Zebra, along with two kinds of peppers, in six 4-foot by 8-foot boxes filled with soil from Mix Garden and augmented with compost from the kitchen at Valette and his brother Aaron’s garden. He’s growing Espelette peppers (a hot variety with a depth of flavor originally from the Basque region of France), which he describes as “the
freight train of peppers. There’s a lot of energy behind it. It looks like a big red jalapeno, 5 to 6 inches long and one-inch wide. I was turned on to them by Laurent Manrique when I worked at Aqua [in San Francisco]. They’re amazing peppers.” When they’re ripe, he will dry them and grind them into a powder, which he’ll mix with flour and water to form bread dough; he’ll wrap the dough around a fish filet. He’ll also make an Espelette pepper sausage, cure it, and mix it with fresh green beans and baby fresh onions. He’s also raising Piquillos, an intensely flavored sweet Spanish chili pepper, with a bell pepper flavor. He picks off the first set of blossoms as soon as they appear, so the plant becomes 5 to 6 feet high, “and then it produces like crazy!” Valette’s food is edible art and if you’ve never experienced it before, or find it hard to choose from the rich menu descriptions, you can order the “Trust Me” tasting menu and sample four or more courses in a single meal.
Refined Comfort Food at Fork Everything about Fork Roadhouse and Catering says local comfort; cozy indoor dining rooms hung with colorful paintings by Saroj Heron and Mary Lu Downing, the espresso bar and chalkboard menus, an outdoor creekside patio featuring a whimsical wood-fired oven with surround seating, built by Miguel Elliott of Living Earth Structures out of cob—a mixture of clay, sand and straw—and inlaid with abalone shell. But first and foremost, it’s all about the authentic food. Sarah Piccolo, the petite dynamo who runs the busy engine of Fork Roadhouse and Catering and who has been operating her popular food truck at local events for the past five years, recently opened up her new restaurant on rural Bodega Highway, just outside of Sebastopol.
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