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“Former Prune Chefs to open Restaurant Eloise this weekend!”

Northern California has long been a hotbed of culinary activity. From the seeds of sustainability born at Chez Panisse to the temple of exquisite cuisine raised with The French Laundry and the myriad of wine country hot spots in between (Terra comes to mind), this region has never been short on monumental culinary achievement. And now it’s time to add another great restaurant to the list: Restaurant Eloise. Never heard of it? That’s cause it’s opening this weekend. But I have a feeling about this place. You could call it food writer’s intuition. Let me back up a bit, and I think you’ll agree with me.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a story for the NY Post about two very pregnant chefs working side by side in the tiny kitchen of an impossibly popular East Village bistro. You may have heard of the place—it’s called Prune? Yeah, I think you’ve heard of it. So, one of the chefs was (obviously) Gabrielle Hamilton. (I think you’ve heard of her.) The other was Ginevra Iverson, who you may not have heard of, but like Hamilton, she’s a feisty, passionate young woman with a serious amount of culinary talent.

After the story ran in the Post, Ginny and I stayed in touch. She had her baby (a gorgeous little girl named Grace), and then she and her husband, chef Eric Korsh (an alumni of Picholine, Café des Artists, Patio Dining, and Prune) decided to move back to California where Ginny grew up in West Marin County, California. There, they hoped to open a restaurant that Eric explained “would be everything we could do in New York but more. In other words, the setting will be sophisticated but not pretentious, the food will be serious and technique based.”

Their vision was to grow their own vegetables and farm their own land. And a year later, that’s precisely what they’ve done at Restaurant Eloise, located in the Bohemian town of Sebastapol, just a few miles from other local hot spots like K&L, and Jonathan Waxman’s latest venture, West Country Grill.

(SIDE NOTE: It’s also not too far from Wild Flour, possibly the best bread bakery I have ever been to. Fresh warm breads (some stuffed with cheese that are essential), morning buns, scones, cookies, twists and more. It’s like you’ve died and gone to carb heaven. My brother, who is a cyclist, usually bikes a hundred miles or so and rewards himself with a stop there on the way home. I drove. Does that not count?)

Anyway, back to Eloise. The restaurant was a few weeks from opening when Craig and I visited over July 4th weekend while were out in California hanging out with my brother David, and while the place was still in construction, it was easy to see through to the final product. There will be a cool front bar area that they’ve tiled with beautiful yellow, orange, white and blue ceramic from Morocco, and two elegant and airy dining rooms encased in glass windows. Out back, they’ve turned their acre of dirt into a manicured stretch of farmland with raised beds of greens, tomatoes, herbs, peppers and more. There’s a nice walking path that winds its way through the gardens, so you can enjoy a glass of wine while seeing where all the good food comes from.

The Bar Room at Restaurant Eloise 

The most exciting part of the restaurant is not the bar or the farm, but the menu which has a fun, quirky edge to it, à la Prune, and focuses on Southern French/Northern Italian farmhouse food. Of course, there will be a bar menu (no Triscuits yet) with snacks like salt cod brandade ($12), Deviled eggs with grated radishes ($9), crushed fingerlings with raclette and sea salt ($12) and veal tongue, foie gras and head cheese ($16).

Starters are similarly rustic and super bold, with puntarelle (from their house-grown supply out back) with a chopped egg vinaigrette and candied bacon ($11), roasted bone marrow with parsley and shallot salad and some grilled bread ($13), an octopus and white anchovy salad, string beans, fingerling potatoes ($13), and crispy sweetbreads, with pickled vegetables and raisin-mustard vinaigrette ($14).

For dinner, there’s roast guinea hen with lardo and an heirloom tomato salad ($27), a butterflied trout with lettuces, peas and bacon ($25), milk-poached halibut with a frothy local butter sauce and early summer beans ($26), and ricotta gnocchi with Swiss chard, and chanterelle mushrooms ($21).

Specials will change often but for now they’re doing local partridge with king trumpet mushrooms and foie gras sauce ($33) and a summertime cassoulet ($29). Desserts include Baba rum ($9, Eric’s favorite), a lemon tart ($9), a Breton butter cake ($9), an icebox cake ($9) and a slew of homemade ice creams.

I know that not too many of you leave on the West Coast, but if you do, you really must check it out and let me know your thoughts. And if you don’t live in California, well, plan a trip! I have a gut feeling that if you pair a dinner at Restaurant Eloise with a stop at the Wildflower bakery, you’ll be ready to move.

Restaurant Eloise is located at 2295 Gravenstein Highway South (Route 116), 707-823-6300 in Sebastopol, California.  

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Posted: July 24, 2008

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