Smash restaurant to open on Sonoma Plaza
The Glen Ellen Star–Stella team will open their new Smash restaurant on the ground floor of Taub Family Outpost at the corner of First Street West and West Napa Street.
Much lauded chef Ari Weiswasser, his wife Erinn Benziger, and Ashley and Spencer Waite will feature smashed burgers, fried chicken sandwiches, crispy fries, and shakes of all kinds – meaning regular and adult fare, and more, we are sure.
Set to open in early May, Smash plans to offer quick lunch and dinner service at the counter, to-go or to hang out. Expect the same finest local ingredients and hospitality we enjoy at their Glen Ellen Star and Stella restaurants in Glen Ellen and Kenwood.
Ashley Waite emailed, “Our full menu from Smash will be available upstairs and downstairs. A rotating selection of the Beacon’s cocktails will be available downstairs at Smash seven days a week for lunch and dinner. Additionally, spiked shakes, beer and wine will also be available downstairs at Smash.”
Such memories: The law office of my late husband, Gerald Hill, used to inhabit the whole upstairs floor where the Beacon is now, and the downstairs was once a lovely clothing and home store called Champagne Taste. At one time, Dr. Carroll B. Andrews’ medical office occupied that corner. That’s the same Dr. Andrews who purchased the Sonoma Grammar School, now the Sonoma Community Center, and dedicated the building to the community.
Smash, 497 First Street West, Sonoma. Will be open daily for lunch and dinner.
Sonoma Eats Closes
Efrain Balmes has closed his and Hayley’s Sonoma Eats restaurant across from the former Big 3 on Highway 12 in Boyes Hot Springs. He chose to serve his last meals there on the March 21 weekend, almost exactly four years after he left his previous location where Spread Kitchen is now.
As I wrote in the Sonoma Index-Tribune in March of 2022, Springs historian Michael Acker established that the location at Highway 12 and Boyes Blvd. and East Thompson housed Keller’s Club Hollywood in 1938, followed by the COG Club owned by Oscar Larson of Larson Park fame. Denny Coleman took it over in 1949 and was still holding court at his bar when Jerry and I moved here in the mid-‘70s.
The Barking Dog’s coffee shop parking lot that hosted Balmes’ first food truck had once been a gas station owned by Major League baseball player Sam Agnew.
Eventually Balmes also purchased the girl & the fig’s Fig Rig, but sold both food trucks to operators in Reno and Los Angeles.
Balmes opened his first Sonoma Eats “brick and mortar” restaurant where Cristina Topham’s Spread Kitchen is now, featuring her beautiful fresh food with interesting Lebanese traditions.
According to an email from Efrain Balmes, they signed a lease for the now closed location in September, 2022 at $11,000 a month, and Balmes said that in September of 2025 the landlord raised the rent to $17,000 a month. That’s a lot of tacos and mole, especially in an older building at that location.
Many people agree that Balmes has done a lot to improve the visual look of that corner, with fencing, plants, and new tables.
As stated in his email to me, Balmes said he offered to buy the property for the alleged appraised value of about $1.4 million, and the landlord wanted $2.6 million. So Efrain and Hayley decide to leave and focus on their new location in Santa Rosa.
We wish Efrain Balmes and Hayley Cutri the best in their new Bennett Valley location in Santa Rosa. Their Parkside Eats will replace Lupe’s and will feature both Mexican specialties and American burgers, salads, and more.
It isn’t just President Trump’s war in Iran and resulting cost and lack of fertilizer for farmers around the world to grow food, and Trump’s tariffs raising costs of everything, or labor and gasoline prices rising that cause restaurants to raise prices. May I suggest, politely, that some landlords raise rents as high as they can get away with.
As well, there always seems to be someone with culinary ambitions to give business in our beautiful Sonoma Valley a whirl. Only a few own their own commercial property.
Starling Bar has a happy ending
Here is part of what Fred Johnson replied to my email inquiry. Loving life, obviously:
Fred and Elizabeth Takeuchi-Krist “felt like, after 10 years, if we got a good offer we should let someone else take over. We got an offer that we liked. “Landlord is great, rent is fair. Working with the landlord Latizia Fernandez and her son Marsial is one of the things I will miss most, other than our incredible Starling community.
I’m not retiring, I’m going to take a minute and wait for the right project or opening to come my way. I’m excited about the next chapter, even though I have no idea what it will bring. I can only speak for myself, as you will probably get a different answer from each of my partners.”
When I asked if more long distance swimming was part of his plans, he responded, “Swimming, yes! I’m working on round trip Angel Island, a 10-mile swim that would qualify me for the English Channel and other channel swims. I love that you were a competitive swimmer, I did not know that. I feel as I age I need to balance play and work.”
He also wants to let the purchasers of the business and liquor license – Frank Landrum and friends – define what they want to do with their upcoming “Lily’s Outpost,” except to say, “I think they want to manage their own timetable and personal info…They’re locals, this is not their first rodeo and it’s clear they plan on putting some love into the building and the business. I say we give them a chance to show their stuff.”
Wise gentleman
Easter specials
Soroptimists’ free Easter Egg Hunt
For the 45th year, Soroptimists of Sonoma Valley members have stuffed 3,500 plastic eggs, to be chased by kids, in the northwest and northeast quadrants of Sonoma Plaza on Saturday, April 4 at 10 a.m.
Families should bring their own bags or baskets for the kids to gather their treasures. Plaza sections will be roped off by age groups (4-5, 6-7, and 8-9). There is one special egg that contains a prize that delivers an extra special basket to the winner.
Peter Rabbit will hop into Sonoma Plaza and will be available for photos until 10:45.
Caution from personal experience: Don’t be late. Kids run to collect all the eggs they can. If you notice someone else doesn’t have any, think about sharing.
Restaurant specials:
This time we will list Easter specials working our way from south to north for a change.
Sonoma Grille & Bar
Nima Sherpa and Executive Chef Saul Razo offer a Happy Easter brunch with a veggie scramble, smoked salmon Benedict, cinnamon roll French toast, an Easter ham plate with two over-easy eggs, country potatoes and mixed greens, and a lobster omelet. ($21-$28) Served 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Then Easter dinner includes scallop risotto with porcini mushrooms, salmon with lima beans and roasted squash, or filet mignon with grilled Portobello mushroom ($34-$48), with add-ons of Tiger shrimp, seared scallops, or a half Maine lobster available. ($14-$27. 4:30 to 9 p.m. 165 W. Napa St., Sonoma. (707) 938-7542.
El Dorado Kitchen
Easter brunch at EDK brings a three-course prix fixe offering of a deviled egg topped with Dungeness crab and caviar, then choices of crab Benedict, brioche French toast, filet mignon, lobster ravioli, or spring vegetable risotto. ($85, bottomless mimosas for $20). 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 405 First St. W., Sonoma. (707) 996-3030.
Sonoma Valley Farmhouse
Pemba Sherpa offers a four-course prix fixe menu with each table receiving a basket of housemade mini croissants and muffins. Then you choose among starters, such as a burrata tartine, asparagus tartlets, apple fritters, a sweet potato with whipped feta and hot honey, or beet carpaccio. Mains include crab cake Benedict, chicken and waffle, huevos rancheros, or a generous vegetable omelet with hash browns, and a dessert trio of chocolate mousse egg, carrot cake and a “bird’s nest.” Sides also available. ($60). 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. 18999 Sonoma Hwy., Sonoma.
Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn
Every year the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn serves a splendiferous Easter brunch with live music and an Easter egg hunt for hotel and brunch guests.
This year the brunch starts with a smoked fish platter to share with potato latkes, pickles, creamed cheese and mini bagels. Some main course selections include lobster Benedict, scrambled eggs, lemon ricotta pancakes, brioche French toast, short rib hash, fried chicken and waffle, lamb chops, petit filet, pork tenderloin, and Santa Barbara Spot prawns.
Save room for the vast dessert buffet with specialties such as an espresso mascarpone mini martini, passion fruit crème brûlée, chocolate grasshopper cheesecake, and a blackberry fruit tartlet. Adults $125, children 6-12 $39. Free to children 5 and under. Easter egg hunt 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. for hotel and brunch guests. Brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (707) 938-9000.
Glen Ellen Star
Ari Weiswasser and chef Matt Cardona will offer a red wine braised lamb osso buco with English peas, farrotto and carrot butter ($54) in addition to their regular menu. 5 to 9 p.m.. 13648 Arnold Dr., Glen Ellen. (707) 343-1384.
Songbird Parlour
Songbird’s menu celebrates both Passover and Easter including lamb breast porchetta, a 16 oz. bone in rib eye with urfa chili, and charoset of whipped ricotta and toasted Bejkr bread. Regular menu also available. ($18 to $65). 4 to 9 p.m. 14301 Arnold Dr., Glen Ellen. (707) 343-1308.
Stella
Located where Café Citti used to be on Highway 12, Stella presents its regular menu plus some Easter specials including a grilled focaccia tartina – meaning focaccia with shaved asparagus, pistachios, and trout roe, asparagus gazpacho with chive blossoms, a 32 oz. Porterhouse steak with Maitake mushrooms and crispy potatoes, and slow-braised rabbit ragu with pecorino espuma and Aleppo pepper. (Easter specials $18 to $150.) 9049 Hwy. 12, Kenwood. (707) 801-9043.
Dolores Huerta and César Chávez
Enormous love and thanks to Dolores Huerta for speaking her truth of abuse by Cesar Chavez. Perhaps it is not surprising that such quick action is being taken to remove Cesar Chavez’s name from everything public following Dolores’ revelations of sexual abuse by him.
At the same time, it is sadly not surprising that most of the men who abused girls and women at the will of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are being protected and hidden by the Attorney General of the United States.
What a difference a color makes.
In the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign I was coordinator of grassroots organizing from the L.A. County line to the Oregon border. In that role, I worked with Dolores and her assistant, who came to La Luz and Hanna Center with her in 2019, to get out the vote among Native Americans. At the end of our effort one day, Dolores took off her UFW cap and put it on my head. I wore it to the Hanna event 27 years later, and when she saw me in it at her table, she jumped up from her chair and hugged me. We had had conversations about our children, and I will leave it at that.
My late husband, Gerald Hill, walked the valley with Cesar Chavez, marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., and led an anti-Vietnam war march of 40,000 people in San Francisco. These days I get lots of questions, such as “What would Jerry do now?”
Not sure where the author or Mr. Acker got their timeline for the various occupants of the Sonoma Eats location over the years. That location was the occupied by Larson’s Liquors, owned by noted local citizens Mel and Irene Larson, starting sometime in the 50s, until at least the late 70s.