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2009 Best Business Restaurant: Dry Creek Kitchen

You have to like any place that puts on a “Pigs and Pinot” weekend. “It’s like chocolate and raspberries or fois gras and Sauternes—pork and Pinot Noir are meant for each other,” says Chicago-born general manager Dan Prentice. “Pork is really too light for Cabernet and too heavy for most whites, but when you put our chef’s pork tenderloin with acorn squash together with a voluptuous Pinot, it’s like the most harmonious of musical compositions.”

A Dry Creek Kitchen special that speaks loudly to locals is the three-course “Sonoma neighbor’s menu,” available for just $34 Monday through Thursday evenings. “Bring a local wine—we don’t charge corkage for Sonoma County wines—and you and a friend can have a fine meal at a fair price,” says Prentice with a smile.

In 2001, Charlie Palmer brought his Upper East Side swagger—along with an innovative reputation for intense flavors—west to Sonoma County. “I was drawn here by the county’s pioneering food and wine spirit,” says Palmer. “You look at the fruits of the local entrepreneurs—the wines, the outstanding produce, the hand-crafted cheeses—it all makes for outstanding foodstuffs. You can taste that freshness in chef Les Goodman’s thyme-basted Painted Hills natural beef coulotte.” The Kitchen’s mantra is “progressive American” cuisine, but there is an underlying foundation of classical French on which to build.

Prentice, who spent six years on a working tour of top European restaurants, brings with him a commitment to better service standards. “American servers are better at connecting with guests, but Europeans are better at nuts-and-bolts service standards. We want to get beyond what I call ‘limited-experience-turned-policy’ to a higher level of service, based on the needs and expectations of the guest—no matter what level of diner we’re serving.”

Located on the grounds of Hotel Healdsburg, Dry Creek Kitchen has an exhaustive wine cellar, shown off to its best in the restaurant’s six-course tasting menu which features wine and food pairings from the “valleys and hills of Sonoma.”

Palmer has always been keyed into the value of good local wines, like Geyser Peak’s Block Collection series and the excellent Nalle Zinfandels. The 650-label wine list features many one-of-a-kind selections from private cellars and libraries of the region’s winemakers, including wines that simply aren’t available anywhere else. There are many large-format bottles, as well as long-cellared wines that show off the benefits of bottle aging. (And you absolutely must love the fact that corkage is waived for up to two bottles of your own wine—if they’re from Sonoma County.)

The Charlie Palmer brand (he likes to call it his “restaurant collection”) is spreading across the country—he has three restaurants in New York City alone (he also has a presence in Las Vegas, Reno, Washington D.C, Dallas and Costa Mesa)—and the Charlie Palmer Group develops menus for Seabourn Cruises, a line of luxury yachts cruises. It’s kind of nice to know he has a little time for the hamlet of Healdsburg and its environs, and the local karma that matches fine wine to thoughtful food.

www.charliepalmer.com/Properties/DryCreekKitchen