Gilding it all is sweet-sour honey-sesame vinaigrette, and along the side rests a petite pile of crunchy farro-sesame seed “soil.”īut first things first. Tucked here and there are tiny Tokyo turnips and carrots from Sebastopol Microgreens - the produce is so fresh it’s delivered to restaurants as growing, living plants rather than precut and packaged. How else to describe his Little Gem salad ($18)? The lettuce, a crisp, crinkly leaf cross between romaine and butter lettuce, is popular at many Wine Country restaurants, but this treatment stands out.Ī bouquet of the Coke Farm organic greens cascades with brilliant red and pink edible flowers plucked from the hotel garden. Yet Lopez has brought such vibrancy to the somewhat sleepy Sonoma dining scene that the Layla experience is wonderful culinary theater. It’s true I have constant deadlines, many menu and chef changes that keep me scrambling, lots of driving to plenty of restaurants that are “fine” but not interesting, and hour after hour plunked at my computer writing until my brain melts. He finally debuted his inaugural spring menu in mid-April, and in doing so, reminded me why I have one of the best jobs in the world. Lopez had been hired several months earlier, but he took his time reworking the contemporary Mediterranean concept, re-engineering the spacious kitchen and cross-training his staff to work multiple stations he even installed a cookbook library in the kitchen for his team. had taken over the kitchen of the upscale restaurant in the posh MacArthur Place Hotel & Spa. In February, Layla’s marketing team formally announced that new executive chef Francisco Lopez Jr. I embarrass myself by taking too many photos of each plate, then reflect again before finally lifting my fork. Yet with the new menu at Layla in Sonoma, I find myself pausing, dish after dish, to soak up the beauty. The more beautiful a dish, the more I want to devour it.
I’ve never liked the food cliché “too pretty to eat.” It’s just silly.
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