After several visits to wine country, you eventually learn you don’t need to go to a vineyard or a winery to have a quintessential wine country experience. In a humble space on Sonoma’s old town square, the restaurant Valley embodies many of the things city dwellers seek when they venture out of their urban enclaves and settle into the rhythms of a place where one of the most romantic versions of agriculture is practiced.
Thomas J. Story
Valley the restaurant is not unlike the actual valleys that surround it, charming in a dressed-down sort of way, expressing the terroir in wines and food and an ethos that bridges an Alice Waters–like farm-to-table obsession with seasonal and local ingredients while bringing in global tweaks and influences that jump borders.
Thomas J. Story
Valley is as much a gathering place for the community as it is a restaurant and excellent bottle shop: There’s a bar out front where folks can order espresso or an orange wine any time of day, or pick up a bottle or two; there’s also a come-as-you-are vibe that attracts both folks with their dogs and food-savvy tourists. The food is as good as any you’ll get in the city, all the while avoiding wine-country clichés like roast duck and Cabernet-braised this and that; actual winemakers and chefs frequent the place, along with locals on the patio in the shade or perched by little café tables in the sun out front.
Thomas J. Story
The fact that it’s in the center of Sonoma, which has long been the civic heart of the vast county, is what gives it a bit of a pulse—albeit a restful 65 bpm. Sonoma Plaza is the kind of old-timey place that feels like throwback wine country: a shaded park with the town hall at the center and a Franciscan mission at one end. Valley slow-walks the evolution of the city and surrounding fields forward. It’s a restaurant that’s simultaneously simple and ambitious and above all the kind of place you want to go to again and again.
This sweet spot is the result of the vision of Emma Lipp and Stephanie Reagor, partners in work and in life who met while working together at nearby Scribe Winery. Lipp has a culinary education that explains the Chez Panisse through-line of the place: She worked at New York’s seminal Prune on the Lower East Side and as the assistant to David Tanis, longtime executive chef at Chez Panisse. Reagor’s resumé́ includes other restaurants grounded in a local-produce-first philosophy, such as the Spotted Pig and Marlow & Daughters. Along with partners Tanner Walle and Lauren Feldman, they’ve created something they say is not “the French-country, Tuscan-Pinterest, fantasy-pastoral, countryside-sophistication” you’ll see elsewhere in the region.
Thomas J. Story
They use ingredients not traditionally associated with wine, like fish sauce and spice, but without ever losing focus of where they are. “This is a wine-focused restaurant,” says Reagor. “We love spicy food, so we’re going to cook it, but we’re not going to blow the wine out of the water with the spice. The emphasis is on freshness and everything working together.” And you’ll experience that in this celebratory late-summer menu that takes full advantage of ingredients that are at their best right now. Like Valley, the dishes embody wine country as it’s evolving in real time, at just the right pace.