Kathleen Hill: Notes from the rumor department

Rumors have come this way from several directions that the final resting place of Sonoma Meritage on West Napa Street will become a restaurant being developed by members of our Himalayan community who have worked hard and long hours at Meritage and many other restaurants.

One rumor is that they would like to turn it into a seafood restaurant, which would probably be most welcomed here.

A few features of the building have deteriorated and need to be fixed, but the unique communal mentality of our friends from Nepal might just do the trick with everyone helping everyone in their large Sherpa family.

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Rustic Bakery of Larkspur is rumored to be opening a baking plant in Petaluma.

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Burglars smashed a door of Thomas Keller’s multi-star French Laundry restaurant in Yountville on Christmas Day and stole about $300,000 worth of fine wine in bottles priced from $3,500 to $7,950. The restaurant is closed now for a scheduled remodel.

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Multi-talented Zane Fiala will soon join the Stone Edge team at its Edge dining venue, across East Napa Street from Culinary Director John McReynolds’ alma mater of Café LaHaye.

Fiala and his wife Danielle will move to Sonoma as soon as they can find a place to live/rent. All of this news came from Linda Carucci, former dean of various colleges including Occidental and California Culinary Academy, as well as Julia Child Culinary Director at the late COPIA.

Both Fialas are interesting. With an M.A. in choral conducting from San Francisco State, Zane is artistic director of the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco. At the same time he works as wine director of Chris Cosentino’s Noe Valley Incanto restaurant in San Francisco.

McReynolds told me: “We are very excited to have someone with Zane’s experience!”

Danielle Fiala, an engineer born in Kingston, Jamaica, who has worked on airplanes, cooks at the popular Ramen Shop in Berkeley, where the couple live. She is looking for a cooking job here in Sonoma as well as a rental for the two to call home. If you have something to rent, contact them at daniellesfiala@gmail.com.

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The Feast of the Olive celebrates Sonoma Valley’s second largest crop and if you have any interest at all in attending, get tickets immediately. Tickets sell out fast to guests around the world and here’s why: 18 local chefs will be cooking dinner, each course involving olives: Andrew Cain of Santé at The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa; Ari Weiswasser of Glen Ellen Star; Jeffrey Lloyd of Café La Haye; Adolfo Veronese of Aventine; John Toulze of the girl & the fig; Andrew Wilson of Carneros Bistro; Carlo Cavallo at Burgers & Vine; Catherine Venturini at Olive & Vine; Dana Jaffe at Saddles at MacArthur Place; Andrea Koweek and Moaya Scheiman at Crisp; Gary Edwards at Carneros Caves; Antonio Ghilarducci at Depot Hotel; Amando Navarro at El Dorado Kitchen; Manuel Azevedo and Ed Metcalfe at La Salette and Shiso; Lisa Lavagetto and Doug MacFarland at Ramekins; and Sheana Davis at The Epicurean Connection. Abundant local wine is included, with many winemakers attending.

The Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau’s 14th annual Feast of the Olive will be at Ramekins Culinary School on Saturday, Jan. 31, and will be emceed by our own Gary Saperstein of Out in the Vineyard, Liam Mayclem of KCBS radio’s Foodie Chap and CBS-5’s “Eye on the Bay,” and Joel Riddell who succeeded the late Gene Burns with “Dining Around,” now broadcast on KKSF-FM. $175. 6 p.m. 450 W. Spain St., Sonoma. Reservations at 996-1090, Ext. 108.

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Gayle and Tom Jenkins welcomed “Eat, Pray, Love” and “The Signature of All Things” author Elizabeth Gilbert and her husband, José, to Sonoma’s Best and then to their home for dinner recently, after some winetasting at the aforementioned Edge venue. Edge’s imaginative and slightly far-out black and white décor is a must-see. The Jenkins party was hosted there by Dorothe Moller-Racke Cicchetti, who expertly presents all Stone Edge wines and food pairings.

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Speaking of Linda Carucci, she and her husband Al met Mack, grandson Linus and me Saturday at daughter-in-law Na Young Ma’s Proof Bakery in the Atwater Village area of Los Angeles. I treated everyone to what guests at neighboring tables peered around and called a two-hour “tastings of everything.” While Proof’s croissants and chocolate chip cookies have been called “the best in Los Angeles” by two major newspapers, we tried the croissant loaded, and I mean loaded, with Valrhona chocolate, perfect morning buns and those cookies. Then Mack brought us two gougères to taste. A little savory something to cleanse our palates. And it was only 11 a.m.

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I had the honor of cooking Christmas dinner all day for Na Young’s Korean-American family, who flattered me by eating two platefuls of everything. When we finished the main course, someone asked about dessert. Baker Na Young giggled, “We don’t have any dessert.” Much laughter and reminders of the cobbler’s kids with no shoes.

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Sondra Bernstein and John Toulze’s pop-ups at Suite D, which have become popular during the remodel of her fig café in Glen Ellen, include Baja Pop-Ups Friday, Jan. 16, and Saturday, Jan. 17, Route 66 Pop-Ups Thursday, Jan. 29, and Friday, Jan. 30, and Italian Feast Pop-Ups Friday, Feb. 6, and Saturday, Feb. 7.

Reserve now for the Baja Pop-Ups which are bound to be fun with Latin Soul and R&B music. The evenings start with passion fruit sparklers and Mystery Red Wine for libations. The menu will include seafood ceviche salad with fried plantains; butternut squash tamales with mole sauce; a “taco set-up” with fig wood spit-fired pork shoulder, warm flour tortillas, Rancho Gordo black beans and cilantro rice; pickled vegetables from Sonoma Sharecropper (Bernstein’s farm at Imagery Winery); salsa verde, Cotija cheese, avocado crema and hot sauce, followed by Dulce Leche cake with burnt caramel ice cream.

Bernstein has another pop-up scheduled called Route 66 on Thursday, Jan. 29, and Friday, Jan. 30, at Suite D with a “Wedge BLT Salad,” fried chicken, ribs, John Toulze’s sides and Dawn’s biscuits (divine) and two kinds of pie. This one comes with two glasses of beer and a beer bar, or BYOW. Expect a little bit country and a little bit rock & roll music. Each pop-up $50 inclusive. 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. 21800 Schellville Rd., Sonoma. BYOW, no corkage. Tickets at Eventbrite.com.

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At Readers’ Books local authors’ book signing, where we all enjoyed the shortbread cookies Cathy Seveneau contributed, locals Judi and Al Friedman brought in their family, which included daughter Niki and her fiancé Evan Goldberg, and baby grandson Sammy with his parents and the Friedmans’ other daughter Danielle and husband Elliott Kalan, the latter head-writer for Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.

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Susan and Richard Idell hosted a party at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art to introduce Richard Idell’s new law associate, Sonoma-grown Naiomi Kaufman. The Idell Firm focuses on wineries and vineyard owners and represents the new BottleRock music festival in Napa, Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco, the Treasure Island Music Festival, and SHN Theatres in downtown San Francisco as well as presenters, artists and performers around the Bay Area.

Susan prepared all of the colorful healthy food herself, featuring loads of fresh vegetables and cheeses, and the crowd was a mix of entertainment industry clients, such as California Film Institute and Mill Valley Film Festival board president Jennifer McCready. Richard served several years as MVFF board president.

Among those in the crowd were Naiomi’s proud parents Emiko and Ray Kaufman, Sonoma International Film Festival executive director Kevin McNeely, Sandy and Joan Weill, Bob Bonino, Jim and Marcia Levy, Jon Parker, Judi Cohen, Chuck Lamp, Dan Zepponi, Doug Mo, Eva Bertran, George Hamel Jr. and his son George, Norm and Susan Goldstein, Patrick Campbell, Richard and Sharon Nevins, Sarin Mehta, California Film Institute and Mill Valley Film Festival executive director Mark Fishkin, Liana Bender, Isaac Raboy, Ginger Martin, Kevin and Claudia Mendoza-Carruth, museum executive director Kate Eilertsen and Michael Muscardini, Nicki Naylor, Mitsi Hughes, Morty Wiggins, and Sheana Davis.

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Food and wine goings and comings in 2014:

Among the queens of wine country food we lost both Bonnie Tempesta and Donna Scala in 2014.

Bonnie Tempesta, who lived in Sonoma Valley and was a devoted donor and fundraiser for Pets Lifeline, had created La Tempesta Biscotti from a recipe of her aunt’s, moving it from a home kitchen product to a corner kitchen in a warehouse, to a whole warehouse and eventually selling the enterprise for millions.

After her non-competition agreement ended, she restarted with Boncora, combining her name Bonnie with ancora, Italian for again. Baking first in Studebaker Cheesecake’s West Napa bakery, Tempesta moved her Boncora operation to Kenwood Village Shopping Center. My favorite of her new biscotti, always perfectly crisp, was her triple chocolate with chocolate in the batter, chocolate chips, all dipped into chocolate after baking. After several rounds of cancer, her body gave in this past September.

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Lorenzo Petroni had Petroni Vineyards in the Mayacamas Mountains, a tasting room on Sonoma’s Broadway, and a gigantically powerful Italian restaurant in San Francisco, appropriately called North Beach Restaurant. Mayors, movers and shakers all met there and were greeted ebulliently by Petroni, a showman who handled the front of the house but had high standards in his kitchen as well.

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Donna Scala reached the pinnacle of her culinary career with Bistro Don Giovanni on Highway 29 in Napa, combining her name with that of her host and husband, Giovanni. The couple started the Piatti chain in Yountville in 1987, Scala’s Bistro in Sir Francis Drake Hotel, and she became a consultant to Hilton Hotels. A chef who always wore pearls in the kitchen, Scala died of brain cancer in March.

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Victor Gotti and his brother Roland took over Ernie’s in San Francisco from their father and turned it into a restaurant with elegant French-influenced cuisine, opulent décor loaded with red velvet, example-setting service. It closed in 1995 after 61 years, but produced waiter “captains” Henri Barberis and Claude Rouas, both of whom Dolly Fritz MacMasters Cope hired away to run L’Etoile restaurant in her Huntington Hotel. Rouas went on to partner with Bob Harmon in the Piatti chain, Auberge du Soleil, El Dorado Kitchen in Sonoma and several resorts run by their Moana Group.

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Also locally we lost Sonoma Meritage Martini Oyster Bar & Grill, whose owner, Carlo Cavallo, opened Burgers & Vine, and Restaurant Rudy at the seems-to-be-jinxed now-vacant space on Broadway. Rudy Mihal went on to become chef at Rossi’s (formerly Little Switzerland) and left even his knives when he exited that job.

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Drakes Bay Oyster Company lost its effort to renew or extend its least to farm oysters on federal property.

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And then there was the Napa earthquake in August that destroyed tanks, barrels and cases of wine, to say nothing of some people’s homes.

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Good news:

Rachel and Andy Berliner’s Amy’s Kitchen, which offers many organic packaged foods through their family-owned company named for their daughter, is expanding its plants in Santa Rosa and Oregon, opening a plant in New York, and taking over an existing food packaging plant in Pocatello, Idaho.

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Victoria Campbell left Levy Restaurants at Sonoma Raceway to become general manager at Ramekins Culinary School and the General’s Daughter.

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Our Sonoma School Gardens are thriving with fabulous contributions from Stone Edge Farm, Sonoma Mission Gardens, Bloom’s, and Sonoma Materials. Students are learning to grow, harvest and cook vegetables often new to them, with more cooking sessions being planned with Stone Edge and Edge Culinary Director John McReynolds offering cooking demos from the trailer built by Sonoma Valley High School Ag-Shop students.

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And several Sonomans enjoyed a culinary and flea market sojourn in France and look forward to more such trips in 2015 with Chateau Sonoma and Sarah Anderson.

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Happy New Year!