Restaurants that time forgot

From Babette's to Big 3, Sonoma will never taste the same…|

Sonoma has had a turnover of restaurants in the last 20 years. Working from my list of restaurants in Jerry’s and my first guidebook, “Sonoma Valley – The Secret Wine Country,” I found 45 restaurants and food businesses that existed 20 years ago and are now gone.

Babette’s Restaurant

In the Guerra family’s Place des Pyranées off First Street East we had Daniel Patterson’s Babette’s Restaurant and then-wife Elizabeth Ramsey’s restaurant.

Perhaps the best restaurant in this location, now Murphy’s Irish Pub, was Françoise Guerra Hodges’ Café Pilou (which means Café Shorty), where she served excellent French and Basque food for American palates.

Daniel Patterson prepared food he enjoyed in his childhood in France and later cooked at Domaine Chandon and Mustard’s Grill on the Napa side of the border.

At Babette’s he used Sonoma Foie Gras, local oysters, what was then called Niman-Schell beef, a great grilled cheese sandwich, polenta and mussels. A three-course prix fixe menu cost $28 and the five-course tasting menu was $38 in his so-called Bohemian Wine Bar.

Daniel is now well known as the Daniel Patterson Group, which owns Alfred’s (steakhouse), Alta, Aster, Coi, PB and Haven in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Currently he is married to attorney Alexandra Foote.

Big 3/Sonoma Mission Inn Café/Big 3

Once the popular Big 3 grocery store had a sandwich counter and soda fountain where farmers’ and ranchers’ rear ends sometime revealed themselves while perched on a counter stool drinking coffee from short, thick beige ceramic cups. One-time Sonoma Mission Inn owner Ed Safdie renamed it Big Three Café, which is when the really big changes happened.

The counter disappeared and was replaced by white table cloths and rich blue carpeting. The food changed from big burgers and greasy sandwiches to fat-free spa food. Safdie also installed a lovely gift and souvenir shop with high quality clothing, cookbooks, olive oils and jams.

Subsequent owners raised the food quality and prices and eventually eliminated the gift shop to replace it with a “sports wine room,” which did not work.

Now the Big 3 is entirely closed and rumors are that the building will be torn down and replaced with a parking garage for the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn.

A real loss of local community character.

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