Kathleen Hill: Michelin Guide released and New Year’s Eve specials

New Year's Eve menus in Sonoma Valley

Most restaurants and bars will be open to help you celebrate New Year's Eve if you like to go out. Some of us prefer to stay home or join friends for dinner at our own homes or at theirs. Others consider it “amateur night.”

If you have the urge to go out, you might check out these special menus offered by a variety of Sonoma restaurants, listed alphabetically.

Bistecca e Vino

Co-owner and chef Carlo Cavallo will offer a four-course dinner where guests choose grilled garlic bread with Parma prosciutto and black truffle tapenade and Cambozola cheese, or a salad of heirloom beets, butternut squash, crispy Brussels sprouts and walnuts with warm Laura Chenel goat cheese crotin.

Then come risotto with wild mushrooms, grass fed hanger steak with Cavallo's secret Sinatra sauce and six jumbo prawns in garlic sauce with garlic mashed potatoes and broccolini, followed by a “150-year-old tiramisu recipe.” Full bar. $60. 400 First St. E., Sonoma. Reserve at 938-7110.

Depot Hotel

Gia and chef Tony Ghilarducci offer many options, except everyone gets the first course, potato leek soup. For the second course guests choose among winter greens salad of Little Gem lettuce, Bay scallops crisped with Arborio rice, Balsamic glazed pork belly or Hackleback caviar on house made rye blini.

The Depot's third course consists of choices among its famous Dungeness crab cannelloni, filet of Loch Duart salmon with white asparagus and potato gratin, spinach and ricotta ravioli, or slow roasted loin of Akaushi beef with Bordelaise sauce, horseradish potato puree, glazed carrots and watercress.

The dessert tops it off with the Depot's tiramisu, chocolate torte, sour cream glazed cheesecake with mango and raspberry coulis. $75. 241 W. First St., Sonoma. 938-2980.

El Dorado Kitchen

Enjoy an elegant four-course dinner that starts with an amuse bouche of a vichyssoise, water cress and a fried oyster and caviar. Starters bring a choice of potato gnocchi with lobster, duck consommé with foie gras dumplings, tuna carpaccio with roasted beets and puffed rice, or mixed greens with hearts of palm, quinoa and cotija cheese.

Entrées range from black truffle risotto with celery root and Swiss chard, Wagyu beef duo of New York and braised short rib with ginger carrot puree with King trumpet mushrooms, seared branzino fish with caper beurre blanc potato leeks and spinach, to suckling pig with creamy polenta and apples. Dessert choices include molten chocolate cake, coconut tapioca and housemade ice cream or sorbets. $95, wine pairing $35. 405 First St. W., Sonoma. 996-3030.

Glen Ellen Star

Chef and co-owner Ari Weisswasser has added a special menu to his regular offerings featuring a spinach, artichoke and Dungeness crab dip ($18) and a pan-roasted beef tenderloin with Hassleback potatoes, melted Swiss chard, a sauce Perigordine ($42). 13648 Arnold Drive, Glen Ellen. 343-1384.

The Fig Café & Wine Bar

While the Girl & the Fig on Sonoma Plaza is serving its regular menu and full bar on New Year's Eve, owner Sondra Bernstein's Fig Café & Wine Bar in Glen Ellen will start with Parmesan gougères with herbs and Mornay sauche, followed by bacon and cauliflower bisque, which leads to smoked short rib risotto with wild mushrooms, roasted shallots and chicories. Dessert brings a chocolate terrine, caramel custard, crushed raspberries and toasted pistachio. $45. 13690 Arnold Drive, Glen Ellen. Reserve at 933-3000, ext. 13.

The Girl & The Fig will be open for New Year's Day brunch and closed Jan. 7 to 11 for spiff up.

The Fig Cafe in Glen Ellen will be open New Year's Day and closed Jan. 15 and 16 for cleaning.

Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn

Sonoma Mission Inn offers the ultimate gorgeous evening with a seven-course wine-paired dinner followed by dancing and a midnight Champagne toast in the Lobby Living Room.

The seven course dinner starts with a slow cooked duck egg and caviar; toasted bread soup with jamon iberico, Delice de Bourgogne and Burgundy black truffle; bluefin toro sashimi with Santa Barbara uni and shiso; bucatini with aged pecorino, cultured butter and Alba white truffles; lacquered foie gras; slow-roasted turbot with lobster nage, cauliflower mousseline and clams; charred green onion and yuzu kosho, and a confectionary duo of cheesecake, ginger graham sable with a mandarin orange reduction, and a dark chocolate cremeux with crispy raspberry and Pop Rock dragees. Vegetarian options available $299. Wine pairing $135 includes midnight toast. Reservations at 938-9000 or fairmont.com/Sonoma.

Sonoma Grille

Owner Nima Sherpa and friends present an attractive prix fixe menu with first course choices that include raw oyster trio, crispy polenta, or salmon Carpaccio of thinly sliced salmon with fried capers. Next guests select either heirloom tomato bisque or a blood orange salad.

Entrées follow with homemade gnocchi with Crimini mushrooms and brown butter sage sauce, lobster ravioli made with Maine lobster lemon cream and caviar, petrale sole stuffed with fresh crab meat sautéed spinach and lemongrass sauce. And then there's the oven-roasted filet mignon stuffed with porcini mushrooms and served with Yukon gold potatoes au gratin and a port reduction sauce. Dessert choices include a chocolate torte, crème brûlée, or cheesecake with strawberry sauce. Full bar. $75 adults, $35 kids, wine pairing $30. 5 to 10 p.m. 165 W. Napa St., Sonoma. 938-7542.

Tips Roadside

Chef Thaddeus Palmese offers a new prix-fixe New Year's Eve menu with first choices of grilled persimmon with chicories and goat cheese or Kabocha squash soup with pepitas and citrus aioli. Main course range from roasted game hen with rice and winter greens to clams with pork belly and house kim chi, or smoked ribeye with her frites and cabernet butter, with vegetarian options available It all ends with a choice of chocolate lava cake or a citrus tart. $55. Wine pairing $35. 8445 Sonoma Highway, Kenwood. 509-0078.

More food news from around the Valley

Michelin Guide – What happened to Sonoma?

As a slightly obsessive collector of kitchen things and food-related books, I have saved years of Michelin Guides, especially of the San Francisco area. So I can compare them side by side, from year to year.

Besides the fact that several Sonoma Valley restaurants have been dropped entirely from the last few editions, including the new 2019, whoever is writing these gems isn't writing. He or she is simply copying and pasting previous copy from year to year. As co-author of more than 30 guidebooks to wine regions of the West Coast, I know how to check copying. It's lazy, offers nothing new and sometimes is incorrect.

Michelin has changed some of the designations. Previously there were five “crossed fork” categories designating comfort, stars and “bib gourmand” groups.

Now in the 2019 guide there are stars, Bib Gourmand and “Michelin plate” with fork and knife signaling, “Good cooking, fresh ingredients, capably prepared: simply a good meal.”

“Bib Gourmand,” which means “inspectors' favorites for good value,” is a mid-level honor that only Glen Ellen Star and El Molino Central achieved this year in Sonoma.

What the “inspectors” say in the 2019 edition about these two restaurants is the exact same copy as was printed in the 2017 edition.

Still included are Café La Haye, Yeti, and the Fig Café & Wine Bar with same copy as 2017, with Della Santina's, Oso, Harvest Moon Cafe, Santé and El Dorado Kitchen dropped completely,

Did Michelin's “inspectors” even come to Sonoma Valley?

Jacob's Restaurant rises again

Our Tuesday “lunch bunch” decided to venture out and try Jacob's Restaurant just north of Train Town since so many people had told us that it was good.

And was it ever!

Jacob Begorgis, who grew up in Sweden and is the original owner of Pizzeria Capri and of the small shopping center just north of Train Town, is back cooking and serving at the same location, calling it simply Jacob's Restaurant.

He has expanded the menu beyond pizza, although he still serves the “pies.”

Jacob makes all breads in house, so the ciabatta was fresh and soft since it was baked that morning. We all tasted the Philly steak sandwich, but others liked the lamb gyro, pesto eggplant, and grilled salami and brie sandwiches. All sandwiches come with Caesar or a glittering mixed green salad at $12.

Jacob's salads are large and shareable and run $7 to $16 (includes shrimp) and a family salad to serve four to six at $19. Lots of vegetarian options, including pizza and calzone or gluten free pizza. Check it out at 1266 Broadway, Sonoma. 996-4024.

Crawfish Boil returns to Tips Roadside

Tips Roadside and Tips Tri-tip Trolley chef Thaddeus Palmese, who spent loads of food time in Louisiana and other parts south, is putting together a Crawfish Boil on Wednesday, Jan. 9.

It's a whole lot of messy fun. You have to work hard to extract the meat from a skinny little crawfish; staff will be on hand to assist beginners.

Sides will include potatoes, sausage slices and corn, all served with cornbread. Beer is made on site. Two seatings, at 5:30 and 7:30. $35. Housemade beer $5. Reservations required. 8445 Sonoma Highway, Kenwood. 509-0078.