Palooza to open beer garden at Cornerstone Sonoma

The owners of Palooza Brewery and Gastropub of Kenwood will open a beer garden and restaurant at Cornerstone Sonoma within a week.

Palooza will take over the restaurant space currently occupied by Public Kitchen, Palooza owner Jeff Tyler told the Index-Tribune. The new Palooza Beer Garden & Eatery will replace Public Kitchen in the Cornerstone retail center, which was sold to investment group LeFever Mattson this past January. Public Kitchen had only been in the space since February of this year, having taken over following a seven-year run at Cornerstone by the restaurant Park 121.

Tyler said he plans to 'retain all staff.'

The restaurant space will close for a couple of days next week while work crews complete some minor construction, and will reopen after Tyler takes employees of both his Kenwood Palooza and the new Palooza on a staff retreat to a San Francisco Giants game. He says they will then share recipes and begin to coordinate kitchens and cooking.

Tyler wants his Palooza Beer Garden and Eatery to be family oriented, as is their Kenwood restaurant. Palooza at Cornerstone will open for lunch first, adding 'dinner in short order, but we have to master lunch first,' according to Tyler. They also cater Stompers baseball games at Arnold Field.

Food trucks will fill the food and hunger gap for Cornerstone visitors from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. El Coyote will be there today, Tuesday, and Sonoma Eats will cook on Wednesday through Friday. El Coyote is the popular truck usually parked across Broadway from Sonoma Valley High School. Sonoma Eats is the food truck owned by Efrain Blames who sold his mobile home to start his own business with his mother's recipes and a micro-loan from La Luz Center.

Having started with one solitary hot dog cart, then a second one, and then a food truck, Tyler and his wife Suzette now have investors and plan to open at six more locations soon that will be 'beer-centric.' Tyler commented about his burgeoning Palooza empire, 'I have surrounded myself with good, hardworking people, so this will all work.'

Once situated, Palooza will follow in Public Kitchen's steps as, not only the sole food space in Cornerstone, but the only beer taproom in the retail center – as Kenwood Investments this week confirmed it has abandoned plans to open what was to be called the Jack London Taproom in a space near the front entrance.

Palooza in Kenwood is located at 8910 Sonoma Highway, Cornerstone Sonoma is located at 23570 Arnold Drive, Sonoma, and Schellville Grill is located at 22900 Broadway, Sonoma.

[This story has been updated to include additional information.]