Eloise

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, August 12, 2009—

THE ONE THING I forgot, again, was to ask about the name: why Eloise?
It's south of Sebastopol, a little north of the furnace factory where Dad worked when we first moved to the country, fall of '45. Roadside restaurant building; was Chez Peyo for years. New Yorkers bought it a year or so ago, wanting to raise their kid in California, way I heard it. Amuse-gueules were toasts with rabbit-liver mousse, very nice. Then I opened with marinated sardines, with avocado on the side, and John and I split some headcheese (superlative) and duck prosciutto.

On to nice tender gnocchi with Swiss chard and ricotta, in drawn butter, flavored with little sage leaves: optimal.
Fine service, fine wine list, very pleasant room. There's something a little off-kilter about the menu, which seems to hesitate uneasily between country French and evolved Italian, and tosses terms around confusingly: what would tomatoes "bagna cauda" be, or a "goat cheese panisse"? But I like the place. We were here a year ago, and wil likely be back in a year.

Sauvignon blanc, Preston Vineyards, 2008; Brouilly, Thivin, 2007