Also this issue: Drink Tank -Frank Lewis

December 5-11, 2002

food

Sonoma Again, Naturally

Itâs only natural: A Caesar salad is stripped to its essentials at the now organically inclined Sonoma. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

The Main Street mainstay enters its second decade with a new organic menu.

by Maxine Keyser

Sonoma’s black and silver, hard-edged look and chef Derek Davis’ Cal-Ital cuisine are celebrating their 10th anniversary this month. Sonoma was the first restaurant of the Main Street group that also has Kansas City Prime and Arroyo Grille. It’s always been a light-hearted place with a busy sidewalk café in the warmer months, and an elite upstairs vodka bar showcasing more than 200 different brands of vodka.

Davis, an experienced but underrated chef, has taken his restaurant in a new direction. His menu is now completely organic, as are some of the wines and vodkas, and if the dinner I had there recently is any example of what's to come, well, cheers are in order.

"It's really not that big a change in concept for me," says Davis, smiling his cherubic smile. "In Europe, the food comes from the farmer directly to the table, so that's what I'm doing. The market drives the menu." So Sonoma's menu will change weekly to reflect what is freshest at the farm. The only dishes not 100 percent organic are the Sonoma classics, the six most popular dishes from the last 10 years.

The menu he devised for this introductory dinner couldn't have been better. After a white bean hummus with a selection of the restaurant's own crusty breads, we start out with one of Davis' wood-burned pizzas, only this one has a whole-wheat crust. On it are roasted jingle bell peppers (Green Hill Farms), sweet pepper jack cheese and baby shiitake mushrooms from Kennett Square. "I like to use the babies because you can eat them stem and all," Davis tells me. He also blanches the elephant garlic that sprinkles the pizza so that it's mellower. The result is spicy and sweet and salty, with the infinite pleasure that comes from sinking your teeth into a well-made slice of pizza.

A salad of roasted vegetables from the Philly Chile Company follows: roasted baby beets, baby fennel, leeks, Jerusalem artichokes and acorn squash. The beets are like candy, the fennel lends its delightful licorice flavor, the nutty artichokes and sweet squash provide even more contrasts of flavor and color and an orange and lemon thyme vinaigrette binds it all together. With this salad, Davis has chosen a Coteaux d'Aix, a 1999 biodynamically grown white wine from Chapoutier, the premier winery of the Rh™ne Valley. It's a surprise because I had always found white organic wines to be on the edge of maderisation (when ethanal forms as a result of oxidation), but this illustrious shipper adds a little sulfite, which is permissible and preserves the wine. The flowery scent and delicate flavor complement the salad quite well.

Next comes Alaskan scrod, heavily crusted with black peppers that light up the bland fish, and leek and mushroom ragout. The big hit of this dish is not only the flaky scrod, but the purée of white sweet potatoes beneath it all. Bonterra Chardonnay Mendocino 2000, organically grown, has enough heft to withstand the assault of the black pepper.

The piece de resistance comes in the form of pork osso buco (Niman Ranch in California or Pennsylvania's Natural Acres Farm supply all the meat), tenderly braised in red wine with baby carrots, cipollini onions and a baby potato assortment. The Honig Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 1999, also organically grown, has a deep garnet color and lots of fruit to offset the almost creamy meat and vegetables.

Then I enjoy the best dessert that I have had this year -- warm sour cream gingerbread with a cajeta (like a dulce de leche flavoring) semifreddo, poised on a Key Lime curd.

Sonoma is ready for the future, when organic growing hopefully will become a way of life no longer associated only with tempeh and Birkenstocks. Hope that some of these dishes will appear on his ever-changing menu when next you arrive. If not, there are always the Sonoma classics to depend on (shrimp ravioli with lobster-brandy sauce, tri-colored cavatelli primavera, garlic rib steak, secret recipe roasted chicken, honey-lavender hickory roasted salmon, achiote spiced grilled tuna). Some things are not changing, like the good-natured, vaguely incompetent staff. But the food is worth it.