29-04-2025
Book your table at this new Wine Country restaurant before it gets a Michelin star
Over a year ago, my colleague Jess Lander gave readers a preview of Enclos, a fine dining restaurant in Sonoma owned by Stone Edge Farm Vineyards & Winery. ' Can this winery bring a Michelin star to Sonoma?' she teased.
Enclos opened in December, and my verdict is in: Yes, it absolutely will.
This is not a formal review of Enclos — a distinction that may matter less to readers and more to my editors and me. I've only visited one time as opposed to the customary three for reviews, but that was enough to certify that chef Brian Limoges has made good on his ambition.
There is much to find charming about Enclos, from the Victorian building in which it is housed, half a block from Sonoma's downtown plaza, to the copper pots and dried flowers framing the kitchen — a touch that reminded me of Saison and Angler, where Limoges oversaw operations for two years. Waiting for us at our table was a note of welcome, a pen and ink illustration of two deer in a meadow of wildflowers, shaded in with colored pencil. These personalized cards are the work of Larry Nadeau, a nearly 20-year veteran of the French Laundry who now oversees the excellent service at Enclos.
If there's a conceit to the restaurant, it's that the 13 or so courses ($235, not including 20% automatic gratuity) in Limoges' menu refract his New England upbringing through a California lens. There's a chawanmushi that nods to clam chowder, venison tartare tarts (tartartes?) that reference the state animal of New Hampshire, where Limoges grew up. The concept is lightly sold and not always a clear throughline for the meal, but those tartlets are so exquisite that had our server told me they were an homage to Chef's favorite movie 'Bambi,' I'd have said, uh huh, any chance I can have another? The raw venison, served in a shell made with smoked oats, is crowned with a dramatic tuft of salty, wispy fried lichen that somewhat resembles nori in texture.
In advance of a course of aged tuna belly over Koshihikari rice, a server will visit your table with an intact slab of the fatty fish to demonstrate how 60 days can transform the flesh. The toro was the highlight of my meal. A miraculous brown butter passion fruit zabaglione pitted richness and acidity against one another, and gleaming succulents added crunch.
Pastry chef Sophie Hau, most recently of Californios, ensures the meal ends on an operatic high note. The evening's final bites, two wee ice cream sandwiches that resemble Choco Tacos in form, arrive perched on a frame of honeycomb. The two-bite delights left me outraged that honey is not more frequently viewed as a main character rather than just a sweetener.
There were a few misses among the hits, most notably a course where duck tortellini were finished at our table with brodo poured from a vintage silver urn. Sipping the broth from the cup left my lips slicked with fat and my tongue wishing for acidity. The gorgeous urn, the honeycomb, the tuna belly show-and-tell — for the most part the dramatic flair works marvelously. But by the end of the evening, my dining companion and I found ourselves sneezing. A course of smoked Wolfe Ranch quail legs is presented tableside, smoke billowing out of a handcrafted wooden box. We were seated in the narrower of the two dining rooms, and my sensitive sinuses grew to dread the arrival of the quail course at the tables around us. (Of note, a friend who was seated in the larger room did not share my sneezy experience.)
Regardless of which room you end up in, ask to poke your head into the other. The space, which housed Stone Edge's previous restaurant, Edge, has been overhauled by Jiun Ho, the designer behind Saison. The result feels like a Scandinavian tiny house, one room moody with ebony shou sugi ban'd walls, the other light and clad in cedar. While an astonishingly intricate papercut artwork is a holdover from Edge, the new sheep's wool tapestries that adorn other walls not only add textural dimension but also absorb sound — a thoughtful touch in a restaurant full of thoughtful touches.
