Cox: Delightful choices at Harvest Moon Café

Once in a great while, a dish comes along with the power to transport you to a faraway place and time. And so it was with Nick Demarest’s Turkish Vegetable and Bread Soup with Caraway and Local Olive Oil ($9.50 ???? ) at his Harvest Moon Café on the Sonoma Plaza.

English food writer Annie Bell popularized this stew-like soup and called it “Turkish Village Bread Soup,” which is apt, because the first bite conjured up the farm fields surrounding Turkish villages, the hard life of a farmer, and his or her need for something honest, robust, nourishing, and delicious to eat.

The taste of history is in this soup. Caraway is native to that part of the Middle East, and the peasants there have undoubtedly been tossing caraway seeds into the stewpot since stewpots were invented. Into the pot also go chopped carrots, onions, and celery; parsley, cabbage, and garlic; tomatoes, beans and the water they soaked in, and torn up country bread, with good olive oil drizzled on top.

It seams like a simple stew, but something magical happens when the aromas of garlic and caraway mingle. They make a synergistic scent that’s a soulful connection to a rustic past.

Demarest and his wife, Jen, are both accomplished cooks. They met at the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, N.Y. Their experience at a biodynamic farm there informs their decision in Sonoma to make sure every ingredient they use is sustainably grown and locally produced whenever possible.

Because they deal directly with small local farmers, and ingredients become available and unavailable quickly, the menu at Harvest Moon changes daily - except for the Niman Ranch rib-eye that’s a permanent feature.

The interior of the restaurant is small and dimly lit; there’s a big patio out back with lots of seating.

During the winter, the patio is tented.

There’s no full bar, but the 58-bottle wine list is full of well-priced treasures like Le Mesnil Champagne for $88, 2012 Bucklin “Bambino” Zin for $46, and 2008 Aubin Cellars Syrah from Washington State for $40.

Our young waiter was earnest, if in need of some training. He went down the menu with us, telling us what he liked.

Who cares?

And when we ordered something, he said, “Good choice.” That implies bad choices are possible.

You may not be able to find any bad choices at Harvest Moon, though. The food, though not exactly unique, does show Demarest’s personality and reveals his talent.

A Slow-Cooked Pork Shoulder Ragu ($14.75 ??? ½) is intensely savory, marrying a fontina-smeared bruschetta with a splash of black truffle oil, and topping it with an organic egg from a cage-free hen at Piggy Hill farm in Napa, perfectly pan cooked so the white has a crispy edge while the yolk is still liquid and forms a sort of sauce.

This is intelligent cooking, not just recipe-following.

A big bowl of Trivela Pasta ($17.50 ??? ) featured lots of Parmesan cheese mixed with crème fraiche and lemon juice, stirred up with sautéed summer squash and leeks, plus fresh basil and pine nuts making a sort of pesto.

Other than the Turkish Village Soup, the most inspired dish of the evening was Grilled Chicken Leg and Thighs ($24 ??? ½).

The meat was marinated in coconut milk infused with curry, giving it a Southeast Asian flavor. It looked and tasted like it was cooked al mattone (under a brick) and had that wonderful flavor chicken acquires from being forced onto a hot grill or griddle by a heavy weight.

The marinade was cooked with peanuts to make the most delectable sauce imaginable.

With the chicken were slices of sautéed eggplant and a serving of what the menu described as basmati rice.

But it lacked the fragrance of basmati and appeared to be plain, soggy, white rice, which accounts for the half-star off.

An entrée of spice-seared Fort Bragg Albacore ($25.50 ?? ) was a forgettable piece of fresh fish paired with mei qing choi (a dwarf green related to bok choy) and herbed quinoa.

For dessert, the S’mores ($9 ??? ½) with their layers of graham cracker, bittersweet chocolate ganache, peanut butter mousse, and house-made marshmallow capitalized beautifully on the supreme affinity that chocolate has for peanuts.

To sum up: Sonoma’s most interesting restaurant keeps its laurels.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review for the Sonoma Living section. He can be reached at jeffcox@sonic.net.