Farmhouse Inn’s culinary shuffles continue as chef Trevor Anderson takes over Forestville restaurant

Editor’s note: An unexpected chef departure at this historic Forestville restaurant upended Carey Sweet’s planned review, but we felt it was important to run the story with the caveat that the menu has recently changed. This is the fourth chef shuffle at the restaurant since 2021.

It’s only January, and already, the wild ride of our restaurant scene seems poised to continue through the year. We’ve all been hoping the craziness that started in 2020 — and really, the chaos began with the wildfires in 2017 — will just go away before we lose our minds.

Wine Country is blessed with many talented chefs, creative restaurateurs, food producers, sommeliers, winemakers and hospitality talents of all kinds. Yet the headlines keep telling the stories, over and over, of difficult staff transitions and employee shortages, “pivoting” — a word I’ve come to hate, inflation and supply chain challenges and, ultimately, complete closures of beloved restaurants.

That’s why it’s concerning to see the revolving door of high-profile chefs come through the storied Farmhouse Inn’s restaurant since founding chef Steve Litke retired in the fall of 2021. Litke, who now does private chef catering, established the restaurant in 1999, earning and keeping the restaurant’s one Michelin star for years.

The restaurant unveiled a new multicourse tasting menu a few months ago under chef Jeremy Cabrera (formerly of Fourth Street Social Club). I was blown away by the experience.

But now, I’m sad to report, the executive chef who put that adventure together has suddenly moved on. He’s the latest departure of several big-name executive chefs — including Daniel Beal, a former sous chef of Chicago’s renowned Alinea and San Francisco’s three-Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn — who quickly have come and gone from the luxury hotel property owned by siblings Joe and Catherine Bartolomei.

I’m bummed, but no longer surprised. I could write a detailed family tree-style article about the constant top-name chef shuffles occurring around the Bay Area these past few years. It’s an increasingly brutal business for everyone involved.

Fortunately for us, the elegant Farmhouse Inn can rely on another talented chef who has already made a huge impression at the property, Trevor Anderson.

Anderson worked at Calistoga’s Solbar, St. Helena’s Cook and Healdsburg’s (now closed) Campo Fina before opening Taub Family Outpost in Sonoma in 2020. He debuted Farmhouse Inn’s casual Farmstand cafe last summer and now directs the fine-dining Farmhouse, too.

The resort has an established team of other notable professionals, as well. That includes Wine Director and Sommelier Jared Hooper (who is worth the price of admission certainly for his grape knowledge but also his charming comedy routines), plus Food and Beverage Director Moira Beveridge (who worked at Michelin-starred Barndiva in Healdsburg and owned the lovely Crocodile French Restaurant in Petaluma).

Farmhouse co-owners, siblings Joe Bartolomei and Catherine Bartolomei, say they are keeping Cabrera’s concept and that the kitchen team is well-trained to pull it off. Anderson has done very well introducing Farmstand (see my review here bit.ly/3QNn1VM).

I looked at Anderson’s brand-new menu last week, and while the dishes have changed pretty significantly since my dinner, the approach is still upscale with some of the ingredients Cabrera used. Considering that most tasting menus frequently change anyway (that’s part of the fun), your results may vary from mine.

The dining menu has two main components: a split-in-two food menu you can share with your companion ($175 per person) and a shareable wine menu of global, small-batch selections ($125 per person). Because of the unique menu, Farmhouse is a great first date night place. You can try every dish offered, discuss your favorites, then see which pairable wines you prefer with each course (it’s built-in conversation for any awkward silent moments).

Amuses get the show started. We each got a precious, pop-in-your-mouth dry Jack cheese sponge cake topped with caramelized onion puree and more shaved cheese, plus a clever “origami folder” of a housemade sesame tuille stuffed with venison tartare and a fruity-sharp jolt of tellicherry pepper gelee.

Next, you order from five categories split into two columns: “Land and Sea” and “From the Garden.” Each category offers two choices — yes, get them both. Portions are big enough to sample from each other’s plates and get a few dainty bites per person.

For “Land and Sea,” you might get a golden-ivory nubbin of grilled Monterey abalone nestled in its pearlescent shell and capped in smoked acorn milk foam and a dollop of Osetra caviar. Rimming the plate were sea grapes harvested from their coral bed and tasting of fresh ocean and fronds of salty seaweed.

“Everything on this dish is edible besides the rocks (the abalone shells sits on),” Hooper playfully warned. “I’ve seen many people try to eat them, and we don’t have a dentist on property.”

On the “Garden” side, a tiny pottery bowl of wild mushrooms beckoned with chanterelle, sparassis (cauliflower) and maitake mushrooms decorated with shaved black truffle, beetroot powder and fennel flower atop a creamy black trumpet custard.

Next came a medallion of black cod pan-seared to create a buttery interior and dehydrated skin; flanked with wild mushrooms, sea grapes and dulse; crowned in caracol caviar; and splashed tableside with manzanita mushroom dashi.

Fun fact: Caracol, I learned, are the tiny eggs of snails. I asked Hooper how they were harvested (tweezers? squeezing the snail?). He checked with the chef and reported back that snails “regurgitate the eggs.” I queried YouTube, and they do upchuck the delicacies. No worries, though — the flavor is appealingly earthy and woodsy with vegetal and herbaceous notes.

Next, we got nibbles of roasted root veggies — sunchoke, squash and parsnip garnished with bay laurel-honeynut squash “shatter” (crunchy chips). The vegetables sat on “culinary sand” of white and black sesame, poppy seeds, Maldon sea salt and charred onion.

Then we broke bread. Farmhouse makes its own sourdough, house churns cultured butter in a two-day process, mixes in mascarpone cheese and sprinkles it with foraged local sea salt.

A third land course brought a tiny roast quail, bronzed in persimmon glaze, puddled in persimmon gastrique, topped in braised chicory and fermented persimmon and nested on a bed of (inedible) hay, with a rosemary-lavender moist towelette alongside for our royal fingers.

On the garden side: roasted delicata squash velouté dotted with a tart kiss of quick-pickled squash and crunchy pumpkin seeds.

For entrees, Anderson Valley Oz Farm duck breast was plated with a slab of duck liver pate spread with grain mustard and braised Green Frill mustard greens — a nice change from the usual sweet pairings found with duck. And one of the best dishes of the night came from the garden — scarpinocc. That’s a shoe-shaped pasta. Here, the bundles were stained fuchsia with beetroot, set on a pond of rich roasted parsnip-chestnut beurre blanc, sprinkled with diced celery and dolloped in vibrant black garlic puree.

Nobody will leave hungry. Because then we got the cheese course, presented as a whimsical nod to winter with red maple leaf-shaped wild herb-garlic tuille crackers atop smoked housemade ricotta sprinkled in sea salt, shaved Lamb Chopper sheep milk cheese and tartlets baked with pungent Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk triple-crème aged cheese.

Dessert makes an impressive finish, crafted by Pastry Chef Lea Schleimer. Spiced chocolate marquis delivers a miniature ganache cake crowned in maple sabayon and set on a bed of wild rice toffee crunch and candied pear puree. And a tiny lemon custard cake was topped with huckleberry compote and crisp honey-almond lace.

Hopefully, this is the last of the chef changes for our long-treasured Farmhouse. The silver lining, I suppose, is I’m already planning to return to try Anderson’s new menu (Dungeness crab with sea urchin, brassicas and cured egg yolk; crystallized potatoes with malt vinegar powder and sea lettuce; roasted squab with chanterelles and whey caramel, oh my).

And let’s all hope for a quieter, calmer 2023 for the restaurant scene everywhere.

Carey Sweet is a Sebastopol-based food and restaurant writer. Read her restaurant reviews every other week in Sonoma Life. Contact her at carey@careysweet.com.