Luma Bar & Eatery in Petaluma joins the plant-based dining lineup

In 2002, while working as a restaurant critic in Phoenix, Arizona, I wrote about a blossoming concept: raw food. The subject was a restaurant called Rawsome! (yes, with the annoying exclamation point at the end).

Zealots were feeding their wispy frames with raw vegetables, raw grains, and raw proteins, shunning any conventional cooking in favor of food getting its “nourishment, vitality and fulfillment from the sun.”

I adore fresh vegetables, grains, nuts and sashimi, but these recipes were creepy, with damp, sticky dishes like uncooked, gray garden burgers or cold, dehydrated seed "pizza" crust and mock sour cream fashioned from pine nuts, water, lemon juice and olive oil.

One of my worst flashbacks is to their "rawjitas," a perverse, disturbingly brown and clammy take on "meat" paste utilizing pecans, flax seeds, tomatoes, celery, onion, lemon juice and cayenne blended to baby-food mash and slathered on dehydrated flax seed crackers under mock sour cream.

Yet hallelujah, the current trend toward plant-based dining is nothing like that.

These days, many talented chefs are crafting mouthwatering twists on plant-based recipes with such skillful results that we don’t even know we’re eating something without chemical additives, excessive salt, and the meat we so often crave.

The latest plant-focused restaurant in Sonoma County is Luma Bar & Eatery, a chic spot overlooking the Petaluma River (formerly Dempsey’s). Opened in mid-December, Luma is a departure for Petaluma restaurateur Jazmine Lalicker, who owns The Shuckery restaurant just a half mile away.

Luma is no hippie joint. I like the modern décor with sleek wood and metal furnishings, soft moss and cream paint, and a striking bar backdrop with glowing, lit-up liquor shelves.

The patio is nice, too – I can see hanging here in warm weather and feeling cosmopolitan while I snack on juicy, marinated olives warmed by the wood-burning oven ($8), sipping a refreshing Winter Queen cocktail of Chareau Aloe Liqueur, Corsican quina wine, pear puree, cava and fresh mint ($16).

Chareau is lovely, distilled from Northern California-grown grapes into an eau-de-vie, then infused with local cucumber, spearmint, lemon peel, muskmelon, aloe vera juice and just a touch of sugar for a bright, vegetal, botanical-kissed quaff.

I’m more on the fence about the cuisine. Here, all the dishes are vegan, except some of the desserts. A plant-based diet does not have to be vegetarian or vegan, but animal product consumption is low, if non-existent. But this menu was developed by chef and butcher Travis Day, who launched Thistle Meats in Petaluma.

So, in a different approach, all dishes are plant-based, but we can add in 4-ounce sides of shredded Liberty duck ($10), Stemple Creek brisket ($12), or a Coastal Hills farm egg ($4).

Appetizers work fine. Who doesn’t like golden hushpuppies decorated with roasted apple and dunked in slightly spicy remoulade ($12)? A dip of briny seaweed softened into a hummus adds needed personality to a colorful, if mainstream, crudité arrangement of sliced heirloom radishes, cucumber and other winter veggies ($12).

It’s hard to go wrong with flatbread, either. The crispy rounds and ovals are pleasing with simple toppings like San Marzano tomatoes, cashew milk cheese and basil ($20). Even better is the earthy-sweet combo of shaved red and gold beets, sweet potato puree, mushrooms and cashew milk cheese ($22).

After trying some of the entrée plates, however, I want proteins to add more flavor and umami. The meats tend to be rich, such as the duck that utilizes wings instead of breast, slow cooked in fat and spices. The brisket almost looks like bacon.

The duck really boosts the subtle notes of the heirloom squash dressed with sprouted grains and Brussels leaves ($26) and adds spark to fusilloni pasta draped plainly in fennel-carrot ragu and celery root puree ($24).

On the other hand, “greens & beans” are so rich it’s hard to finish the bowl. The vegan dish tastes like the braised beans, Swiss chard stalk and torn leaves are bobbing in butter. I like the crisp accent of bean sprouts, and the charred cabbage chunks bring satisfying smokiness, slicked in vibrant salsa verde. Yet thank goodness for my side order of excellent house made Parker roll-style bread to tame the tongue-coating creaminess down.

But then, one dish shows what this kitchen can do. Handmade gnocchi ($24) is perfect, the big, plump bundles expertly done and tumbled with goodness like roasted sunchoke and various mushrooms (cremini, chanterelles, whatever the chef sources on a given day).

For sweets, we can sample housemade apple crumble that’s fired in the wood oven and capped in non-dairy ice cream ($12) or a chocolate tart made with coconut “cream” and candied hazelnuts ($12). They’re okay, but blanc mange is more of a standout in an untraditional presentation of custard stabbed with a shard of bitterish tonka bean tuille, a thin slab of real honeycomb candy, and a chunk of poached pear ($12).

Looking back at my 2002 article on Rawsome! I saw I had interviewed the now-late Chicago celebrity chef Charlie Trotter, a then-recent convert to the craze. He had predicted that "within five to 10 years, every serious chef in the country will have raw preparations in their repertoire."

Hmmm. So far, that’s not true. And so far, I’m not racing to return to Luma until the menu gets more inventive and the cooking more consistent.

But as for the plant-based cooking trend in general, I’m still very much behind it and have to say, it’s looking better and better every day.

Luma Bar & Eatery: 50 E. Washington St., Petaluma, 707-772-5037, lumaeatery.com.

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.