Matt Spector shows his son Joe, 5, a card trick while his wife Sonjia watches at their JoLe restaurant in Calistoga on Wednesday, January 21, 2009.

Two young restaurateur couples make a splash in Wine Country

DIANE PETERSON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Just in the past year, Wine Country witnessed the birth of several new restaurants thanks to a fresh crop of young, talented chefs.

Some of the new jewels in Wine Country's culinary crown are owned by young couples who work long hours closely together on their venture. The popular Scopa in Healdsburg is one example. So are Restaurant Eloise in the former Chez Peyo and Bistro V space in Sebastopol, and JoLe, in the former Catahoula in Calistoga.

The couples who run Eloise and JoLe uprooted themselves from the East Coast to make their mark in this region. A few months after each restaurant opened, the economy turned sour, making their transitions that much tougher.

Ginevra Iverson and Eric Korsh opened Restaurant Eloise in Sebastopol in July after renovating the 60-seat restaurant and building raised garden beds out back. It is their first restaurant, and they have a 15-year lease.

"You only get this opportunity once in a lifetime," said Korsh, who shares cooking duties with his wife. "We just have to fight our way through."

Matt and Sonjia Spector opened JoLe in Calistoga in June after refurbishing the 56-seat restaurant, where he mans the stove and she oversees desserts.

"It's been a tough year," Sonjia said. "But we're in it for the long haul. We feel everything we do is a stepping stone."

Here's a look at these up-and-coming restaurateurs who are facing the challenging economy with the same honesty and audacity that they bring to the plate.

Eric Korsh, 33, has been working on a business plan for his own restaurant since he was 19. As a teen growing up on Long Island, he started his career as a line cook at a local diner.

"There's a skill you learn working at a restaurant like that," Korsh said. "It was 140 degrees at the griddle."

After graduating from college, Korsh cooked in Boston then landed a job at Picholine, a French-Mediterranean restaurant on New York's Upper West Side.

That's where a new line cook -- a striking blond of Norwegian and Italian descent -- walked through the door and stole his heart.

Iverson, 30, has always loved to cook. "My mom's side is all Italian," she said. "There's just food everywhere."

Iverson grew up in Marin County and went to the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, snagging an internship at the Left Bank in Larkspur. Then she took a slight detour, studying food science at UC Davis and French in Paris.

In Paris, she found herself throwing dinner parties for 30 people using only a hot plate. She decided her fate was sealed. Then she moved to New York and promptly fell in love with Korsh, an articulate Jewish guy with a strong work ethic and a dry sense of humor.

To build his resume, Korsh landed stints as sous chef at hot spots in Brooklyn and the Upper West Side. Meanwhile, Iverson started running the kitchen at Prune, a hip little bistro on the Lower East Side. She kept cooking through most of her pregnancy, then took a break after their daughter, Grace, was born.

A few months later, the couple took a trip to Healdsburg to visit Iverson's parents. While her parents babysat, they took a romantic drive through Calistoga and Yountville, ending up sipping wine at Bistro Jeanty and the Burgundy House.

"We looked at each other and said, 'OK, this could happen,' " Iverson said. By the following spring, they made up their minds to move to Sonoma County.

Quickly putting together a business plan for a restaurant, they gathered a group of investors on both coasts. They moved from New York to Geyserville in fall 2007 and put an offer on the Sebastopol restaurant space on New Year's Eve that same year.

After serious renovations, Restaurant Eloise, named after the sassy protagonist of the famous children's books, opened on July 20, 2008 with a dazzling array of farmhouse food.

Eloise's roasted bone marrow appetizer, for example, was an immediate hit with foodies. The bar menu, offering unusual delicacies like veal tongue and head cheese, attracted the attention of Bay Area chefs like Bruce Aidells and Nancy Oakes. And their marinated sardines appetizer was recently showcased in San Francisco Magazine.

Eloise's food relies on traditional French techniques, applied to local ingredients. If they don't grow it themselves, the couple acquire their ingredients from folks up the road.

"If it doesn't add to the dish, we're not putting it on the plate," Korsh added. "There's an honesty to that."

While the restaurant has attracted a core group of regulars, the economic drop-off has required cutting some corners. They make do with a small but mighty crew of three front waiters and two back waiters. Everyone is trained to do everything.

The couple recently moved to west Santa Rosa to be closer to the restaurant. They reserve a pint-size table right next to the kitchen, equipped with crayons and paper, for Grace, now 2.

"The biggest issue is getting the word out," Iverson said. "But there's something nice about being unknown . . . people feel like it's a find."

Last fall, Matt Spector had a tough time when the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series and he had to witness the miracle from 2,500 miles away.

"I was 10 the last time the team won," wailed the 33-year-old chef, who was born and raised in Cherry Hill, N.J.

There are other trade-offs, too, now that Spector and his wife, Sonjia, have moved West and opened JoLe restaurant in Calistoga.

"In Philly, it's doctor, lawyer and investment banker sitting at the bar," Matt said. "Here, it's the guy who grows the grapes, makes wine and cooks."

Spector grew up in a family of Eastern European Jews from Poland who didn't exactly know food.

"We overcooked everything," he said. "But my grandmother was a great baker . . . and my uncle had a meat market called Penn Center Prime Meats."

Throughout high school, Spector worked at his uncle's meat market, then started cooking at big-name restaurants in Philadelphia, from Susanna Foo's eponymous Chinese restaurant to Georges Perrier's French restaurant Le Bec Fin and Bruce Cooper's new American eatery Novelty.

He met Sonjia while helping to open Novelty in 2000, and they hung out as friends before getting romantically involved. She's a a petite, energetic brunette of Spanish descent who grew up in the Sacramento Valley, where her father grew alfalfa.

After studying nutrition at University of Nevada at Reno, Sonjia went to the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, then landed cooking jobs at Bistro Don Giovanni and Tra Vigne in the Napa Valley.

After Novelty, the couple decided to strike out on their own, launching a small, neighborhood restaurant called Matyson -- a blend of both of their names -- in the butcher shop where Matt Spector used to work.

Matyson's reasonally priced menu showcased Matt's full-flavored vision and Sonjia's rustic desserts. The restaurant garnered kudos from Bon Appetit and Gourmet as one of Philadelphia's hottest new restaurants.

"It was a very successful place," Matt Spector said. "I like to say it's American, and we steal from everyone."

Moving West was a no-brainer for the food-obsessed couple, who had spent many vacations grazing their way through Wine Country and by now had two sons.

"We always knew that we wanted to end up here," Spector said. "To do what we do, there's not anywhere better."

They sold Matyson and met with the owner of the Mount View Hotel on New Year's Eve of 2007.

"We liked that it's always been a restaurant," he said. "The bones were there."

To fund their venture, the couple applied for a Small Business Administration loan, but the mortgage crisis deep-sixed those plans.

"The loan fell through twice," Spector said. "Finally, we came up with the cash on our own."

JoLe -- named after sons Joe, 5, and Jacob Levi, 18 months -- opened on June 9, 2008 with a tasting menu of sophisticated small plates such as Smoked Veal Sweetbreads with split pea soup.

"Our food is creative, but it's honest food, prepared well with good ingredients," Spector said.

All the wines are offered by the glass or half carafe. JoLe stays open until 10 p.m. or later in order to attract restaurant workers, and hires servers who love food and wine.

To keep labor costs down, the restaurant does not have a manager. Sonjia Spector does all the scheduling and the books, runs the floor and oversees the desserts. She also bakes pastries for the Mount View Hotel and a coffeehouse in Calistoga.

Meanwhile, Matt Spector works from 9 a.m. to midnight most days, turning out labor-intensive dishes like like Pork Cheek Tostadas and Citrus Marinated Octopus salad.

"I love it here," he said. "The produce is the best stuff I've ever seen."

The couple recently moved to a home in Rincon Valley, where a nanny comes daily to watch the kids. Meanwhile, they are working on building their reputation, one satisfied customer at a time.

"We believe in ourselves and the things we do," Matt said.

You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com.

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