Healdsburg

Healdsburg's food economy was for a century agricultural rather than culinary. The Russian River and Dry Creek valleys were planted in hops and orchard fruit, and the town functioned as a prune-drying center — a Sunsweet company town, in the recollection of Preston Farm & Winery's Lou Preston, who bought Dry Creek land in the 1970s that was mostly prunes with turn-of-the-century Zinfandel blocks scattered among them. Wine predated the boom but did not dominate it: Simi Winery, founded in 1876 by Tuscan immigrant brothers Giuseppe and Pietro Simi and relocated to Healdsburg in 1881, survived Prohibition on bulk and sacramental wine and is among the few California brands in continuous operation since the 19th century.

Restaurant culture arrived with the wine industry's late-20th-century expansion. Madrona Manor, the 1881 Paxton mansion converted to a country inn in 1981, became the town's formal dining benchmark, earning a Michelin star in 2008 and holding one for thirteen consecutive years under chef Jesse Mallgren; it reopened in 2022 as The Madrona with an all-day menu.

In 2001 Charlie Palmer opened Dry Creek Kitchen at Hotel Healdsburg with an all-Sonoma wine list, at a time when the county's marquee chefs — John Ash, Josh Silvers — worked in Santa Rosa. SingleThread, opened in December 2016 by chef Kyle Connaughton and farmer Katina Connaughton around a five-acre farm and a kaiseki-inspired tasting menu, extended that trajectory to three Michelin stars.