Cafe La Haye

Cafe La Haye has cooked a half-block off the Sonoma Plaza on East Napa Street since 1996, when Saul Gropman opened it with founding chef John McReynolds, whose bistro sensibility still shapes the menu. The room is small and unfussy: a split-level space with tin-topped bar stools facing the open kitchen, large windows and walls hung with local artists' paintings that are for sale, and many of the guests seem to know each other. In late 2024, after nearly three decades, Gropman sold the restaurant to José López, who had worked in its kitchen for more than twenty years, and his wife, Marta Elena Echeverría Bacab. López now cooks alongside Andrew López-Echeverría and Marco Echeverría, and the regulars have been coming nearly as long as the room has been open.