Glen Ellen Star

Glen Ellen Star is chef Ari Weiswasser's restaurant in a small cottage on Arnold Drive, in the village of Glen Ellen just north of Sonoma. Weiswasser trained at Daniel, Picholine, Corton and The French Laundry before opening the restaurant with his wife, Erinn Benziger-Weiswasser, in 2012. The heart of the kitchen is a custom-built wood-burning oven that runs at around 650 degrees, and much of the produce comes from her family's biodynamic Glentucky Family Farm nearby. The dining room is intimate, with fewer than fifty seats, and the menu shifts with whatever is growing in the valley that week. The Michelin Guide lists it among its Bib Gourmand restaurants in California, The New York Times has pointed readers to it, and people do drive out to Glen Ellen for it.