| |
Best of the Bay 2010
French Garden was voted #3 Best French Restaurant
out of 83 nominees in the entire Bay Area!
Thank you to everyone who voted to
make this recognition possible!
Recent Yelp Reviews
From: S. B., Sebastopol, CA 5/3/2010
We love the bar at French Garden, it is top notch! The bartender, Jeff, makes the best Cosmos and Margaritas I've ever had! I'm sure the other drinks he makes are excellent too but I've been so happy with these that I don't veer from my "usuals". Very elegant setting too!
From: Angela C, Sebastopol, CA 3/25/2010*****
My five stars is for what's going on Sunday mornings:
A small and local farmer's market and fresh, perfect pastries. This has become our new Sunday morning ritual. We stroll through the few tables of veggies and my son gets to help pick out what we get. It's nice because their aren't a ton of people fighting over the produce like at a normal, busy farmer's market.
Once inside there is a display of the most perfect and gorgeous pastries in Somoma County. My son got an eclair last Sunday and it was SO yummy: perfect puff pastry, not cut in half like most and filled to the brim with fresh vanilla bean custard and perfect dark chocolate glaze over the top. They have some sort of asiago bread as well that is just to die for. $2 for a HUGE cup of Taylor Maid coffee. They will let you try anything if you aren't sure and practically make you try at least one thing from the pastry counter.
What I really like about it as well is that they treat my seven year-old son like an adult with his own tastes and opinions about things. They offer us both samples of things and talk to him like he's a person--not just ignoring him because he's a child in a fancy French restaurant.
Sunday mornings can't get any better.
Farmer's Market is on Sundays from 10am-2pm. If it's raining they just move it inside.
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, October 19, 2008
by Carey Sweet
"The heirloom fruits and vegetables that are the signature of the French Garden in Sebastopol are often used as centerpieces in the restaurant. Colorful squash, pumpkins, corn, tomatoes and other seasonal produce are displayed throughout the expansive space, decorating tables and the doorway to the lavishly landscaped patio and even piled on a small stage in the main dining room.
By my second visit, I was eagerly anticipating not just admiring but also eating the beautiful produce, most of which is plucked daily from restaurant owner Dan Smith's 30-acre farm nearby. Even a simple amuse bouche I had on my first visit - a bright yellow squash blossom with a bit of crunchy body attached - was sensational. The raw flower was stuffed with ricotta, then sprinkled with olive oil and cayenne, but what made it so delicious was its palpable freshness. Ultimately, it's these simple fruits and vegetables that raise the French Garden above the ordinary."
To read the entire review, click here
The Bohemian
November 21, 2007
First Bite
French Garden
By Gretchen Giles
Snuggled on sheepskin throws on a couch before a fire, a disheveled couple feed one another with forks and fingers. Her hair has loosened from its tie and her face is flushed. He extends his fork, she takes a coy bite and makes a pretty moue with her mouth. She giggles. We shouldn't be watching this.
But the cozy fireside area of Sebastopol's French Garden Restaurant and Brasserie invites such intimacies. Just celebrating its first anniversary, the restaurant has a large, well-lit dining room and a nicely dim, comfortable bar where lovers may eat tucked away while musicians play. What makes the French Garden exceedingly different is that as much as possible, all fruit and produce come from what our server familiarly referred to as "Dan's farm."
"Dan" is co-owner Dan Smith, a community activist and former software developer. When foods come directly from an organic farm, they may be small and they may be misshapen—but they taste like real food. Those so-called baby carrots that woodenly dong out of plastic bags have nothing on Dan's baby carrots, which are truly small sweet roots pulled right from the earth and lightly sautéed.
To read the entire review, click here
The Bohemian
September 27, 2007
Complete Cycle
In which our writer phones up restaurants looking for one that composts because she thinks it's fun.
By Gianna de Persiis Vona
Just for fun, I decided to cold-call restaurants out of the phone book until I find one that composts. After all, if I can fill a one-gallon bucket every single day with food scraps, how much must a restaurant produce?
"Why should I compost? It will just breakdown in the landfills anyway, so what's the difference?" I have heard this pathetic excuse from people who refuse to compost so many times that I long ago lost count. No matter how many times I hear it, I never get over the stab of irritation that inevitably makes me snap something unattractive like, "Been to any landfills lately, Einstein? You actually believe that your food scraps compost? And how exactly, in this compressed and smothering environment, do you expect anything to breakdown?"
In response to my small act of guerilla investigative journalism, I receive a series of no's, which finally end with a miraculous "Yes," at the French Garden Restaurant in Sebastopol. Restaurant owners Joan Marler and Dan Smith compost the scraps from their kitchen at their nearby 30-acre organic farm, and it is this morsel of information that leads me not just to a composting restaurant, but to an organic garden, a way of life and a small community hospital struggling for survival.
Marler tells me that the reason she and Smith have the restaurant is because of the farm. It is the farm that drives their menu, their passion and their dream. "This is our way of manifesting our values in terms of how to live and be earth stewards, supporting local economy and eating locally," she says. "And how not to support this whole megabusiness of food that's coming from all over the world. The whole point is: what sustains life?" Their farm provides, almost exclusively, the fruits and vegetables used in the restaurant. Everything is fresh picked and delivered straight to the restaurant's kitchen, down to the flowers on the tables. Even the butter is churned fresh from local organic cream.
Marler and Smith are actively committed not only to growing and serving their own food, but to using the restaurant space as a positive place of interaction for the community. The last Wednesday of every month, the French Garden sponsors a free documentary series on peace, justice and sustainability; the first Sunday of every month there is an open mic for poets; and the last Sunday, up come the chairs, tables and carpets—and in come the band and the folk dancing.
I meet Smith at the restaurant, and he walks me through the bustling kitchen. The kitchen overflows with produce—tomatoes, lettuces, onions, herbs, multicolored peppers, chives, garlic, berries, apples, pears—all of it brought in fresh from the farm. Buckets of freshly pulled carrots wait to be washed, heirloom tomatoes are lined up on trays, fresh-made sauces and tapenades are in the cooler and edible flowers await. I am surrounded by a priceless array of organic food, and am struck momentarily by an almost overwhelming case of kitchen envy that dissolves into admiration when Smith shows me where the kitchen scraps are collected into trash bags. These scraps are taken back up to the farm, mixed in with composted duck manure, and then turned back into the ground to feed the farm so that, as Smith puts it, the cycle is complete.
Along with running the farm and the restaurant, Smith is director of business and strategic development for Palm Drive Hospital, a volunteer position of utmost importance for this hospital, which is all too often teetering at the brink of extinction. He and Marler have, on more than one occasion, been personally responsible for helping to provide the funding necessary to keep Palm Drive open and functioning. Smith insists, "A hospital isn't just a corner store. You don't just let your hospital close!" To this end, the French Garden will host a fundraiser for Palm Drive Hospital on Sept. 30, providing the entire banquet free of charge, which means that 100 percent of the ticket price goes directly to saving the hospital.
As I drive home, it occurs to me that there must be something more to people who compost. On the surface, composting may seem like a small thing. After all, what is a little decomposition compared to the perilous nature of existence? But the facts are irrefutable, and once again I have been shown proof that composting is, indeed, indicative of so much more.
The Press Democrat
Sunday, December 3, 2006
French Garden Aptly Named
Menu based on fresh, organic vegetables, fruits from owners' farm
by Jeff Cox
When Dan Smith and Joan Marler bought their 30-acre farm west of Sebastopol more than 20 years ago, he ran a construction company and she taught dance and ancient mythology. They always had a garden and loved growing their own food.
At about the time they bought their farm, Smith created the Master Builder software program, which became, over the next two decades, the most popular software for small- and medium-sized contractors. It was subsequently purchased by Intuit, which gave him the resources to start farming organically.
Smith built his own barn, replete with housing for bats and barn owls and bluebirds. He refurbished a series of old tractors and built himself a precision seeder to sow vegetables. He plans to expand the year-round farming operation to 20 acres.
And then Sebastopol's Bistro Bella Vita, the gloriously upscale reincarnation of funky Marty's Top of the Hill, went belly up and Smith bought it. He renamed it The French Garden and his daughter, Sorrel Smith, an artist living in Paris, came over to do some of the excellent artwork that graces the restaurant.
The floors are covered with floral-patterned rugs, the dining room is now separated from the bar and brasserie area by glass panels and doors, and a wine rack capable of holding more than 600 bottles fills the north wall.
Customers get to partake of the fulfillment of Smith's dream of being a farmer. As much as possible, the vegetables are seasonal, local, just-harvested and organic. They are often, in fact, the stars of the plates, able to upstage the meat or fish portion of the entrees.
When the fruits are in season, they include sweet and pie cherries, red and black currants, apples, peaches, plums, prune plums and pears - plus the honey his bees make from the blossoms. It is Smith's intention to have his farm supply just about all the produce for the restaurant.
To read the entire review, click here
|
|
