Seat at the table

The restaurant, located in the Cornerstone marketplace, is packed with patrons eager to try the latest from a kitchen that sources directly from Sonoma’s Thank House Farms-further redefining farm-to-table, as the farm is literally outside the restaurant’s backdoor.

So, again, it’s a buzzy place on Sundays, And yet, Casey Thompson glides among the tables, laughing and chatting with patrons about favorite dishes. The chef, who became a fan favorite during the third season of Bravo’s Top Chef clearly loves what she’s doing these days, as she serves as consulting executive chef for Folktable and Sonoma’s Best Hospitality Group restaurants.

“If you’ve ever been to wine country you’ve probably driven past this place without ever having pulled in here. Thera re stores; there are gardens,” says Thompson. “there are a lot of restaurants that try to do that really well, but we are truly doing it from our farm. People think I am kidding, but our farmer truly farms across the street.

The bounty of sustainable farming practices reveals itself o Folktable’s recent seasonal ment which will be around through the fall. Favorites include the harvest salad (kales and chards, stone fruits, pistachio, ricotta salata, sumac dressing); grilled shishito pepper (black garlic vinaigrette, gomasio); smoky button mushrooms (tarragon butter); avocado and charred corn (crumbled feta cheese, chile tamulado, crisp tortillas); and grilled skirt steak in Angry Bear sauce blistered green bean, herb sala, tomato vinaigrette, white bean puree). For one of the menu’s new favorites, Thompson pulls out her phone and scrolls to a recent photo shoot. “Just look at this. It’s so gorgeous, fresh and different,” she says. It’s marinated watermelon. “We marinate it in Champagne vinegar, shallots and a little bit of sugar. And then we compress it in a bag and whip up some salty cheese—so it’s salty, sour, sweet, pungent, chunky watermelon. And then comes a little bit of mint and basil. It’s mind-blowing.”

Thompson is also keen on the annual BLT. “It has tomatoes that are unbelievably fresh and juicy, but the key is our primal cuts from our in-house pitmaster; it’s what we call extra-large bacon that’s cut super thick and cured perfectly,” she says. “We brush it with a tiny bit of barbecue sauce and then layer it on top of a basil mayonnaise. It’s a big open-face sandwich, with three huge slices of tomato. It’s covered with fresh basil from our garden, along with a cherry tomato oil I make.”

If dining at Folktable feels like eating lunch in a garden, there’s a good reason for this: you are. “We’re an attraction inside this little garden Disneyland,” says Thompson. “When people do come in. they feel that true farm-to-table sensibility, It’s just amazing”.