Single Thread – the food

I am a lucky boy…

I have been very lucky in my life to have dined at some of the greatest restaurants in the world. On my 30th birthday, Isabelle took me to the legendary The Fat Duck, which was just mind-blowing in terms of its culinary wizardy. On my 31st birthday, she took me to Noma, which completely made me re-examine what I am looking for in a dining experience. When it came to planning my 40th in California, I knew that we were going to be in wine country for it and so left the planning of the actual celebration to her. I’ll be honest, I was expecting that we would head to the French Laundry. I mean, it’s just classic – it’s where you go if you want a legendary meal in California, right? Isabelle had other ideas – she said she’d booked a stay at a place in Healdsburg in Sonoma called SingleThread. I hadn’t heard of it, but trusted her judgement. She is never wrong about these kinds of thing.

Reader – she was not wrong. Dining at SingleThread was the greatest culinary experience in my life to date.

I am going to write two blogs about my experience at SingleThread. The first [this one] will be on the food that we ate. It will be quite short and somewhat lacking in detail because, quite frankly, it was overwhelming. Normally, I write about each course in turn, but I feel I both lack the technical capability to do it justice – the complexity of the plates, the precision, elegance, and beauty of what was produced, I do not feel I can do adequately do credit to. In addition, if I’m very honest, I wanted to just enjoy the experience. I wanted to be in the moment and just savour it. Instead, I will attempt in this post to describe what the menu was like and the impression that the dining experience left on me.

However, I will also write a second blog – about the wines that I sampled at this experience. When we were asked about a wine pairing option to go with a meal, we were offered a wine flight that was called “Unforgettable”. We were promised that the wines served would each be ‘bucket list’ wines – each one worth writing home about. Stay tuned if you want to read about these…!

“If I tell you that my wine flight, which was not the ‘unforgettable’ one featured Chateau Y’quem 2015 (ex-Imperial) then that should give you a sense of what Tim had to look forward to on his!”

Isabelle

The SingleThread ethos…

The SingleThread philosophy is based on a combination of different aspects. Firstly, and most importantly, there is a drive to use local produce derived from their farm in Dry Creek Valley, which is just a few miles outside of Healdsburg. There is a married couple at the helm – Kyle and Katina Connaughton. It is telling of the importance that they attach to the farming aspect of what they do, that Katina is specified on their website as ‘Owner – Head Farmer’. On their farm they focus on producing seasonal crops in a manner that is sustainable, which is very much in tune with the zeitgeist (and rightly so, may I add).

The second aspect that comes through very clearly is Owner – Head Chef Kyle’s influence from the time that he has spent in Japan. Japanese culture and culinary matters are abundant throughout the meal. More on this later as we look at the food.

As an aside, Chef Kyle also worked previously at The Fat Duck – so I thought it a nice little piece of symmetry that I spent my 30th at The Fat Duck and my 40th at SingleThread…!

The SingleThread dining experience

Onto the dining experience. As a guest staying at their inn (somewhat of a misnomer: ‘stylish, luxurious townhouse, with state of the art mod cons’, more-like) we were able to take a glass of wine on their roof terrace and enjoy sunset before heading down to the meal. After our glass of wine, we headed down to the main restaurant. Whilst we waited for our table to be ready we were given a given a welcoming glass of tea to sip and cleanse our palate, whilst we got a glimpse through into the kitchen, which was already bustling with activity – yet looked calm, collected and unbelievably well organised.

On being seated we were asked by a waiter what water we wanted with our meal. ‘Sparkling’, we responded. As we were still talking to the waiter about the menu two different waiters emerged from nowhere and simultaneously poured the sparkling water into our glasses – all without a word being uttered. It was like magic – how did they know? I loved it. So much so, that I had to try and figure it out! By watching other tables I did work out how they did it, but I won’t ruin the surprise – for me it just showed the attention to the detail that the restaurant wanted to go through to create a wonderfully, effortless sense of dining. It might seem like a small thing, but it left a real impression on me.

The food!

To start our meal we were given the usual ‘snacks’ to pique the stomach’s interest. These snacks though were presented in the most beautiful way imaginable. There were numerous little plates set up around a decorative table setting that had gorgeous flowers arranged tastefully to complement these diminutive morsels of deliciousness. There was tofu in there, elements of sushi, and several other items. Each of them just perfect. Each of them worthy of a whole piece being written about them. And this was only the appetiser. You can understand why I felt that I was going to be unable to keep up with this!

In Singlethread everyone eats from a 10 course seasonal tasting menu. Ours was called ‘early autumn in Sonoma’.

The menu that we tasted was as follows:

• Spot Prawn Bisque (with roasted heirloom tomato, silken tofu, and yuzu kosho)
• Shima-Aji (with tomato, lemon verbena, cucumber and ice plant)
• Aubergine Takiawase (with black sesame, yuba, grape, and dengaku miso)
• Kinmedai (with summer squash, goma mochi, and zucchini herb purée)
• Green Strawberry (with matcha, olive oil, and farm herbs)
• Duclair Duck (with apple, kohlrabi, and burgundy truffle)
• Luna Rice (with matsuake, burdock, and short rib)
• Albion Strawberry (with fig leaf, toasted oat, and kasu)
• Wagashi (with yuzu and cucumber, strawberry and kinako, passion fruit and melon, fig and vanilla)

As you can tell, there is a lot in this menu that isn’t immediately apparent to someone not steeped in Japanese cuisine. As each course arrived the waiter would outline not just the ingredients, but aspects of the various cooking techniques. I’ll be honest we were overwhelmed with information – it came at us thick and fast. It was a lot to take in for each course. The complexity and precision of the cooking and the presentation was so high that, frankly, I just went with it. I didn’t even attempt to take notes on the courses. However, on reflection afterwards a few thoughts stayed with me.

Firstly, the obvious Japanese influence was fascinating. Some times these things can feel contrived, but at SingleThread it was anything but. The selection of certain authentic Japanese serving vessels to present dishes demonstrated how closely chef Kyle wanted to be with his representation of the culinary heritage that meant so much to him. I mentioned earlier that we were staying at their inn, the next morning we went for their Japanese breakfast, which was absolutely superb and again showed their commitment to celebrating Japanese culture and cuisine.

Secondly, the respect for the quality and heritage of the ingredients was incredible. So much of the restaurant’s produce was sourced from their own farm, which in this era of focus on carbon miles for food production meant that you could eat safe in the knowledge that the produce you were consuming was coming from very close by. In addition, this contributed to a real sense of a menu that was not just influenced by seasonality, but dictated by it. I really got that sense from the first two of our main courses – they showcased the last of the season’s tomatoes and boy were they packed with delicious flavour!

The below photo gallery gives you an indication of the beautiful food that we were grateful to try.

I hope this post gives you a suitable sense of what a tremendous dining experience it was at SingleThread. Stay tuned for details of all the wine that we tried…!

Lastly, thank you a million times over to Isabelle for treating me to this incredible experience. What on earth are we going to do for my 50th…?!