Single Thread was first visited in Dec. 2018 when it had just been elevated to a 3 Michelin star rating.   The physical room has aged well and the service is still first-rate.  This trip we ‘shot the wad’ and stayed in one of their upstairs guest rooms.  There are 5 of them, all nice-sized, very modern and a good bit of food comes with your room in the form of snacks and breakfast, which was on par with dinner.  Chef Kyle Connaughton and wife/Head Farmer Katina bought the property and a 5-acre farm in 2014, opened the restaurant in 2016 and the farm now provides much of the produce served in the 10-course tasting menu.  The farm-to-table menu has major Asian influences to it and a seasonal theme – this one was about ‘Mid-Spring in Sonoma.’  Pairings are available as is an extensive wine list.   Nicely no supplements were offered for sale for the menu.  Everything was good but nothing crossed into the spectacular zone for me, which at this price it should.  It’s a restaurant that rates highly on many lists and one you should visit if you’re in to farm-to-table but bring your platinum card and plan to spend around 3 hours.

Set-Up

Food

We were greeted at the kitchen window in the entry room with a ginger and mint drink.  Then it’s off to your table.

 

Tables were pre-set with a large display featuring 9 bites for each of us and 3 shared plates on the top center.  The shared bites included turnip squash, abalone and pineapple strawberries.  The other bowls held scallops, sea bream, salmon, King mackerel, tofu with sesame, caviar, oysters and another fish.  It was a grand variety of tastes and textures.

 

There were 3 more additions to the array:  a tempura artichoke, grilled fish and malted potato with black trumpet mushrooms.  The smooth potatoes were rich and flavorful.  The fish tender, tasty and served with greens.  The bottom part of the artichoke was fried in the crisp tempura batter to a good end result.

 

Buri O-Tsukuri was Yellowtail served with a salted Sakura Flower (cherry blossom) vinaigrette.  The sashimi was from a 3-year-old fish and a jelly was made from some of the bones.  A bit of spiciness was in the dish but the jelly was tough to eat with chopsticks.  The leaves were from the Sakura plant and tasted like spinach.

 

Dungeness crab trio included a chawanmushi, glass dumpling and Komatsuna with Kasu chili.  The dumpling was filled with taro root and crab in a nice strongly crab flavored broth.  The wrapper was tender and thin with most of the crab flavor coming from the broth.  The leg was brushed with the chili and placed on the Komatsuna or Japanese mustard spinach which when combined was spicy and delicious.  The custard was smooth, warm and studded with crab bits.

 

Salanova with Mt. Tam (cheese) mousse, rhubarb, spring herbs and Saikyo miso was poached rhubarb in a salad on a layer of something sweet.   It was an interesting mix of flavors.  The crisp roll filled with the light cheese was very mild.

 

Black cod Fukkura-san with herbed croute, leeks, spring vegetables and citrus kosho sauce was first brought to the table in the cooking vessel.   When plated the amazingly tender fish was good with the various fresh vegetables and fine sauce.

 

Snap peas with yuba, hon wasabi and mint were layered in a cup served in a basket of greenery.  Some of the mint was a frozen layer with sweet chunks of something in the bottom.  The tender little peas on the top were lovely and I wish we’d just had a cup of them.

 

Masami wagyu was plated with white asparagus, morels, young almonds and green peppercorn jus.  The beef was from the Northern California Masami ranch known for its wagyu breeding program.   It was a ribeye cut. The beef and morel were good but the asparagus was bitter.

 

Takenoko Zakkokumai (bamboo shoot) was layered with Koshihikari rice, favas, dashi and Kinome.   It was fine.  Alongside was some tempura batter with duck liver parfait on the rock.  This was a tastier bite.

 

Sonoma Milk and honey with barley, beeswax and wildflowers was the first trio of desserts.  Gelato was one version and some beeswax was the little disk.  Madeleines were on the pedestal and coated with bee pollen.  This was a nice alternative to the usual fruit course.  The gelato was okay, the beeswax better. The madeleines were nice with something making a drippy sweetness.  The trio nicely showed off various levels of sweetness.

 

The second set of sweets were Wagashi with Meyer lemon and verjus blanc, sunchoke and chocolate, matsukaze and Albion strawberry and mochi and miso.  The egg was white chocolate with yuzu and filled with lemon juice.  It had too much of the rind flavor.  The red bowl had a strawberry jello on top of a cake in the bottom of the dish.  It was tasty.  A tray below held the sunchoke and chocolate ice cream sandwich.  The triangle was a gummy cold thing.