Barndiva in Healdsburg, CA – update, dinner
Review date: March 2011
(previous review appended below)

We loved our first time at Barndiva, where we had a marvelous lunch on their patio in early May 2010. The food was simple, perfect, and a wonderful springtime meal. Right now it's too cold to be outside, and raining to boot. We were eager to see if Chef Ryan Fancher would continue to impress us.

The answer is....almost. Maybe. Sort of. 

The flaws were minor. But that they were there at all was disturbing. We ate a simple but amazing lunch last year, but this dinner menu was more complex, more involved – and thus, harder to pull off. And unfortunately, expectations for Mr. Fancher (an alumni of the French Laundry) are high. He's gotten a lot of press, and has to live up to it. 

Sweetbreads were on the menu, albeit 'crispy', which is a euphemism for battered and fried. This is, as our friends are aware, our least favorite way to prepare sweetbreads. We sincerely hope this fad passes while leaving our favorite offal on the menus. 

We ordered a plate to share, deciding that if it was good, we would order a second plate to split. Sadly, it wasn't good enough to request another. The serving, like all the recent ones, was very small – four pieces. They were deep-fried to the point of coming a little too close to overcooked – not hard, but definitely firmer than they should have been. They were served with small slices of crispy bacon that were tasty but too salty to be good companions, atop a bed of chopped leeks in one of the richest truffle butter sauces I've had in a long time. The fried quail egg was cute but superfluous. 

We liked it – we always like sweetbreads and buttered leeks, although not necessarily together. But we didn't love it so much after the first few mouthfuls. It was over-the-top rich, and the salt content was just a little too high, although not overwhelming. But these are very delicate ingredients (excluding the bacon) and especially with that high-fat content European butter, one needs to be careful how much the food is being salted.

Carlos ordered the lamb with a cassoulet gratin, and I ordered the white sea bass. Both were almost perfect – but not quite. And that 'not quite' was therefore more annoying than if the dishes had missed the mark widely. Our expectations here are higher than they would be for Doce Lunas or Girl & The Fig, because we've seen that Chef Fancher is capable of reaching those stratospheric levels that Boulevard, Cafe Beaujolais, and Five manage with amazing reliability.

The slices of lamb were blood rare, thin, and perfect. They were delectable with an amazing cilantro-garlic pesto and tomato marmalade. But the cassoulet gratin, made with lovely cannellini beans and sliced asparagus, was overly salty. The vegetables were salted, and then there was a thick browned crust of panko crumbs. 

Firstly, a lot of panko brands are on the salty side – as Carlos said, if you took away salt and sugar there wouldn't be any Japanese food. Second, they didn't quite work in this dish, although they were nicely browned. We're not sure why they didn't please us, but this attempt to do a no-fuss replication of the classic cassoulet crust didn't quite come off right. Traditionally the recipe calls for sprinkling the crumbs on top, baking until crisp, pushing them down into the beans, putting more crumbs on, baking it/pushing it down again, and repeating the cycle at least three times. It really can't be short-cutted, and panko's airy, crispy texture is wrong for this dish.

The waiter came out to tell me that the white sea bass (which is also known as corvina or king croaker) had been replaced by halibut. I like halibut even better, so this was fine with me – but when it came, the halibut was overcooked. Not badly, but halibut has very little fat. It was as if whoever cooked it was more accustomed to a thicker piece of fish, so it was sear-roasted about 30 seconds to 1 minute too long. Timing on fish is very split-second, and somebody blinked on this one. 

What annoyed me about the dish was the fish sat on a bed of mushrooms – Hen of the Wood variety – that were drowned in the same rich truffle butter as the leeks in the sweetbread dish.  Now, there are mushrooms that are vastly improved with butter. Button mushrooms and crimini, for example. Lobster mushrooms can work, too. But shiitake, enoki, matsutake, and Hen of the Woods (also known as maitake or mitake), aren't in this category. The high fat content blurs their subtle flavor and texture. 

The waiter raved about the red onion relish, which was a raw sweet pickle, finely chopped. It was good, but only in very tiny amounts with the other ingredients. Otherwise, it overwhelmed both mushrooms and fish. I left most of it as unneeded. If it had been a burger or something equally robust, I might have used more of it.

Because we weren't thrilled with the sweetbreads and told him the fish was too well done, he comped us our after-dinner cappuccinos. They came drowned in more foam than I've ever seen in a cup, and had the harsh taste of too much grounds in the drip.

Barndiva came very close in both vision and ingredients. But the selection of specific ingredients and execution slipped. So we judge them harshly, more so than Jeanty or Doce Lunas or La Salette, because we know they could be better than what they showed us tonight.

When the waiter asked me if I wanted the halibut redone, I told him no. Carlos asked me why, and I said, “90 people out of 100 might not have even noticed.” But Fancher is good enough that we expect him to not want to settle for a 90% rating. We are expecting that he wants to aim not for the lowest common denominator but the pickiest, most discerning diners. 

We are, IOW, expecting that his pride and ego will take precedence and not permit him to settle for being less than the best. Because this chef and his kitchen could be at that level, so easily. But he needs to hit it consistently, even if most of his customers are tourists who may never pass this way again. If Boulevard/San Francisco can do it, anybody can....but most don’t, and Mr. Fancher’s kitchen this time, didn’t.

One starter, two entrees, two beverages, with tip came to $110.

Barndiva (lunch)
231 Center St., Healdsburg
www.barndiva.com 
Review date:  May 2010

This lovely, light-filled restaurant is in a modern building designed to resemble a classic red barn, provided the barn was attached to a Frank Gehry contempory home. Part art gallery, part restaurant with an outdoor patio, it's open for lunch and dinner. The chef for the last year is Ryan Fancher, who has a good resume, having worked with Thomas Keller for three years at the French Laundry before moving to NYC to work at Per Se. 

It was a sunny but windy day, but the weather is warmer in Healdsburg than in Geyserville, so we risked sitting outside by the big modern fountain. It made for a pleasant dining experience, and the service was very attentive.

The bread arrives fresh and warm as two tear-apart, chewy but tender rolls, with sweet local butter sprinkled with sea salt. I don't often eat bread, although I love it, as I have a very slight gluten allergy. This bread was worth ignoring any allergy symptoms, being tender crumbed and nicely chewy of crust without being hard.

I shared my beet salad (yes, again) with Carlos. The goat cheese was deep fried balls, the beets were sweet and unpickled, and the greens were a delectable combination of baby endive and radicchio with some hydroponic watercress, in a tart citrus vinaigrette with candied walnuts and a single round of sweet tangerine. If they hadn't added just a touch too much dressing - you should not see dressing pooled at the bottom of the bowl - it would have been sublimely perfect. I loved the greens however, and as I normally don't like endive or radicchio, I was impressed by the skillful combinations in this dish.

Carlos had the beef sliders, which were little mini-cheeseburgers on brioche buns that were just the right texture and not too rich or sweet. There was a small salad of baby spinach and radish leaves, but instead of fries he opted for onion rings. There weren't many - maybe six modest rings - but the batter was flawless. Made with a combination of wheat and rice flour, perfectly deep-fried, the batter was crispy but absolutely light. Carlos thought they were the best onion rings he's ever had, and he's had a lot of them!

I had the fromage blanc gnocchi, panfried and served with asparagus, crispy prosciutto, and grated pecorino. This dish was a great showcase for Fancher's skill in training his kitchen staff. The prosciutto was perfectly crisped but not salty (it reminded me of the great prosciutto we ate at Estate in Sonoma) and the Pecorino, which is one of the saltiest cheeses around, was very finely grated and applied with a properly light hand. The sauce was merely EVOO, fromage blanc emulsion, sea salt and finely minced tarragon. Not a drop of cream, but it was so luscious I chased every morsel around with the rest of that yummy bread. It was a brilliant dish - hands-down the best primavera I've had anywhere.

We decided to skip dessert since we had our eye on a bakery we saw on the Square. As we love coffee, trying Flying Goat Coffee was also a must, and the two are close by one another. So we contented ourselves with iced tea and an Australian ginger beer (which Carlos liked a lot) with our meal.

We're impressed with Barndiva, and it jumps right into the top tier for us. Whenever we are in this area, we will definitely come back. We're eager to try dinner! Two starters (the sliders are in the appetizer section), one entree, two beverages, with tip came to $62.