Bravas Tapas in Healdsburg, CA – update lunch
http://www.starkrestaurants.com/menus/bravas_lunchdinner.pdf
Review date: March 2014
(previous review appended below)

We first dined at Bravas Tapas in May 2013 during a Sonoma/Mendocino trip. Over the course of a week-long trip that saw us review twelve restaurants, we ranked Bravas and Hole In The Wall as the best meals. 

Bravas is one of the Stark Restaurants group, a mini-chain in Sonoma County. It's the newest and the best of the bunch. Whether it will stay that way is another matter. Stark restaurants have a reputation for starting strong but then fading when the kitchen staff inevitably turns over in a couple of years. We've dined at two of the other restaurants, Willi's and Stark Steakhouse, but although good we wouldn't be inclined to return to either.  

This trip to Sonoma County was aimed at introducing our friends Mel and Christie to the French restaurants out here. Unfortunately one of the best, K&L Bistro in Sebastopol, is currently closed for remodeling. Another previous favorite, Bistro 29 in Santa Rosa, wasn't that good the last time we visited, and is only open for dinner, not lunch. As this is a short trip, I wanted to maximize our dining time. So I thought of Bravas Tapas, whose menu is the same for lunch and dinner. 

Plus, it has that lovely outside patio, and the weather was promising to be just good enough to sit outside. With more people we could try a wide variety of dishes to really give the kitchen a workout. It would be the ideal opportunity to see if this restaurant was able to maintain its cooking chops.

We enjoy Bravas' outdoor patio – similar to, but bigger than Girl & Fig/Sonoma. Although the day started out foggy and cold, it warmed up fast once the fog receded, so we could sit outside in the shade (you gotta love living in CA in March!). I made an early lunch reservation, as I feel for tapas meals the attention one gets from the waitstaff is much better before they get slammed by the lunch rush. Dining usually runs late in the Wine Country, so lunch crowds arrive around 1 p.m. rather than noon.

Mel and Christie had never had tapas before. We started by ordering a small selection of four dishes that caught our eye, while we perused the rest of the menu more thoroughly. We began with:

Marcona almonds with rosemary and pimentón salt. These were excellent, the small, almost round Marconas. The bigger Marconas don't get quite so crisp – we like both types, they're just different. Mel doesn't like rosemary, so she picked off the tiny crisped leaves. 

Bacon-wrapped dates with goat cheese stuffing. These five nibbles came piled in an Old-fashioned glass. They were lightly drizzled with sweet balsamic and more Marcona almonds. The bacon was crisp, the dates and honey were sweet, and the goat cheese very soft. Our party was divided on these nibbles: Mel and I liked them, Carlos and Christie were less enthused. Christie was looking for more bacon flavor. I did think the balsamic was superfluous, there was no real need for it and the almonds (although they didn't have any rosemary, so Mel spooned them on to her plate and ate them!).

Goat cheese, golden onions, white truffle honey tostada. Tostadas are what most of us have learned to call crostini. We ended up ordering two of them – the goat cheese and the oxtail, described below. Both were double orders, as the tostada come two to an order. Each good-sized bread slice is very thin, grilled crisp, and generously topped. All of us enjoyed this dish. It's rather sweet from the caramelized onions and honey, but the goat cheese gives some much-needed depth.

Roasted beets with cinnamon. This was a dish we were very impressed with on our first visit. The dish has changed, and although still excellent, it was somewhat sloppier in presentation. The beets are now lightly pickled and there are fine shreds of cooked beets scattered around the quarters, with beet juices skimming the surface of the plate. The delightful dusting of cinnamon is more obscured by the pickling but thankfully still evident. The Idiazabal cheese shavings are thicker but somehow seem creamier, not the sharp-tasting, flaky semi-hardness of before. There were a lot of toasted walnut crumbles in the dish, probably a few too many. The dish has lost some of its elegant simplicity, but it's still a good one for beet lovers.

Rioja braised pulled oxtail, fennel slaw, aioli tostada. The four of us liked this tostada even more than the goat cheese and honey crisps. Mel and Christie had never had oxtail before, and they loved the rich beefy flavor. The fennel slaw was excellent, and even Carlos was fine with the slathering of aioli (it's his least favorite condiment, except on burgers). Spanish aioli is different than French mayonnaise; it has no eggs, being just a garlic and oil emulsion.

Cider braised chorizo and padron peppers. Also coming in a cup, these were cocktail-sized Spanish chorizo sausages with grilled padron peppers. Spanish chorizo is different than Mexican chorizo or the Portuguese linguiça: there's no cumin, the dried paprika powder is smoked, and the sausage texture is more to the dry side. The padrons were spicy little bites, and everybody loved the chorizo.

Dungeness crab Fideuá. Spanish paella is not always rice.  Fideuá is made of broken, fine noodles, cooked the same way, in a shallow paella pan with liquid gradually ladled in. There was a light tomato sauce with a good amount of fresh crab, and the traditional dollop of aioli in the middle. Mel is allergic to rice, so she loved being able to finally taste a paella. Carlos doesn't always enjoy Fideuá as much as I do, but he said this one was very good.

(A side note: David Tanis of the NY Times did a wonderful column and recipe for shellfish Fideus. As with many great ethnic recipes, it's all about the tastiest stock and taking the time with your technique. It's not complicated: if you've ever made Rice-a-Roni, it'll sound similar: http://www.nytimes.com/the-catalan-way. There's also an Epicurious recipe that simplifies it even more with just a partial simmer and then baking it, in a chorizo-and-mushroom version: http://www.epicurious.com/Chorizo-and-Mushroom-Fideua. Note that some folks warned against using pimentón in place of paprika powder, saying the smokiness overwhelmed the saffron. Use pimentón or saffron, but not both. It takes an expert hand to balance those two spices).

Braised Brussels sprouts with sobrasada sausage, tomatoes, Manchego cheese. This was good, but the least impressive of the dishes. All of us like Brussels sprouts, but this missed being a distinctive dish. Somehow each ingredient, although of very good quality, just didn't come together to make a greater whole. However, added to the Fideuá, Mel said it was excellent. The two tomato-based dishes had different tomato flavors and ended up complementing one another very well, and texturally it added interest to the Fideuá.

Sebastopol maitake mushrooms, goat cheese fluff. This came with a colorful array of red and green drizzles to set off the white of the goat cheese, which tasted as if it had been whipped with some ricotta or other fresh cheese. The maitake were brushed with olive oil and halved, then oven roasted just until tender. A drizzle of chunky fresh tomato sauce, just enough to add a bright color, and drizzles of a basil oil for a bright green, made a visually beautiful presentation. It's an excellent dish for mushroom lovers like us.

Skirt steak, red onion marmalade, Valdeón cheese. Again, this was a dish Carlos and I ordered on our first visit. This time it came topped with a row of soft, lightly pickled mustard seeds. We really liked the balance of the original dish, and it was interesting to see that balance maintained and even enhanced by the new addition. The steak, marmalade and cheese (which is similar to a bleu) are all strong flavors; they're well matched to one another when handled skillfully. Bravas definitely knows how to handle red meat; we agreed we would all like to return for dinner to try one of their Raciones, or shared meat plates. 

Bravas offers three sangrias by the glass: red, white, and Cava (Spanish sparkling wine, their equivalent of champagne). Christie ordered the red sangria, and Mel chose the Cava sangria. Both liked their individual choices. Mel's sangria was sweeter, and she prefers that whereas Christie liked the drier red sangria.

There definitely has been a change in Bravas' food. The slight but noticeable sauciness on the roasted beets turned out to be a consistent "look" on most of the dishes, which suggests the kitchen staff may have begun to turn over. Or it may be that management has chosen to make the portions bigger and "wetter". This is no doubt to please current tastes, but it isn't authentic and in fact, contradicts the tradition of Spanish cooking. The maitake mushrooms, for example, would traditionally be roasted with EVOO and a touch of sherry, but served without that colorful display of red and green sauces.

As Carlos said afterwards, Bravas is beginning to trend into a hybrid Spanish-American cuisine. This doesn't mean it's bad food – it's still very good food. But Spanish food, although gutsy and vibrant, isn't a sauce-oriented cuisine. Anyone who has gone to Venga Paella/Oakland or Zarzuela/SF, and then goes to Bravas, would feel the difference. Bravas originally did feel like Venga, with the dishes having that austere, sophisticated balance which celebrates the simplicity of two or three good flavors, instead of five or six on every plate.

Still, although Bravas remains one of the better restaurants in Sonoma County, there's a growing number of Spanish-style tapas restaurants in the SF Bay Area. It behooves Carlos and I to visit Coqueta/SF, Michael Chiarello's tapas restaurant; as well as Paul Canales' Duende/Oakland, to compare them to where Bravas is now.

All of us enjoyed Bravas. It is still an excellent restaurant, with outstanding service (and great Boomer music, LOL). It's one of the best places to come and sit with friends, or just relax outside on a nice day. You can try a lot of different dishes. Since the food is designed to come out fast, if you're still hungry you just order another couple of plates. All the food goes well with drinks, and most people would enjoy the sherry flights as much as we did.

Bravas's tapas could be thought of as a heartier version of Girl & The Fig/Sonoma Square. The food at lunch at G&F tends towards the light side, sometimes as much the size of the food portion as the concept of the dish. Bravas is more flexible: you can order more cold plates in hot weather, or heartier dishes when the temps are chilly. 

The quality here is excellent, the execution of the dishes is good. If the conception has deliberately lost a small amount of sophistication, the flavors remain at an above-average level. It offers expert service and pleasant surroundings. This is a mellow, relaxing place to while away a couple of hours in the Wine Country, especially with friends. We will drop Bravas to an A-minus, but they remain one of the best restaurants in Healdsburg and our preference as the best of the Stark specialty restaurants.

Four people, dinner: twelve tapas, two glasses of wine, two tasting flights, two beverages, with tip was $186.
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Sherry Tasting
We did two sherry flights. Bravas offers both a dry tasting and a sweet tasting. There are three sherries per flight, bartender's choice. We did the dry tasting with the tapas, and the sweet tasting afterwards. Even Carlos participated! Our sherries were:

Dry sherry tasting:
Hidalgo: La Gitana Manzanilla
Lightest in color, flavor and aroma. Very much a hot weather, chug-it-down lightweight; refreshing and easy to drink. If you have tried sherry and disliked the nuttiness that most have, the Hidalgo is much more neutral. It was excellent, for example, with the crab Fideuá, which is mildly flavored but still has a slight pimentón smokiness that would be overwhelmed by the sweetness of a Chenin Blanc or a flinty Sancerre white.

Valdespino: Tio Diego Amontillado
The dry (and upscale) version of that sweet "cream sherry" from Christian Brothers you once tried and grimaced over. Lovely golden color, fine bouquet, medium-light legs, smooth-as-silk drink. This is what you drink with the Marcona almonds and the maitake mushrooms, and maybe the goat cheese tostadas. Medium weight and solidly pleasing, smack in the middle between its partners.

Gonzales Byass: Leonor Palo Cortada
A nice golden brown, or maybe a brownish-gold. A surprising tartness to it, medium legs. A fuller body and even smoother going down than the Valdespino Amontillado. Carlos pointed out that this and the Valdespino were so smooth one could barely taste any alcohol – there was no harsh "burn" with either one. I suggested to Mel and Christie that they try this with the skirt steak, and both of them agreed it was wonderful with red meat. 

Summary: If you can only drink one sherry with food, the Valdespino is the best choice. By itself, on a hot day, the Hidalgo is the most refreshing but it won't stand up to anything strongly flavored. The Gonzales is ideal if you're eating spicy food or red meat – and you don't need to restrict yourself to Spanish-style cooking with this one. 

Sweet sherry tasting:
Valdespino: Isabella Cream Oloroso
Here's the upscale sweet wine to which Harvey's Bristol cream sherry is related. It has the depth, balance, and proper acid proportion to make this sherry nutty and pleasing, without being cloying. It's the difference between spiced nuts and honey-drenched nuts. Light raisin-y aroma.

Cesar Florido: Moscatel Especial
This surprised three of us with its strong orange flavor yet lacking the usual nutty aroma or flavor. Christie passed on trying it; she doesn't like orange-flavored alcohol in any form. Moscatel shows its flowery character here, and the color is a lovely warm light brown, with medium legs and a full raisin aroma.

Equipa Navazos: Pedro Ximinez
Super sweet, rich vanilla, medium brown color, extremely viscous legs. Christie described this as prunes mixed with sugar and fermented, an apt description of both taste and aroma. It's a heavy sweetness, without the leavening touch of acid that a German trockenbeeranauslase retains. 

Summary: Carlos loved both the Cesar and the Equipa; I liked the Valdespino and the Cesar. Christie preferred the Valdespino. Mel went with Carlos on the Cesar and the Equipa, suggesting the Equipa would be wonderful over ice cream.

Bravas Bar de Tapas
420 Center Street, Healdsburg, CA 
http://www.starkrestaurants.com/menus/bravas_menu.pdf
May 2013

I've written about the joys of serendipity before, when the unexpected is a positive experience. As the saying goes, sometimes you have to kiss (or chew, as the case may be) a lot of frogs before finding your prince.

After eight multi-day visits to Sonoma County over the last three years, our return list includes only a few restaurants: River's End, Le Bistro, Willow Wood, Bistro 29, La Salette, Hole In The Wall, Depot Hotel, and Yanni's Sausage Grill. 

None of these are Stark Group restaurants. They have five restaurants here in Sonoma County, each with a different theme: Monti's Rotisserie, Willi's Seafood & Raw Bar, Willi's Wine Bar, Stark's Seafood & Steakhouse, and the newest, Bravas Tapas. 

We have gone to Willi's Seafood/Healdsburg and Stark's Steakhouse/Santa Rosa. Although good, both had sufficient flaws to eliminate them from making our "A" list. 

As we needed a place for lunch before the drive to Mendocino, Bravas fit the bill even though our experience with Stark restaurants wasn't encouraging. It even made it onto SF Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer's Top 100 for 2013. No matter how much we all like to diss Bauer on occasion, there's no denying his influence in making a place popular. Still, the menu was interesting, the reviews were good, and the location was right on the way up Hwy 101. 

So we decided to chance it – and we're very glad we did.

Bravas is less than two short blocks to Healdsburg Square, on an opposite corner from where sibling Willi's Seafood sits. Bravas is a much prettier restaurant, however. It's a converted bungalow which holds a single table for six in a front room alcove. You first pass the bar area and then the inside dining room, which are on the right-hand side, with the left side being the kitchen. All the way out through the back door is a large patio area.

Because the weather was so nice, we decided to sit outside. The patio area is charming, reminiscent of the feel of Girl & Fig in Sonoma Square, but with slightly more space for tables. The mature landscaping of the neighbors' homes adds a great deal of charm (and shade) to the restaurant's patio, encircled by mature trees and even a 50' massive clump of towering bamboo.

Stark restaurants generally have good young servers, and Bravas is no exception. They know the menu and have had all the dishes, so their descriptions are accurate. They can be a little hesitant about giving their opinion, because they do serve a fair number of visitors who aren't familiar with California or Spanish food. Given a little encouragement, however, our server became more forthcoming and enthusiastic.

We started with two cold tapas: the tuna belly salad and the beet salad. The tuna was small, thin slices of gently cooked tuna – cooked thru, not just seared – with shreds of peeled celery, fennel, red onion. The green olive slices added a nice piquancy, and underneath some black paddlefish roe was roughly smeared into a paste with squid ink for a tasty dressing. The diner mixes it at the table. It might have looked strange, even unattractive with that inky dressing, but we found it refreshing, with that salty seafood flavor which added the same kind of umami depth that anchovies usually provide.

The beet salad almost didn't make it into our order choices, because the second ingredient listed was cinnamon. We're not cinnamon lovers. We like it, but we infinitely prefer true Ceylon cinnamon to hot Vietnamese cassia...and in either case we don't like a whole lot of it in anything. 

Thankfully, we were brave and ordered it anyway. The red beets were in good-sized chunks. They were roasted to sublime sweetness, then lightly dusted with real cinnamon – giving it more a gentle aroma than a strong flavor. There were small pieces of toasted walnuts that played off the beets, and small shreds of rinsed sweet onions soaked in the beet juices until they were the same color as the beets. There was no bite to the onions, just a vegetal flavor that like the walnuts, riffed off the aromatic sweet beets in a phenomenal combination. 

Over the beets were four small strips of Idiazábal cheese that were a great contrast to everything else. This is a hard cheese from unpasteurized sheep's milk, lightly smoked, with a good nutty flavor. It was wonderful with the beets.

We have eaten a lot of beet salads over the last five years, but it continues to surprise us how inventive chefs have been in creating new combinations with this once-unloved root vegetable. Bravas' version is masterful: there is no other word for it. Creative and perfectly executed, it is an absolute must if it is on the menu when you are there. 

Next came the chicken croquetas, or croquettes. Not the least of Bravas' charm is that once we gave our order to the waiter, he suggested bringing them in a certain order, then waited for our assent before leaving to place the order with the kitchen. When we were at Comal/Berkeley last week, I was a little peeved at the waiter for taking our order, announcing how he was going to bring the courses to us, then without waiting for our assent, zipped off to the kitchen.

Back to the food: the chicken croquettes were small round balls of breadcrumb-crusted delight, fried to a golden brown. The filling was creamed chicken, very mild, and the slight dusting of salt over the croquetas worked because the filling wasn't salty. The chicken isn't overcooked, and there is real cream used. These are tasty little nibbles. They'd probably match up well with the patatas bravas, the pimenton-spiked potatoes that are a Spanish tapas bar standard, but we didn't order any this time.

Next came the duck egg and the bacalao fritters. The duck egg – yes, a single egg – is fried sunnyside-up. The yolk is still runny but the white is a little crispy on the underside, which is never my favorite method, although Carlos is fine with it. The egg is generously sprinkled with chorizo crumbles, but this is the dry Spanish chorizo. Whatever brand they used lacked enough salt to be interesting. There are four slender halves of toasted baguette to eat with the egg. It's an okay dish, but needs a more interesting concept to be a success.

The bacalao fritters were formed into fat little stick shapes. There was a very generous amount of good quality fish used, but the idea of salting the fritters after frying doesn't work well here. Salt cod, no matter how well-rinsed, is always going to be salty. No additional salt is necessary beyond what is already in the breadcrumbs. I loved the garlic aioli, but Carlos was indifferent to it. Spanish aioli is just garlic and oil, made without egg yolks.

Next came the last two tapas: Skirt Steak with Red Onion Marmalade and Valdeón Cheese; and the Octopus with Fingerlings, Smoked Paprika, and Olives.

The skirt steak was almost as brilliant a creation as the beets. The sliced beef was a true rare, with a great crust on it. The onion jam was sweet as it always is, but the sweetness was in stark contrast to the cheese sauce, which had the flavor of a great bleu cheese with that same salty ripeness to it. Both of these flavors were almost shocking against the rich beefiness of the steak. All three foods had to be in the right amount to be in ideal balance against one another. These are strong flavors, so it could easily have ended up out of proportion, which would make the dish a jarring failure. That the kitchen pulled this off so well is a testament to its skill and precision.

The octopus was unusual both visually and taste-wise. For one thing, it was a single tentacle – a thick single tentacle. This was no bland little baby, but instead must have been a good-sized adult with foot-long arms. It was rubbed with olive oil and pimenton, grilled almost crispy, and served with a mix of different whole, unpitted olives.

This Octopus vulgaris had a strong, aggressive taste, with a tender but muscular texture. Carlos took the first bite, and when I asked him how he liked it, he paused before saying, "I don't think anyone who doesn't love octopus would enjoy this." When I tried some, I had to agree. If you are so-so on octopus, or have never had it before, this is not the dish you should pick to introduce yourself to cephalopods. 

The waiter was anxious to know what we thought of it, and told us it was pressure-cooked to tenderize it, then grilled. We love octopus, pimenton, and olives, so we enjoyed this dish a lot. But there is no compromising here on its flavor, texture, and appearance. It is a simple preparation for a sophisticated octopus-loving palate. If you don't fit that description, you will be so much happier with the fried anchovies or pickled mussels or scallops with Romesco sauce. Trust me on this one!

Dessert, as it always seems to be at Stark restaurants, is nothing more than Strauss vanilla ice cream with a bunch of toppings, all of which are extra. If you want to spend $12 for an indifferent ice cream sundae to end a great meal, please enjoy it. For some odd reason Bravas doesn't even have cappuccinos, only espressos and Americanos. We skipped the final course entirely and walked a half-block down to Flying Goat Coffee for one of their flawless cappuccinos. 

Outside of faltering on the meal-ending side, Bravas did a great job on our lunch – far better than our visit to Willi's/Healdsburg two years prior. At Bravas the food had great flavors, real creativity, careful execution and was well supported by good waitstaff, with a handsomely designed interior and outdoor patio.

Plus, we liked the music. It was the one thing we enjoyed at Stark's Steakhouse, and here at Bravas it was even better. We were listening to Roy Orbison, Moody Blues, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and John Cougar Mellencamp. Woohoo! 

Add in some classic Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and we might have found an excuse to stay another couple of hours.

But they didn't...so we didn't. We walked around the Square with our Flying Goat cappuccinos to stretch our legs a bit, then got back in the car to head north to Mendocino. Of the restaurants we've tried in Healdsburg over the last four years, we agreed that we enjoyed our meal at Bravas most of all. We hope they can keep it up, because we'd love to come back and try some of the other dishes on the menu.

One of the issues with Stark restaurants is that they start off strong, then slide a bit when the staff starts to turn over. Go now, before Bravas risks faltering like its siblings.

Two people, lunch: seven tapas, one beverage (their iced tea is Tejava in bottles), with tip was $101.