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Kyle and Katina Connaughton’s restaurant SingleThread, located in Healdsburg, CA, doesn’t have a menu or a rotating selection of signature dishes. But what the kitchen team does serve up are dishes inspired from their day-fresh farm’s harvest. The owners of SingleThread aren’t interested in becoming the most innovative restaurant in the world. On the contrary, they want to show the world how we can be in control of our own food system.
The farmer and the chef
Katina Connaughton is the farmer. Her husband, Kyle Connaughton, is the chef. Katina: “There’s a growing interest and awareness about the origin of our food. As a farmer, it is my responsibility to inspire people to connect more deeply with nature and show them how hard we work to produce food.” Kyle continues: “We work in perfect harmony. Katina is growing the food; I am cooking it and serving it in the restaurant.” The chef gives more credit to the team of farmers than to his own kitchen staff. Kyle: “As a chef, I have realized that it is not my responsibility to promote my own creativity in the kitchen. I want to give farmers the respect they deserve and make their hard work visible to our guests. Katina and her team spend months producing something that I only have in my kitchen for a few hours.”
The menu
And it’s true: the products are in the kitchen for only a few hours. Around 11 'o'clock in the morning the harvest comes in, and in the evening the ingredients are processed and served. There is no menu, and there are no signature dishes. The kitchen team creates a ten-course dinner with what they can create with the harvest of that day.
Michelin and World's 50 Best
It's not just Michelin that appreciates the work of the Connaughtons; for several years they have been listed in the World’s 50 Best, a yearly list of the premier restaurants worldwide. SingleThread is one of only three restaurants in the U.S. that are on this list.
World-class wine town Healdsburg
Sonoma County in Northern California also has an incredible reputation for world-class wines. The vineyards thrive during the day in the hot summer months, and love the typically cool evenings in the river valleys and along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Hot days and cool nights are a winning combination for incredible wines. A longstanding gem of this wine country is the town of Healdsburg, located about 70 miles north of San Francisco. Great wine regions pair well with dynamic restaurant scenes, which makes it no surprise that Healdsburg has emerged as one of the best cities for fine dining in California’s wine country. Many new restaurants and wine-themed upscale hotels have recently opened in town, and several more are currently under construction. A shining star within this dynamic culinary scene is SingleThread, which sits just a block off the main square in Healdsburg.
This atricle was created with the help of Food Inspiration's American correspondent Doug Koob.
