This James Beard award winner for Best New Restaurant in the United States in 2013 offers adventurous contemporary American food from Chef Stuart Brioza at reasonable prices in an informal setting. Service is both dim sum style with small plates off carts and “commandables” selected from the menu. Highlights included pork belly with plums in a Vietnamese vinaigrette, a guinea hen dumpling in an aromatic shitake broth, a spicy homemade kimchi with yuba bean curd noodles primavera, lamb with cumin, squid, padrons and grapes, and of course a fried “state bird” quail with “provisions” of poached onions and parmesan slices.

Chef Josh Skenes’ 2-Star Michelin restaurant is pushing “beyond the envelope” while incorporating local ingredients with wood fired cooking techniques. A seasonally changing 20 plus course “primitive yet refined” tasting menu provides one of the most unique food experiences in the U.S. today. Among our favorite courses were a lightly smoked trout with anise hyssop, roasted abalone with a liver and caper sauce, a spectacular sea urchin on river vegetable sourdough toast, wild red deer with eggplant and chocolate mint, dexter beef from a nine-year-old cow warmed over a bed of hay with bone marrow and mushrooms, and “fire in the sky” beets dehydrated and reconstituted with beet juice, wine and bone marrow.