Celebrating 20 years on July 14!!

On July 14 we will celebrate a Milestone it’s fair to say we never envisioned achieving - 20 years since the day we opened Barndiva. Over the past two decades we’ve been a local bluesy Bistro Bar, a fine dining Michelin Star Restaurant, hosted thousands of wedding related parties and significant community events, celebrated artists, and worked to strengthen the bonds between farmers and chefs (even helping create a web-site for them). We’ve worked through multiple fires and inventively and safely stayed open through the pandemic. We’ve had the joys of seeing many of our staff grow their families and cherished past employees go on to create wonderful businesses of their own.

It’s been an exhilarating, challenging, frustrating, marvelously engaging life… And on July 14, from 4-6, we're throwing a party to celebrate.

If you are able to come raise a glass with us we will fill it with new versions of the Barndiva cocktail classics, "On the Beach with Fidel" and "Steamy Windows," along with remarkable wines made by vintners who once upon a time polished a glass or two here at the start of their careers. The Chefs will be grilling and the soundtrack will be curated from a 20 year playlist of our favorites. And of course, floral arrangements galore from our farm and some of our slo flower friends.

We know this newsletter goes out to many who live far away, so if you cannot join us on the 14th, please know you have our gratitude. In some way, large or small, you have made this journey with us. Loyal customers, wedding families, farmers, vintners, artists, The City of Healdsburg, and most especially past and present employees - we simply wouldn’t be here without you.

It’s an elusive but significant connection we long to make over food and drink and when it works, that moment when everything comes together, it hits all the high notes of a diva moment . We have never stopped striving for that moment - but even when we miss, we’ve felt the love. Thank you.
 
Follow the link 🥳 to join us. The $10 ticket will go in support of a game changing new nonprofit that builds farm communities -- something that's always been close to our "Eat the View" hearts.
(100% will be donated to FARMpreneurs}  

We hope you can come! 

Of the thousands of images I’ve taken from the day we opened on July 14, 2004 of every aspect of this world we’ve created, at the end of the day what has meant the most to us as a family are the people we have worked alongside, through the good times and bad. This is a stressful industry, with hundreds of moving parts. It takes tremendous effort - physically and emotionally- to stay the course and be true to a vision, especially one as idiosyncratic as Barndiva’s. What has always pulled us over the swells when they got too high has been the dedications of relentless kitchen and front of house teams. When you see the joy of a food or drink moment that has truly landed, especially if that day is significant in a families life, you know why what you do matters.

This no means a complete rogues gallery, just some of the memorable moments we have shared on our way toward writing the barndiva story over the years.

---

Coming July 5th ...
Cocktailing in the Gardens begins!

We are excited to be expanding our wine and cocktail menus
so they can be enjoyed in the gardens even if you aren't joining us for dinner

View the expanded cocktail and wine menu, here!

Studio Barndiva is open for dining Thursday - Monday from 5pm.
Walk-ins are welcome, reservations are encouraged.  

We book parties! 8+? Contact us here.

---

travel towards a common paradise

We travel in spring not least because age has lent greater understanding of Lao Tzu’s message “to be worn out is to be renewed.” Returning to Stockholm and Copenhagen afforded us great art and food, while time spent with our family in London, Sussex, and Gloucestershire was filled to the brim with ambling walks and resonating talks through fields, meadows, and forests filled with wildflowers and animal life, alive with all manner of sentinent being.

This brief but highly recommendable list is to give thanks, and point vigorously towards the gardeners, writers, artists, chefs, farmers, hoteliers that gave us so much pleasure the past three weeks. We travel to renew friendships and make new ones, but really, we travel for beauty, in all its forms. It’s a huge gift to be alive. Travel is a magical handshake with the world just outside your door wherever you are, every minute of every day. The name of our two favorite art exhibits, The Time is Always Now, and Trust Memory over History, really says it all.

Wherever your plans to travel this season, Carpe Diem.

Tokyorsbar (Prunus x yedoensis) in bloom alongside Lake Brunnsviken, Stockholm. The Bergius Botanic gardens consists of large systematic sections, a wetland, an orchard, trees and shrubs from all over the world. It also holds Victoria House and the Edvard Anderson Conservatory.

Firelei Baëz’s Trust Time over Memory exhibit at the Louisiana Museum. Maps and fragments of book pages emerge from beneath sumptuous lavers of paint “reminiscent of persistent ghosts of the past, haunting the present moment.”

Stages in the life of a Liu Chao Yu Ye, Nelumbo Nucifera, white lotus variety, Edvard Anderson Conservatory, Bergianska Trädgarden (Bergius Botanic Garden), Stockholm.

Firelei Báez, ‘How to Slip Out Of Your Body Quietly’; Trust Memory Over History, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen

The standout art for us in London: The Time is Always Now, Artists Reframe the Black Figure, at the National Portrait Gallery, curated by Ekow Eshun, brilliantly showcasing the work of artists from the African diaspora.

In Copenhagen, three stunning exhibits are running alongside the permanent collection at the Louisiana Art Museum, a 30 minute drive from the city along the waterfront. This was art acutely attuned to this moment in history. We were able to spend the day at The Louisiana Museum, wandering from room to room, across the sculpture lawns, lunching beneath enormous Calder mobiles. I’ve long been a fan of @louisanamuseum. Exhibits included an extensive and stunning Chaïm Soutine exhibit of his magnificent portraits, and rooms filled with the mixed media art of Roni Horn spoke to the power of self reverential influences that now invade our waking and sleeping lives. Most thrilling was the premier European exhibition of Firelei Báez, an Dominican-American artist who overlays explosive color and figurative form on colonial maps which speak truth to power: “Confronting historical concepts we have for too long taken for granted.“

Amy Sherald portraits, and far right, Nathanial Mary Quinn, all at The Time is Always Now, National Portrait Gallery, London

Roni Horn, In Dialogue with the Film, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen

Roni Horn, The Detour of Identity, Poured Glass, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen

Chaim Soutine, The Groom, or The Bellboy, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen

Detail, Untitled (Drexciya) 2020, Firelei Báez

Writer Olivia Laing’s new book ‘The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise’ chronicles her response to the pandemic through the restoration of a walled garden in Suffolk which she wisely considers alongside an investigation of real and imagined paradises- a sub-text I find particularly relevant right now. Her talk with Internationally recognized garden designers ( and Daniel Carlson friends, lucky chap) Dan Pearson and Jonny Bruce was the initial reason for our visit to The Charleston Festival, a summer-long celebration of talks and workshops on all things gardening- historic, visionary and possible.

Opened this year by Queen Camilla, long a patron of The Charleston Trust (Bloomsbury in Sussex), it is held on the grounds of the home and gardens of that indefigable Bloomsbury couple Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. A guided tour of their house reveals every corner of the lives they supposedly once lived there, and shared intimately with their Bloomsbury Brethren - Virginia and Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, and as I learned on the tour, John Maynard Keynes, apparently looking out a second floor window to the pond when he conceived ‘Keynesian’ economic theory. That depressing tidit aside, you can’t help but love these guys, obsessed as they were with philosophical questions, literature in transition between the wars, and the coming impact of modern art. The rooms feel haunted, as well as curiously small for a couple with so many friends with such varied appetites. Virtually every surface is inlaid or overpainted, rooms are chock full with books and canvases. From 1907-1930 they talked, drank, painted, coupled, decoupled, and lived a life of the mind no longer imaginable.

The talk we’d come for, “An Ordinary Paradise,’ was guided by Jonny Bruce, followed by a short but pointed Q & A. I have not yet read The Garden Against Time, but Laing more than held her own with these two rising stars of the international gardening and landscape world. Both of their remarkable careers to date have been at the heart of an ongoing re-consideration of Gertrude Jekyll’s Magiot line between the formal and wild. It’s exciting to watch a fuller understanding of the possibilities that Fergus Garrett has been espousing for decades at Great Dixter, where both Jonny and Daniel Carlson, the guiding light of our journey here at barndiva farm, have spent formative years.

For information on Festival of the Garden which will take place 18-21 of July, go to Charleston.org.uk. Dan (@daniel.carlson.co) and Suzanna Grant are teaching a workshop Friday July 19th “Gardening for Beginners.”

Follow in real time the life of an ‘ordinary’ paradise, Dan Pearson’s farm in Devon, @digdelve; for his many impressive ongoing installations, which include recreating Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackvillle-Wests never completed Delos at Sissinghurst, @coyotewillow.

To keep up with Jonny Bruce, a remarkable writer and brilliant plant consultant we hope to see in Northern California again soon, (among his many exciting projects, he continues his guardianship of Derek Jarman’s garden at Prospect Cottage) @j.bruce.garden.

Preceeding our time at Charleston, Dan and I enjoyed a ramble through the private walled garden at Knepp Estate - the 3,500 acre re-wilding / love child / groundbreaking life project of Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree, which they embarked upon in the mid-1990’s. Its various parts are known as Knepp Wilding Estate, Knepp Castle, Knepp Safari (which makes sense given the size of the project, which controversially re- introduced rare breeds back into the land - you would need to go on safari to see it all).

Here’s the thing about re-wilding: even If your interest in gardening begins and ends with a consideration of no longer mowing your lawn, how we relate to all that’s alive and buzzing in nature - i.e. do we kill it in order to seemingly control it - is an essential conversation to be having right now. The Knepp garden restaurant under the direction of Chef Ned Burrell does wonderful things with the regenerative farm’s animals and produce. Wild range meats we bought at Knepp’s shop adjacent to the restaurant, which we cooked through and devoured at our VBRO house in Firle, was exquisite.

Given Englands historic and ongoing obsession with all things gardening, re-wilding is unsurprisingly a galvazing subject right now. Trying to envision any worldly paradise is no ordinary task, but considerations of Dante aside if we mere mortals are to seek it in this lifetime I am on team Olivia in believing it will be found - can only be found- in the ordinary.

@kneppwilding, @kneppwildingkitchen, @kneppregenfarms, @ned_burrell96, and of course @daniel.james.co for his passion, inspiration, and guidance.

All Images in Eat the View copywrite Jil Hales. Above, off the lanes near Lukka and Dan’s cottage near Tetbury, Gloucestershire; below, fields and gardens near our VRBO house in Firle, near Lewes, East Sussex. Thank you for sharing Anna - your gardens are lovely.

One of our favorite hotels in the world is Ett Hem, which means ‘at home in Swedish.’ All we can say to that is ‘as if.’ Ett Hem defines a quality of hospitality that extends to every piece of an experience you can have here through its art, design, stunning lighting, and ever present in the most delightful and delicious ways, food and drink. Ilse Crawford was the original inspiration for the design ethic back when the hotel was one building, but it is owner, Jeanette Mix, is the force of nature who ensures every vase is full, every candle lit, in room after room and gardens that overflow with moments of delight. The hotel is now two co-joined buildings with original windows and exteriors that date back to 1910. Situated in an elegant residential neighborhood, the truly impressive cross trained staff are unfailingly engaging, informative, and honestly dedicated to the mission. The tasting menu at Ett Hem proved to be our best meal in Stockholm, served in the heart of the open kitchen. @etthemstockholm

In Copenhagen the best dining was found at the Flo Campbell and Michelin Recommended Restaurant Frank, @restaurantfrankcp; @michelinguide; the most memorable at Marv & Ben celebrating life, love, and the joys of travel with new friends Robert and Sam.

We are still huge fans of Sessions Art Club in London, @sessionsartclub.

Hand carved ash vase by the artist, framer, and cabinet maker Emanuele Maria Marchi, a gift to Barndiva from the artist. He can be reached for commissions @ema.marchi

Arne Jacobsen’s Petrol Station, designed in 1938 for Texaco, as a new standard model. Now a class A historic monument, it was never put into production. Skovshoved at the northern outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark

Dining at Barndiva this summer

We have never been as proud of the food we are sourcing and serving than in this moment. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Challenges across the hospitality industry are still being felt acutely, and building kitchen and front of house teams that have the desire to work with great skill and integrity has been a considerable challenge. All of which raises the bar on what to deliver when guests come in search of a great - make that gorgeous - food and drink experience. We get it.

Enter Erik Anderson, for whom every challenge is met with a nod and a wink. He and Thomas Noonan, the guiding force behind our hospitality, have built kitchen and Front of House teams that have both the skill set and the desire to be a part of something truly special. Erik's food has an elegant focus of flavors, subtly of texture, glorious color. We will savor the memory of the food we are cooking this summer for a long time to come.

Neidy Venegas continues to create deliriously delicious desserts, and she has expanded her heritage bread program for both dinner and brunch.

Here then is a snapshot of some of our favorite dishes on the dinner menu right now. Reservations are accepted one month out, but the bar, under the direction of Scott Beattie, is now serving dinner on a drop-in without reservation, first come first serve basis.

Barndiva serves dinner Wednesday - Sunday, with a later reservations policy of 9:30 on Friday and Saturday.

We are also pleased to present the new barndiva brunch menu, below.

We hope to see you for a meal, or a cocktail soon. Eat the view!

Dishes above: Nijimasu Crudo horseradish, buttermilk, smoked trout roe, english cucumber; Charcoal Roasted Squab medjool dates, coco nibs; Mount Lassen Trout saffron nage, Jimmy nardello pepper, grilled baby fenne; ; Grilled Spanish Octopus, pimenton caramel, pepper relish, salsa verde;

Our wonderful in house pasta program continues.. on the left: Brentwood Corn Snail Shell Pasta w/ sunflower yogurt, fresno peppers, perilla. on the right: Egg Yolk Dumplings w/ peas, onions, bacon, radish

Roasted Chicken green asparagus, morels, vin jaune, petit baguette

Red Currant Curd chocolate tahini crust, glazed Preston peaches, ras el hanout ice cream

Big News…

While Barndiva will no longer be serving lunch on Wednesday and Thursday, we have expanded our hours for Brunch with an exciting and completely new Menu.

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Barndiva Brunch will be served from 11-2:30. This collaboration between Erik and Neidy have created a big C Comfort menu that is surprisingly fresh and nuanced. Never to be outdone, Scott has upped the ante on brunch cocktails and every week we will be offering a new short list of the best wines to drink on an afternoon. Reservations are required, but as with dinner the bar will be open for diners on a first come first serve basis. And of course, If there are cancellations in the gardens on any afternoon, we will try our best to accommodate your party.

---

all rights reserved Barndiva llc. Photography: Chad Surmick