North Bay Woman

NORTH BAY WOMAN 19 fl avor at SingleThread part of what has made SingleThread's farm to table experience such a success. "What we love to do so much is bring the outdoors in, at SingleThread. That's the role our fl owers play along with the food that we grow," says Katina, tall, model- willowy, her arms tattooed with some of the prettiest fl ower and vine body art I've seen. "We want to bring really unique fl avors into the narrative of the menu. We want dining at Single- Thread to be a multi-sensory event. It's tactile, visual. You could defi nitely say it's a kind of theater," she says. Katina and her husband met and fell in love in high school in Southern California when they were only 15 and 16, respectively. They've been a couple ever since and have two grown daughters, both of whom have worked in SingleThread alongside their parents. Sharing a decades-long vision of wanting to grow food, cook it, serve it at the highest level of art, the Connaughtons traveled the world as a family. Katina worked and honed her understanding of the natural world on farming projects while Kyle cheffed in some of the world's most creative high-end restaurants. It was their four years in Northern Japan that most shaped both Connaughtons' culinary sensibilities. SingleThread refl ects their appreciation for the Japanese values of craft, culture, calmness and complexity, married to simplicity. Kyle's love of unusual fl avors, his fascination with umami (the fi fth sense of fl avor) and visual beauty, plays out in dinners that sweep you away with wonderful things to look at as well as eat. Yet it's a far cry from the formal multi-course pavannes of traditional white tablecloth fi ne dining. SingleThread, with its rich undressed wooden tables, earth tones, soothing music and multiple textures to see, feel and taste, is deeply relaxing throughout the two and a half to three hours it takes to dine here. "We tell all our staff this Japanese phrase we use which means, 'to read the air,'" Kyle says. "It means to really understand that each diner, whether solo or in a party, is going to have a different dynamic. And will have a different experience. Some guests will want to be talking to each other, or are short and to the point in dealing with us. Others want to hang out and talk, want to know every little detail of what we're doing. We're becoming really profi cient at dealing with those dynamics, which of course change each evening. That's part of the choreography of running this kind of restaurant. We've really worked the most on that." SingleThread's dining experience begins on the fourth fl oor, on an open patio with fi re pit, fountains and herb gardens and views of Healdsburg's surrounding hills. You SingleThread strives to grow, prepare and serve food at the highest level of art. – Photos by Garrett Rowland

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