Review: Terra Restaurant

Grilled Liberty Farm duck breast at Terra in St. Helena. (Jeff Kan Lee/PD)

When chef Hiro Sone is in San Francisco at Ame, his restaurant next to the Museum of Modern Art, chef Steve Joo heads the kitchen team at Terra, Sone’s and Lissa Doumani’s original restaurant in St. Helena.

PHOTO GALLERY: Terra Restaraunt in St. Helena

Since 1988, Terra has set a high standard for beautiful and delicious cuisine to partner with this region’s world-class wines. That doesn’t change, whether Chef Sone is at Terra or not. His ideas and spirit live through chef de cuisine Joo, who on a recent night produced one dish so triumphantly perfect that it ranks with some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. But on the same night, there was a dish that flopped like a fresh-caught pickerel in the bottom of a rowboat.

Gnocchi

First, let’s look at the triumph: Gnocchi (****). I give no prices because Terra’s dining room offers four courses for $67, five courses for $82, and six courses for $94, each course chosen by you from the menu of 22 choices. Our table included two couples from the Rotary Club of Santa Rosa West who submitted the top bid for this get-together at the club’s recent crab-feed fundraiser. We all decided on the four-course option. Five people at four courses each means we got to sample most of the menu.

The gnocchi were supreme, made with Bellwether Farms sheep-milk ricotta. This most excellent product results from heating whey drained off sheep-milk curds to 180 degrees F., adding salt and then vinegar, which precipitates out the ricotta solids. It gives the cloud-like gnocchi a sprightly, almost citrusy flavor. The gnocchi are served in a creamy soubise sauce, a sauce made by combining béchamel with charred spring-onion puree. Apple-green fava beans out of their jackets dot the soubise. A few black trumpet mushrooms remind you that heaven includes the forest floor, too.