Cox: Backyard Restaurant

Buttermilk onion rings at Forestville’s Backyard restaurant on Thursday, November 29, 2012. (Jeff Kan Lee/ The Press Democrat)

Many restaurants in Sonoma County talk the locavore talk, but few walk the walk as assiduously as Backyard, a new restaurant in Forestville that sources almost everything from local producers and tells you on its menu who they are.

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There’s some serious upside to this. It means that what you’ll be eating is in season. And that means that ingredients will be absolutely fresh and many will be grown organically. It also means the money you spend will go mostly to support not only the local restaurant, but also the local farmers, ranchers and fisherfolk whose produce takes you out of the mainstream of big agriculture and aquaculture and into the byways of rare and even unique varieties, where the most intriguing flavors are found.

It’s an enchanting idea. As it turned out, though, a couple of visits to Backyard provided disappointments as well as enchantments.

On the first visit, the room was almost full and the noise from patron chatter was so loud that we couldn’t hear one another across two and a half feet of table. On a second night, there were only nine quiet customers, but the sound system blasted non-stop Grateful Dead at an annoyingly high volume.

Service on the first visit was so slow that after an hour and 15 minutes we had only just finished the appetizers and it took another half hour for the entrees to arrive. Service on a second visit, when there were far fewer customers, was swift.

The kitchen is in the hands of Chef Daniel Kedan, working side by side with chefs Seth Harvey and Marianna Gardenhire. Chef Kedan worked at Peter Lowell’s in Sebastopol, where he forged relationships with local food purveyors, and these have persisted at Backyard. The 23 wines on the wine list are mostly local, too.

To give an example of this dedication to local growers, here’s the menu entry for the Soup of the Day ($7 * ½): “First Light Cinderella Squash, pickled Rainbow’s End apples, Nana Mae’s Apple Gastrique.” First Light Farm’s fields are located in Petaluma and Valley Ford. Rainbow’s End apple orchards are on Frati Lane in Sebastopol, and Nana Mae’s Organics is on Gravenstein Highway North in Sebastopol. The soup was sweetish and bland, without much discernible squash flavor.

Sausage flatbread

Sausage Flatbread ($10 **½) was much better. The sausage featured anise-y fennel seeds, ripe peppers, broccoli raab leaflets, and chunky shavings of rich, salty, parmesan cheese topping a thin-crust flatbread and served on a slab of wood.

Buttermilk Onion Rings ($5 ***) were just the right size, not too salty, not too oily, with a crunchy crust that was fun to eat and sweet onion interiors. Even yummier was Creamy Garlic Polenta ($5 ***)-not too garlicky but plenty cheesy and sweetly soft, almost soupy.

Chicken Pot Pie ($20 **½) wasn’t really a pot pie with a top crust, but more like a chicken stew with a surface dotted with spoonfuls of baked buttermilk-biscuit dough. Loads of chicken consorted with root veggies like potatoes, celery root, carrots, and parsnips in a thickened chicken broth. Very tasty.

Rib-eye Steak ($24 **) looked to be an eight or 10-ounce steak, beefy good but leaning more toward chewy than tender. Some crispy-surfaced purple potatoes were given a flavor boost with bacon crumbles, and stems of broccoli were enhanced with horseradish crème fraiche.

The second visit was on a Wednesday evening, when a family-style Fried Chicken Dinner ($32 **) is on the menu. Three pieces of chicken, brined for 12 hours, are dipped in buttermilk batter and deep-fried. For the chicken to be thoroughly cooked, it has to stay in the fat so long that the batter becomes overcooked – hard and dark brown. With the dinner comes a brilliant lettuce and persimmon salad dressed in a honey vinaigrette, sweet and tangy baked beans, roasted root vegetables, a potato dish flavored with porcini mushrooms and a great, warm, chocolate brownie with a scoop of candy-cap ice cream.

Because the ingredients are sourced locally and depend on current availability, the menu changes frequently.

To sum up: Good, local, in-season eats in a loud room.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for the Sonoma Living section. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.

Restaurant: Backyard, 6566 Front St., Forestville
When: Open Wednesdays through Mondays from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.
Reservations: Call 820-8445
Price range: Moderate to expensive, with entrees from $17 to $24
Website: www.backyardforestville.com

Wine list: **
Ambiance: **
Service: *½
Food: **½
Overall: **