It’s always an occasion when a “Top Chef” champion opens a new restaurant. Even more so when it’s Stephanie Izard, arguably one of the most successful winners to emerge from the Bravo TV show’s 22 seasons (and the first woman to win). And especially when she chooses to do so in Silicon Valley.

At the end of March, the James Beard Award-winning chef opened Valley Goat at the new Treehouse Hotel Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale.

After opening her original Girl & The Goat in Chicago in 2010, Izard was named Food & Wine “Best Chef” in 2011. When she opened Girl & The Goat in Los Angeles in 2021, she gave up the Windy City for Tinsel Town, moving there with her family. Valley Goat is her first Northern California restaurant, and what she told me is the first of several planned restaurants she will open with Treehouse Hotels.

Quirky and playful, the hotel is like a glamping playground gone wild for Gen Z. There’s a beer garden with picnic tables set with Jenga towers, rubber duckie floats in the pool, and a fence cleverly painted with tree trunks to blend in and create the look of a lush forest with real trees.

In the reception area, there’s a VW Bug covered in moss and blooms that gives new meaning to “flower power.” In the expansive outdoor area, there’s even a giant beer pong set sure to level anyone after the first round.

Having enjoyed dining at her Los Angeles restaurant, I couldn’t have been more stoked when I was invited in as a guest of the Sunnyvale restaurant last week.

The decor is reminiscent of the Los Angeles one with its profusion of plants and greenery. It can get noisy, owing to the high ceilings, and hard surfaces that include the striking green- and white-tile dining tables.

The menu is similar to the Los Angeles outpost. The flavors are big and bold, and high in acid. In fact, it pays to be a pickle fan because they make their way on to many of the dishes in the form of vinegary red onions and jalapeno slices.

Even the biscuits ($14) get accompanied with a ramekin of perky pickle relish, as well as another of nutty tasting sesame butter. Golden with crispy layers, the biscuits hit the spot. They are more like biscuit nuggets, petite in size, with the four pieces on the plate equivalent in size to cutting one jumbo biscuit into quarters.

Settle in with a Boomtown Bad Hombre Mexican Lager ($9) produced in Los Angeles or a refreshing, citrusy Valley Spritz ($18) made with kumquat brine, lillet blanc, suze, and club soda for a floral, slightly vegetal sip.

Unlike the Los Angeles and Chicago restaurants that feature three goat-meat dishes on their menus, there is only one at the Sunnyvale restaurant: goat empanadas ($18). And what a dish it is. Izard’s restaurants have a sure way with laminated dough and it shows again in these cracklingly crisp pastry hand pies filled with warmly seasoned ground goat meat. They’re served with a lime-y, cilantro sauce.

Large, plump roasted oysters ($18) don’t necessarily need crunchy “biscuit” crackers to be enjoyed. However, when you’re in a place that does justice to anything made with dough, you relish having them as part of the plate. You’re instructed to slide the scallion-topped oyster out of its shell onto a cracker to enjoy. It adds a buttery textural crunch to the warm, supple oyster that’s been bathed in sausage butter for added umami.

Lightly pickled kumquat peels brightened the hamachi poke ($24) that gained depth from fermented tofu and browned goat butter, and pops of crunch from tempura pearls.

“Disco fries” ($19) are like poutine’s crazy cousin, and the perfect nosh for sitting at the bar with a friend over beers. This mountain of thin, nicely fried fries is piled with crisp pork sausage bits, pickled jalapeno, pickled red onions, cotija cheese, and coconut caramel. It could be a meal unto itself, if you let it.

Having much enjoyed the sticky pork shank ($44) at Izard’s Los Angeles restaurant, we decided to try something different from the larger format dishes this time around. Thai-style, whole, wood-fired branzino ($38) was wonderfully moist with the perfect amount of smokiness. It was strewn completely overtop with sweet and sour pickled peppers and onions, as well as bean sprouts.

This was the one dish in which I wish the pickles had been dialed back because they rather smothered the pure taste of the fish. I ended up taking a bite of the fish solo, followed by a chaser of pickles, in order to really enjoy the branzino’s flavor first and foremost.

For dessert, don’t miss the sticky toffee plantain cake ($16). Warm and moist, it’s like a lighter, less cloying sticky toffee pudding. Drizzled with rum toffee sauce, the cake has a touch of salt and a garnish of pineapple chunks to balance the sweetness. It’s served with banana goat milk ice cream and thin, crunchy chocolate plantain chips.

In Silicon Valley, where computers, cell phones, and self-driving cars dominate, a goat definitely makes a fun new addition.

More: My Dinner at Girl & The Goat in Los Angeles