Tag Archives: Chef Sean McGaughey

Troubadour Bread’s Exquisite Metamorphosis From Day to Night

In the daytime, you might get Italian salumi sandwiches. But at night, this stunner is on the menu at Troubadour.
In the daytime, you might get Italian salumi sandwiches. But at night, this stunner is on the menu at Troubadour.

By day, Healdsburg’s Troubadour Bread & Bistro is a sandwich shop, albeit an extraordinary one. But come night, it morphs stunningly into a veritable Michelin-starred dining experience.

Yes, the popular downtown cafe, where you can pick up a pumpkin seed dukkah-dusted chicken salad on heavenly bread baked by sister bakery Quail & Condor, transforms into Le Diner, four nights a week. That’s when it serves a French-California prix fixe worthy of blinding the radar of those discriminating inspectors.

That’s because there’s major talent behind this endeavor in the form of the husband-and-wife team that opened Troubadour and Quail & Condor, Executive Chef Sean McGaughey and Executive Pastry Chef Melissa Yanc McGaughey. They both worked previously at nearby Michelin three-starred SingleThread Farms & Restaurant. He was its chef de cuisine, and she was its hotel baker.

Look for the sign for Troubadour in downtown Healdsburg.
Look for the sign for Troubadour in downtown Healdsburg.

The couple also heads up the kitchen team at Molti Amici, founded by Jonny Barr, a former general manager at SingleThread, whose wife Tiffany Spurgeon, another SingleThread alum, runs front-of-house at Troubadour’s Le Diner.

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