Tag Archives: Troubadour Le Diner

My Top 10 Eats of 2023

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(Wallpaper by @mydarlin_bk)
(Wallpaper by @mydarlin_bk)

This was the year I returned to mostly indoor dining. That in itself was a triumph after doing nothing but takeout through fraught 2020 and opting for outdoor dining primarily in skittish 2021 and 2022. How wonderful to lean ever closer to “normalcy” again.

This is my annual list of the most memorable bites or dishes I enjoyed in 2023. It pained me to leave off a few places that have since closed (San Francisco’s Afici that will forever spoil me for its clever use of Chinese scallion pancakes instead of the usual blini for caviar service) or tragically were destroyed in the devastating Maui wildfires (Pacifico On the Beach for its imaginative mahi mahi Wellington, and Papa’aina’s dazzling and so intentional tropical fruit plate).

It’s an important reminder to really savor and appreciate the restaurants, bakeries, and other establishments that enrich our lives so much. Without further adieu, here is my Top 10, in no particular order:

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Troubadour Bread’s Exquisite Metamorphosis From Day to Night

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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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