Last month, for my 40th birthday, my wife Jun and I traveled to the Sonoma wine country in California. We hadn’t been back to the Bay Area since our unforgettable wedding in Napa Valley in 2017, so we were very thrilled to be back. Our trip, however, started off with a major issue with our flight that got delayed by more than five hours. We were supposed to arrive in the San Francisco airport, pick up our rental car and drive straight to our hotel in Santa Rosa. Due to the flight delay, we missed our window to pick up the rental car and were forced to stay overnight at the airport (I still can’t forget the tiny nap room facility inside where we paid $175 just to sleep on a tiny single bed together for three hours) until the rental car office opened back up in the morning. Needless to say, our first day in Sonoma was a grueling one and we were beyond exhausted by the time we did a couple of wine tastings and were ready for dinner at The Matheson in Healdsburg. When we were planning our itinerary, I picked the restaurant, led by chef Dustin Valette who made a name for himself in the area for his eponymous restaurant Valette, thinking we would have a solid California cuisine with fresh, seasonal ingredients. We were overall underwhelmed by the experience, though.

The Matheson has different menu options with a la carte options and a six-course tasting menu at $125 per person. We chose the former option and ordered several dishes to share. The two starters we ordered (the beets accompanied by whipped chevre, pistachio and charred chicory and the wagyu beef tartare with jidori egg) weren’t too bad but not particularly memorable, either, to stand out from other beet or beef tartare we’d had in other restaurants before. On the other hand, the roasted half-duck was a major disappointment. Of course, Jun may have an impossibly high standard when it comes to duck dishes, but the texture of the meat was quite off and the gamey flavor was not perfectly contained. Additionally, it was hard to see how the meat would pair with salsa macha which, instead of enhancing the duck’s flavor, overwhelmed it instead. We were somewhat soothed by a dessert of apple, cinnamon crumble and brown sugar miso ice cream but the damage was already done at that point.

Getting a reservation at The Matheson, with its spacious dining room, won’t be too difficult so long as you book a few days in advance. Not surprisingly, the restaurant has an expansive wine list (there is also a “wine wall” with many different wines on tap) with a surprisingly global range instead of focusing on California. The upscale décor of the restaurant makes it a good place to hang out with friends and family in a no-frills environment. Yes, we were not in our best conditions to properly enjoy food on that night and we only sampled a limited number of dishes, but based on our experience I would probably recommend The Matheson as a place to grab seats at the trendy bar area and sample a few small dishes to complement whatever wine you sip.

KenScale: 7.0/10 (Jun’s Score: 6.75/10)

Address: 106 Matheson Street, Healdsburg, CA 95448

Website: https://www.thematheson.com/

Reservation via OpenTable