Sonoma Wine Shop / La Bodega - Terrific Food and Wine

The last dinner we had in Sonoma Country prior to departing for Napa in October was at the Sonoma Wine Shop and La Bodega (http://www.sonomawineshop.com/). It is a wine club, food shop, and eatery combination. It has two locations - one on the Plaza in Sonoma and the one we went to near Sebastopol. Our Sonoma hosts are members of the club.

The Sebastopol eatery is terrific. The menu is very creative and every bite of our meal was delicious. Our hosts mentioned that they let you taste wines before you order them and that they will keep bringing different wines for you to try until you find one you like.

It is easy to see why our hosts think so highly of them, and why they generally get rave reviews on yelp.com (http://www.yelp.com/biz/sonoma-wine-shop-sonoma).

The wine shop specializes in wines that have small productions of 200-500 cases per year.

Interestingly, both the hostess who seated us and our waitress were immigrants from Israel. They were not related.

Like most of the other California restaurants we tried, they seem to use mostly local ingredients in their dishes.

My wife and I both started with a terrific salad with apples and caramelized walnuts, Point Reyes blue cheese, spring greens, and walnut vinaigrette for $8.

Then I had a delicious soup of french green lentils and porcini mushrooms with eastern spices and zhug sour cream for $8

My wife’s entrée was ravioli with caramelized artichoke hearts, Oregon morel mushrooms, Fiscalini cheddar, and local coast chanterelle wild mushroom cream for $23.

My entrée was Lasagna Bolognese with ground beef, Calabrese sausage, porcini mushrooms, kale and spinach bechamel for $18

Our wine was a wonderful 2007 David Noyes Dry Creek Zinfandel for $25!

The Sebastopol location where we had dinner is on the south side of Sebastopol at 2295 Gravenstein Highway South.

The shop in Sonoma is located at 412 First St. East facing Sonoma Plaza. They have a similar creative menu offering small plates of dishes to pair with wines. They have a couple of outside tables facing the plaza.