Much-Anticipated SingleThread Opens

Few restaurants this year have been as highly anticipated as SingleThread, a joint effort between Kyle and Katina Connaughton, who are both husband and wife and chef and farmer. Tonight, just before the close of 2016, the pair will serve their first meal at the restaurant in Healdsburg, a town in Sonoma.

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The restaurant will use produce grown by Katina on the restaurant's five-acre farm and rooftop garden, and transform it through Kyle's kaiseki menu, a style of Japanese cooking in which each course highlights a different cooking technique and seasonal ingredient.

"The foundation of kaiseki is that the menu is not the same as yesterday or tomorrow. [It focuses] on that day, that moment in nature. We use that structure and philosophy as applied to Sonoma," Kyle explains to the Wall Street Journal.

Kyle, who will offer a vegetarian, pescatarian and omnivore variation on the theme, honed his skills working for Heston Blumenthal and acclaimed French chef Michel Bras at Bras's restaurant, Toya Japon, in Hokkaido.

He and Katina, who started dating in high school, share a deep love for Japan, and there are nods to the country in more than just the food. Dinner is served on plates made by an eighth-generation Japanese pottery family, and at the restaurant's adjoining inn, the pair aim to put omotenashi, a philosophy of Japanese hospitality where every need is anticipated and fulfilled, to good use.

That seems to carry over to the restaurant, as each meal ends with little packages that include the evening's menu and seeds from the farm to grow at home.

Want to see how the team got ready? Check out this video:

SingleThread Farms-Restaurant-Inn from SingleThread Farms on Vimeo.