| South Sonoma County Food scene: Petaluma By Tom Samarati April 23, 2008 Petaluma California is celebrating its 150th birthday. This weekend (April 26 & 27, 2008) the Butter & Eggs parade and the Kentucky street Antique fair will draw 1,000’s of visitors. If you don’t live here you really should come see this event. It’s a peek into small town life that will amuse you, warm your heart a little and empty your wallet of some cash. You’ll enjoy it. I’ve lived in Sonoma County on & off since 1973. In the 70’s I lived in Santa Rosa. Sleepy enough as S.R. was back then, the occasional trip down the “101” to Petaluma to catch a $3 double feature at the Petaluma Plaza movie theater was entrance into a time-warp zone. Families who lived here for several generations still worked for the dominant agricultural industry. Most of the newly arrived citizens from San Francisco seemed staunchly determined to keep Petaluma small, rural, quiet, and almost hidden. My Petaluma friends all seemed a little more “earthy” than the Santa Rosa ones. Downtown Petaluma still has most of its 19th century buildings. The 1906 earthquake passed by without destroying the town. Successive Petaluma generations had neither the time, the interest, nor cash to tear down the old to replace with the questionably better new. So today, Petaluma is still a relatively small town of 47,000 people. It feels like a town, not just a place to sleep between the daily commute to your high paced job in San Francisco. I don’t live here; my house is over one valley to the west. I do work in Petaluma full time, and by dint of the 50 hours a week that I spend here I feel like I belong. Well, the locals at least seem gracious enough to tolerate my presence… The food scene part: Petaluma has become my favorite restaurant food town in Sonoma County. In the town of Sonoma (12 miles away) & Healdsburg (up north 25 minutes) there are finer establishments run by celebrity chefs with fancy menus that feature stratospheric price levels. Those restaurants cater to the wealthy wine tourists. I’ve eaten in a few of those Michelin star level places. I like them fine; I just don’t consider spending 2 days of my wages on a meal a good value. Santa Rosa to the north has almost 5 times the population of Petaluma, yet the restaurant scene in Santa Rosa in not bigger nor better. So Petaluma wins my endorsement & affection because there are so many family owned restaurants that serve good tasting meals for reasonable prices. I’ve reviewed dozens on them on Tastyr.com and Yelp.com For an almost complete inventory of Petaluma restaurants see this list by Petaluma.com . And the Petaluma downtown website does a good job covering local events. So, come on down this week-end for a family friendly event, there’s plenty of good places to eat. We’ll be waitin’ for ya’. |
