The Fig Cafe & Wine Bar

The Fig Cafe opened in Glen Ellen in 2000 as Sondra Bernstein's second act — the casual sister to her Sonoma Plaza flagship, The Girl and the Fig, which had been transforming wine-country dining in the valley since 1997. Bernstein's idea was simple: take the Rhône-centric wine programme and French country cooking that had made The Girl and the Fig a wine-country institution, strip away the reservation-only tension, remove the corkage charge, and open it in a converted Arnold Drive building where the locals could actually eat there on a Tuesday. The result became, over two decades, one of the most beloved neighbourhood restaurants in Sonoma Valley.

In spring 2024, the restaurant was transformed. Bernstein and longtime business partner John Toulze reopened the Glen Ellen space as Poppy — the same team, the same building, a menu that leans more explicitly into classic Provençal cooking remembered from their 25 years of trips to the south of France. Cassoulet. Escargots. Moules marinière. Duck-liver terrine. Coquilles Saint-Jacques. Roasted rabbit. Chicken with wild mushrooms. The Rhône wine list remains the defining list of the room, and the corkage-free policy is, as before, the reason your best bottle from a morning tasting-room visit earns its evening stage here rather than in a more rigid dining room up the road.

The room retains the Fig's essential character: a low-slung bistro, weather-beaten patio, blackboards on the walls, the kind of lighting that makes everyone look a little better by the second glass. Staff have stayed on; several have been pouring wine for twenty years. The regulars who worried about the transition reported, after the first month, that the soul was intact. This is, in the end, how a continuity business works — the sign changes, the people do not, and the cooking evolves in a direction the owners were always heading.

For a first date that wants to skip the interview atmosphere of white tablecloth restaurants, or for a solo traveller who wants to read at the bar while a plate of moules is assembled two seats away, there is no better argument in Glen Ellen. Bring the bottle you bought at Benziger this morning. They will happily pour it into glasses that cost more than the corkage another restaurant would charge you.