Spoonful of Genius
In Northern California, winter heralds the time for cozy sweaters, down vests and hefty stockpots of homemade soup. Arguably, there’s no better way to turn up the heat than by cooking up these signature soup recipes from five of our region’s most celebrated chefs.
In Vietnam, it’s the quintessential breakfast or lunch or cure-all for most any ailment. The nourishing beef noodle soup known as pho may seem humble—yet, it’s also incredibly precise.
Order matters, explains Charles Phan, the James Beard Award–winning chef who has been serving both beef and chicken pho since opening his original Slanted Door in San Francisco’s Mission District in 1995.
With pho, it’s imperative that the noodles first go into a warmed bowl, followed by thin slices of raw beef. Hot broth is then ladled over, leaving the meat rosy and rare. Contrary to popular belief, hoisin or oyster sauce is never added to the broth directly. Instead, the condiments are squirted into a separate dish into which to dip the meat. Fresh herbs and mung bean sprouts don’t get added to the bowl all at once, either, but a little at a time, so that their fragrance and textures aren’t obliterated.
Grass-fed beef bones are used in Vietnam to give the broth a robust flavor. Redolent of star anise, cinnamon and clove, it’s an aroma that sends Phan back to his childhood, when his family lived next door to a pho shop. Back then, most homes lacked refrigeration, so it was easier to go out for a bowl than to make it.
“Even now, when I go back to Vietnam, pho is the first thing I have in the morning after landing,” he says. “It’s a taste of home.”
At any given lunchtime at the Slanted Door in Napa, a quarter of diners will be slurping up the beef or chicken version. Before the pandemic, his commissary kitchen churned out 200 gallons of broth daily. Demand is expected to near that again in 2025 when he reopens the Slanted Door at its original Valencia Street location in San Francisco.
Diners still often ask for pho at dinnertime but Phan is adamant that it’s strictly a daytime dish. Make it at home, though, and enjoy it any time the craving strikes.
Get the recipe: Charles Phan's Pho Bo
Loveski Deli’s name may be steeped in tradition but its matzoh ball soup takes a few decided liberties.
For one, the scratch-made chicken broth chockablock with vegetables and pillowy dumplings gets a flourish of extra-virgin olive oil drizzled over the top of each bowl for added silky richness. For another, the self-proclaimed “Jew-ish” deli offers an unexpected second version of this soup: Thai-style with fragrant lemongrass, ginger, garlic, shallots, fish sauce and serrano chile.
When Chef Christopher Kostow opened this spot at Napa’s Oxbow Public Market in 2022, it was a way for him to reclaim his family’s surname, which pre–Ellis Island was Koslovski.
It also presented an opportunity for Kostow—the youngest American-born chef to garner three Michelin stars when he helmed the Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena—to put a modern craftsmanship spin on classic Jewish deli food, which he’s no stranger to after having grown up in a Jewish household in a suburb of Chicago.
“I could lie to you and tell you my mother made matzoh ball soup,” he says with a laugh. “But we had a deli in town, where’d we get it. It was the end all and be all.”
Popular year-round, Loveski’s two soup versions share the same base of broth and vegetables, and feature two or three fluffy matzoh balls per serving. But while the classic is infused with caraway, the Asian-influenced one instead gets an exhilarating Thai herb paste.
That unconventional version, “Den’s Way,” honors his mother-in-law Den Lohman, who is of Thai heritage. It’s also the only version that his wife, Martina Kostow, with whom he co-owns Loveski in Napa and Larkspur, plus the Charter Oak in St. Helena, will eat.
“I think Den is bemused, but happy with it,” says Kostow. “It’s not a chef-y dish—just really yummy and a little different.”
Get the recipe: Chef Christopher Kostow's Matzoh Ball Soup
From its opening day in Geyserville in 1936, one item has never left the menu at Catelli’s: a hearty minestrone soup brimming with cannellini, garbanzo and kidney beans, along with a raft of vegetables.
Even now, diners eagerly spoon up hundreds of bowls of this Italian classic each week, says Dominica Catelli, the restaurant’s third-generation chef-owner since 2010.
The longevity of “Nonie’s Minestrone” is even more remarkable when you realize that when Domenica took over the restaurant established by her late grandparents, none of the original recipes had ever been written down. To reconstruct them, she relied on her taste memories, honed from practically growing up inside that restaurant. In fact, her mother went into labor with Domenica while working there. After she was born, her parents hung a swing from the rafters, where they would place her for safekeeping while they worked. As a teen, she’d hang out at the restaurant after school, helping servers toss salads while absorbing everything going on.
She made only two changes to the soup: eliminating the chicken broth and making the Parmesan garnish optional, so that vegans can enjoy it, too.
“People who have been coming here for years—including a guy who is over 100 years old—vouch for it tasting the same,” she says proudly.
It wasn’t a given that Domenica, a former private chef for Oprah, would take over the restaurant that was originally called The Rex, after a sign-maker gave her grandparents the sign for free when they couldn’t afford a custom one. But her father, who grew up living upstairs from the restaurant, convinced her to give it a go.
“I have such gratitude for the vision my grandmother had,” she says. “This place has been a part of my whole life and my second home. It has been for a lot of people.”
Get the recipe: Chef Domenica Catelli's Nonie's Minestrone
When it debuted on the menu last year at Nick’s Cove in Tomales Bay, Rhode Island clam chowder left more than a few diners befuddled. In contrast to the ubiquitous creamy New England version, it was thin, dairy-free and shockingly clear.
“It was a hard sell at first. People complained nonstop,” recalls Chris Cosentino, former consulting chef for the nearly century-old waterfront establishment. “Everybody was calling it the ‘not normal chowder,’ which is ironic.”
Cosentino should know, having grown up in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, right on the Sakonnet Bay, a setting much like Tomales Bay. For him, it was a no-brainer to add it to the menu, having grown up in New England, where, yes, both those types of chowders originated, along with a third, the tomato-based Manhattan-style. As Cosentino recounts, the original clam chowder was actually a clear broth. Only much later were hot milk or cream, once considered luxury ingredients, introduced. Even then, they were served on the side in little carafes to add sparingly.
One spoonful is enough to send Cosentino back to his childhood when he and his cousins would go clamming, and their parents and grandparents would turn that bounty into stuffed clams and the clear clam chowder.
Cosentino’s consulting term came to an end this summer, but not before the Rhode Island clam chowder gained a considerable fanbase. Before leaving, Cosentino helped recruit chef Matt Alfus, formerly of Michelin-starred Schwa in Chicago; the Alinea Group’s Michelin-starred Next in Chicago; and nearby Hog Island Oyster Co. in Marshall, to be Nick’s executive chef.
Dairy- and gluten-free, the Rhode Island version remains on Nick’s menu, which couldn’t please Cosentino more.
“That style is my preference,” he says. “I grew up eating clams on the half shell raw. That flavor is very pronounced and special. That’s what the clear gives you. It’s a purer flavor with that pungent rich umami bomb from the clam yet still light and refreshing.”
Get the recipe: Chef Chris Cosentino's Rhode Island Clam Chowder
Creamy in texture with the warmth of cumin and turmeric, the lentil soup known as dal is so essential in Nepal that it’s enjoyed twice a day, every day. As Kathmandu native Pemba Sherpa declares, “If there’s rice, there better be dal.”
Sherpa has served this vegan, protein-filled, gluten-free soup for the past 21 years at his Taste of the Himalayas in Sonoma. Although it comes with every entrée, diners have been known to make an entire meal out of it. Even kids can’t get enough of it.
“It’s very comforting,” Sherpa says. “It always makes me think of home. I never get tired of eating it.”
Sherpa never intended to open a restaurant. Arriving in the United States at age 17 to study business administration at a university outside of Indianapolis, he planned to return to Nepal to help run his father’s expedition company. But when civil war broke out in Nepal, he heeded his father’s advice to remain abroad.
When a family friend reached out in 2003 to ask for help in opening a restaurant in Sonoma, Sherpa jumped at the opportunity—despite having no restaurant experience and no knowledge of California except what he had seen in movies.
It wasn’t long before Sherpa was running the place. “It was intense,” he says. “You think you’ll never get it all done. But you do, and at the end of the night, you feel amazing.”
Taste of the Himalayas proved a hit from the get-go, with people waiting in line for nearly an hour to enjoy the food that’s a blend of Nepalese, Tibetan and Indian cuisines.
This fall, Sherpa will open a second restaurant, Farmhouse Sonoma on Sonoma Highway, serving not Himalayan but modern American dishes such as pizzas with flour milled in-house, and burgers on house-baked buns. As for dal? It just might make an appearance as a special now and then.
