Simplicity is king for Sonoma chef Ari Weiswasser. His easy approach, fresh-from-the-garden ingredients and creative combinations have earned him the respect of fellow chefs and a steady stream of restaurant guests. He has an appreciation for craft and for peak-of-season ingredients as well as a laid-back style that make for an approachable, fresh-forward dining experience people love.
When Chef Ari and his wife, Erinn Benziger, last year announced plans to open a second restaurant, the buzz was audible. The fan base for their maiden restaurant, Glen Ellen Star, is legendary. Just down the street from her family’s renowned winery, the couple launched Glen Ellen Star in 2012 with Ari in the kitchen and Erinn managing the front of the house. The restaurant’s many admirers love Chef Ari’s inventive use of fresh, seasonal ingredients—most cooked in a cavernous wood-fired oven and paired simply with sprightly sauces and inspired seasonings. Ari has described the restaurant as “plant based and vegetable forward”—a freshnessinspired emphasis that he brings together on the plate in a studied yet seemingly effortless style that is uniquely his own.
At Stella in Kenwood, which opened this March, Ari borrows the same open-kitchen concept that customers appreciate at Glen Ellen Star—except with three times the space and a gleaming Argentine-style grill and plancha in place of the oven. “It’s like Seven Fires meets fine dining,” Ari says, referencing the open-fire cooking technique of Argentine über-chef Francis Mallman.
The restaurant menu draws from the influence of many other chefs with whom he’s cooked (Thomas Keller and David Chang notable among them) and significant culinary-inspired travel around the world. “I take a little bit away every time I eat, then bring it all together here with the amazing ingredients we have here in Sonoma and the West,” he says.
In the kitchen, the grill’s red hot plancha is used to sear massive tomahawk steaks, and also to griddle wild rock shrimp and to briefly char fresh strawberries before they’re added to an asparagus salad. From the wood-fired grill comes smoky fire-roasted whole fish, charred broccoli rabe and Kalbi-cut short ribs, among a range of other preparations.
Despite the Argentine open-fire influence, the menu skews decidedly Italian—with a very California mix. Focaccia and pasta are made fresh every morning. Mozzarella imported from Italy is the featured ingredient in a “mozzarella bar”: This spring pairing mounds of the creamy cheese with a range of accompaniments, from brown butter– fried walnuts to crunchy fava leaf pesto to shaved black truffle.
To keep it all running smoothly and leave time for family (Ari and Erinn have three school-age children) and some necessary time outdoors, Ari leans into partnerships he has forged over the years—bringing chef Bryant Minuche from Glen Ellen Star to manage the kitchen at Stella and relying on managing partner Spencer Waite to handle operations while Spencer’s wife, Ashley, takes care of events and marketing. Erinn manages all HR, which is no small task as the two restaurants currently employ a staff of more than 80. And Erinn’s father, the renowned vintner and grower Mike Benzinger, supplies nearly a quarter of the restaurant’s produce from their Glentucky Farm nearby.
Ari met Erinn Benziger during their freshman year at the University of Colorado, Boulder. When they reconnected years later in New York, Ari had already completed the professional program at CIA and was working his way through some of New York City’s best restaurants—among them Restaurant Daniel and Corton. Erinn was transitioning from working sales for her family’s Glen Ellen winery to a position with their broker in New York. The two became roommates and what started as friendship became romantic. They married in 2007 and, when they were expecting their first child, the couple moved West.
Ari took a position staging at The French Laundry in Yountville, where he stayed for two years, while Erinn continued with family wine sales. When a restaurant space on a slow-moving but nevertheless well-traveled corner of Glen Ellen became available in 2012, the couple purchased the property and began the renovation of what became Glen Ellen Star.
The name Benziger is well-known in the Sonoma Valley and in winery and wine grower circles around the world. Erinn’s father and mother, Mike and Mary Benziger, established Benziger Family Winery a mile or so down the road from adventurer Jack London’s famous Beauty Ranch in Glen Ellen in 1980—eventually drawing Mike’s parents and all four of his siblings and their families into the business.
With Mike at the helm, Benziger Family Winery became an early pioneer in biodynamic farming—supporting organic regenerative agriculture and the holistic principle that everything in farming is interconnected, from plants and the soil to animals and the overall environment. When they sold the winery in 2015, Mike turned his attention to his and Mary’s Glentucky Farm on an adjacent property. The farm’s rich, Demeter-certified biodynamic system is designed to support Ari and Erinn’s restaurant with every manner of sunripened, organically raised seasonal produce.
With two restaurants to supply this year, Mike has ramped up production— putting in more than 700 tomato plants (Glen Ellen Star alone claimed 50 pounds a week last summer); Fairy Tale, Eight Ball and Globe eggplants; several varieties of cucumber; Gold Bar summer squash and squash blossoms; apples, pears, pomegranates and a wellspring of other summer delicacies he grows from seed.
Ari and chef Bryant meet with Mike in advance of each new season with their wish lists and produce requests. Mike puts it all into motion— planting and harvesting with the cycle of the moon to deliver fresh, organic produce in carefully curated stages throughout the year. When we visited Stella in April, the menu was deep into spring.
Fresh mixes of asparagus and tender greens with slivers of radish, sprigs of miner’s lettuce and delicate blossoms. Daily-made pasta adorned with herb-infused sauces and foraged mushrooms. Spring lamb grill-roasted to crusty, spice-rubbed perfection. And, for dessert, sprightly rhubarb sorbet paired with a creamy cocoa pannacotta in one dish and buried in a halo of lofty, caramelized housemade marshmallow fluff over tender cubes of sponge cake in another.
The team at Stella awaits the arrival of summer produce with anticipation. The restaurants are just a few minutes’ drive from Glentucky Farm and a few minutes from each other. In this small, storied sliver of Sonoma County the Benziger-Weiswasser families have implemented a sinuous farm-to-kitchen-to-table system that draws from decades of culinary craft supported by the rich spoils of regenerative organic agriculture to produce some of the freshest, most seasonally inspired dishes around.
