Heather Ames

CARDINAL NEWMAN HIGH SCHOOL AND SONOMA FAMILY MEAL

I wonder if the students at Santa Rosa’s Cardinal Newman High School know that their “lunch lady,” as she calls herself, was the opening chef at Nick’s Cove in Marshall—one of the most fervently anticipated local restaurant openings in recent memory.

For this special Hunger-themed 10th anniversary issue of Edible Marin & Wine Country, we wanted to profile a local chef who is especially dedicated to feeding those in need. When we began asking around for suggestions, the name Heather Ames kept coming up over and over again. For great reason.

In her “time off “ from the kitchen at Cardinal Newman, you will find Heather right back in a different kitchen, preparing hundreds of meals on a weekly basis for people affected by natural disasters in Sonoma County under the auspices of Sonoma Family Meal (SFM), a nonprofit forged in the 2017 Tubbs fire. Founded by food writer Heather Irwin in response to those October fires, SFM’s website reports that they are currently serving 75 families—a stark reminder that some who lost their homes during the 2017 fires, and more recent natural disasters, are still displaced.

Heather’s path to this line of work wasn’t exactly linear. After earning a BS in geology and spending a month in Antarctica studying glaciers, Heather decided to move to the slightly more temperate Bay Area, where she enrolled in the California Culinary Academy. She met her future husband, Matt Weinberger, the chef at Willi’s Wine Bar in Santa Rosa (soon to reopen at press time), the first day of class. The couple spent 13 years in San Francisco cooking at various fine-dining establishments before taking the job as the opening chefs at storied Bay Area designer and restaurateur Pat Kuleto’s Nick’s Cove as a team. Heather and Pat had worked together previously during her tenure at San Francisco’s Farallon, where he was co-owner.

After the couple’s first child was born, Heather made the perverse— or enviable, depending on whom you ask—switch to a daytime schedule. After answering a cryptic craigslist job ad, and, as she puts it, a “training/hazing day,” she discovered that she had been hired to work in Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Ranch kitchen in Nicasio. “There was an organic garden, a staff of amazing women and a nice budget,” she recalls. While there, Heather says she learned the art of creating menus “day of,” based on what was available in the garden and market.

And then came the Wine Country fires. Weinberger’s employers, Terri and Mark Stark—owners of the Stark Reality Restaurant Group that includes Willi’s Wine Bar, itself destroyed in those fires, as well as Willi’s Seafood & Raw Bar and Bravas Bar de Tapas, both in Healdsburg, and Monti’s, Stark’s Steak & Seafood and the Bird & The Bottle, all in Santa Rosa—were sending staff, equipment and food to contribute to the massive undertaking of feeding those who had lost their homes, and the first responders fighting the fires, and Heather joined in to help alongside her husband. The couple enlisted their kids, as well. “They never want to see broccoli again” after preparing pallets of donated produce, Heather laughs.

When it became sadly apparent that the relief effort was not going to be a short-term run, the chef-prepared meals coordinated by Heather Irwin and team evolved into the more organized and ongoing effort that is now Sonoma Family Meal. Heather Ames kept showing up and eventually became chef at SFM. Journey’s End RV Park residents displaced during the fires without hope of rebuilding, recent flood evacuees and others are recipients of the 600–900 meals prepared every weekend by Heather, a very small production crew and volunteers. “I love seeing the young, tattooed, ear-plugged kids working right next to a senior citizen,” she says. “It’s so great.”

“I started at Cardinal Newman a few months after the fire, and I would arrive before dawn, feeling normal. By the time I left every day, the sun was shining and I could see the total destruction and my heart would sink all over again.” Saturdays, she does her piece of the healing at SFM. Always the chef, she is fine-tuning the art of cooking en masse, with whatever donations come through the door.

You never know when what you have learned will find its most vital use. You never know what impact you will have when you start your path. And you never know what your “lunch lady” is capable of.