The Escoffier Questionnaire: Chef Liza Hinman

THE SPINSTER SISTERS

Liza Hinman has such a grounded way about her that it is easy to overlook that she is really rather wildly accomplished. As chef-owner of Santa Rosa’s The Spinster Sisters and co-owner of The Astro Motel, which recently underwent a $10 million “midcentury cool” renovation, not to mention her roles in many other projects “in the planning phases,” you might expect to find her in a constant frenzied whirl—but you don’t. Her self-awareness feels kind and unguarded. Words I don’t oft en use to describe chefs.

A New Englander by birth, Hinman ended up at Gourmet magazine in the post-college ether of possibility. She says that while she was lit up by the food obsession at the office, she knew she didn’t want to spend years in a cubicle.

Using culinary school as a portal to the West Coast, she quickly became bewitched by the different “seasons,” and that lusty California produce. Hinman externed at Woodward’s Gardens, a tiny spot under the freeway in San Francisco’s Inner Mission, where she was able to work in creative collaboration with the owners, Dana Tommasino and Margie Conard, while her classmates toiled in larger kitchens, peeling onions. Then she jumped to Bizou, working for California Cuisine icon Loretta Keller. At Bizou, she met the man who would become her husband while she was contemplating a move back east, but decided to see if the relationship would stick. “It stuck.”

Early 2000s in the Bay Area, post-dotcom bust, was a time when restaurants were reconsidering the “super-fancy” model and the deconstructed boom was a thrill. Hinman worked in the electric heyday of Delfina until she “couldn’t work there anymore. That was my first time cooking until 1am every night. I loved it but it was so intense.”

Here is a moment in her biography when that wisdom of hers shines through: The intensity was too much, so she took time to gain perspective. Instead of forging on and burning out.

Ultimately, Hinman realized she was ready for a more pastoral pace, and she and her husband, Joseph Stewart, whose family owns Downtown Bakery in Healdsburg, made the move north. After some time in private catering, she met Dino Bugica, chef at the groundbreaking Santi in Geyserville. Ari Rosen (now chef/owner of Healdsburg’s Scopa and Campo Fina) was also then in the kitchen at Santi, and he and Bugica were looking for a pasta chef. Hinman had been on that beat at Delfina, so she came on board—and stayed for six years. After both Bugica and Rosen left to open their own restaurants, Hinman became the head chef at Santi. She says she still meets up with owner Franco Dunn of the now-closed Santi to work through “culinary puzzles” over a cappuccino. She says she found her voice there.

After Hinman’s son was born, she spent time teaching and cooking privately, working less and feeling into the role of mom and how it intersected with her life in the kitchen.

It was during this period that Rosen introduced her to Eric Anderson, a Sonoma County native and current New Yorker who was the owner of a building in Santa Rosa—and a vision. The building itself had good bones, though marred with a patina of efforts past: a hot tub dealer, a counseling center, a market. As for the vision, Anderson shared with Hinman that whenever he visited Santa Rosa, he would meet the most extraordinary people, but none of them seemed to know one another. He wanted to create a “third space” that would draw these folks into community.

Hinman started as a consultant on The Spinster Sisters project, but the idea kept getting richer and more involved until she was back in the kitchen, running a three-meal-a-day operation that gracefully transitions from one to the next. This is a magic trick.

Hinman is now the mother of three, a boy and twin girls. The opening of the hotel, the development of a commissary kitchen and other projects force Hinman to operate on multiple levels at once. The fastidious creativity of a chef, as well as the disciplined leadership of an entrepreneur.

Last year, she was selected to the inaugural class of the James Beard Foundation’s Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Program, which also included Tanya Holland of Oakland’s Brown Sugar Kitchen. The experience was a boon intellectually and emotionally, says Hinman. “Even though [the Bay Area] is a welcoming environment for women in many ways, there are so many barriers to women succeeding in this business at a high level. Luckily, my husband was happy to make family his priority. Joe and I never envisioned that this is where we would end up, but he’s a great class mom. It’s worked. So far.”

There’s been ebb and flow in The Spinster Sisters’ trajectory, but seven years in, they’re busier than ever. Its “South A” neighborhood was a busy residential and commercial area until the freeway and the Santa Rosa Plaza cut it off from the rest of downtown. The city has been eager to encourage stability in the few blocks of storefronts left. “Instead of opening a place across town, my partners and I want to open something down the road.” Stay tuned for those developments… The Spinster Sisters always feels like a warm fire, the only business open as you drive down South A Street at night, ceiling-high windows glowing. And the food is good. It’s really, really good.