Tip of My Tongue: Has Sol Food finally come to Petaluma?

Restaurant openings highlight a sampling of bite-sized news items this week

Two restaurants were slated to open this week, with Magdelena’s on the north end of town, offering savory and sweet vegetarian delights in Brasil BBQ’s former location and Sol Food serving up Puerto Rican food downtown, on the south side of Theatre Square, next to Hank’s.

Magdelena’s (www.magdelenas.com) was set to open Feb. 2, and posted to its social media pages thanking Petaluma diners for our patience. “Pandemics are a challenge to making plans. We will open 2/16/22. Thank you for your patience. We promise it will be worth the wait.”

Strong rumors had it that Sol Food also planned to open Wednesday, but as of the eve of their planned opening, there is no confirmation on its social media pages, and no mention yet on its website of their Petaluma plans. However, the restaurant has been vigorously hosting job fairs for the past month or so, hiring quite a few people. Those people should be in the know about when the opening is, and Petaluma is a strong word-of-mouth town, which is why I suspect the Wednesday opening rumors have at least some validity.

Ice Cream Truck 2.0

Oskey’s Ice Cream Truck, the mint and white colored Ford pickup converted to an ice cream truck, is looking to add another “truck” to its fleet. After finding gobs of local support when he needed help rebuilding the 1963 Ford F-100’s engine, owner Daniel Sager is looking again for donations through GoFundMe for help to purchase a 1963 Ford Econoline van in order to meet the requests that Oskey’s covers its 12 Petaluma zones more often. (Visit Oskey’s Facebook page to learn which zone you are in and which current and upcoming zones they plan to visit.)

Currently, Daniel can only get to each zone about once every three weeks, and if you are like me, that simply isn’t enough. “Once in our possession, it may take time to convert into a full working ice cream truck, but we expect it will be on the road and doubling our route coverage by 2023. We hope that you can imagine a cute little "Oskey's meets Scooby-Doo" Ice Cream Mystery Machine and find it in your heart to donate...again.” https://gofund.me/b9b6e4e3

Tolay Red

Thirty-Seven Wines has donated a custom barrel of one of its excellent wines to help celebrate and support Tolay Lake Regional Park, its neighbor to the north. The wine will have a special label featuring the image of the burrowing owl, which is native to Tolay park and the surrounding region. The owls do actually nest in underground burrows, which had me wondering how they defended against predators, especially after spying both foxes and coyotes at the park during a recent hike. Apparently, their key defense is that they can produce a hissing nose that closely resembles that sound of a rattlesnake, which scares off all but the most dedicated predators.

Owners of Thirty-Seven Wines, Al and Lisa Brayton are making their donation in order to help the park “design and create a new Gathering Area at Tolay Lake Regional Park that features engaging, hands-on interpretive elements, will support cultural and educational programs and is being co-designed with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.” Those who donate to the project will receive an appreciation gift of wine, starting at three bottles of wine for a $500 donation and maxing out at two cases of wine for a $5,000 donation. Sourced from Petaluma Gap grapes, Tolay Red is described as “delivering a heady blend of blueberries and cherries with mid-palate notes of huckleberry, cola and raspberry and a finish of boysenberry, graphite and allspice.” Visit sonomacountyparksfoundation.org/tolay to make a donation, at a wine level or not. For all of Thirty-Seven Wines’ award winning wines, and they have a truly impressive number of awards, visit www.thirty-sevenwines.com.

“Beans have a soul” - Pythagoras

With all the Mardi Gras food talk of rice and beans, it was exciting to see Rancho Gordo (ranchogordo.com) announce that they may be adding everyone on their Bean Club waitlist into the club. Thanks to Patti Kruse, a member of the “Petaluma – Rancho Gordo Beans” recipe share group on Facebook, we learned that sometime in March Rancho Gordo hopes to accommodate anyone who is on the waiting list and wants to join in the Bean Club fun. This is exciting news and sure beats the heck out of the two years we were on the waiting list before getting in, but have been loving it ever since. As club members, we get about a dozen random bags of heirloom beans (and rice and popcorn) every three months, which is just about perfect for us as we cook up a new bean recipe about once a week.

We were first introduced to Rancho Gordo a few years ago when we stumbled across them in the cassoulet at Pearl. We love cassoulets, and Pearls are phenomenal, so we figured the excellent flavor and texture of the dish had to be coming from other ingredients – it simply couldn’t be the beans. In fact, we chuckled at the fact that after that, we were starting to see beans specifically called out on menus, like we see with the ranches listed for meats and cheese makers to identify the dairy sourcing in a recipe. However, over several years of having Rancho Gordo Beans in plenty of other local restaurant dishes, we started to suspect that maybe it was the beans that were making the difference. Sure enough, after our first half-dozen home recipes with Rancho Gordo Beans, we now have trouble getting excited about eating dishes with any other kind of beans. They are that good, even the lima beans. (One of Wild Goat Bistro’s most popular small spates is their “Beans-N-Go” – Rancho Gordo heirloom beans, seasonal braising greens, white wine and lemon.)

For those looking to buy individual bags of Rancho Gordo beans and other delicacies, limited quantities and selection can be found at Lunchette, the Seed Bank and i Leoni.

Pythagoras dies by the bean, literally

Yes, that Pythagoras. The one known for the theorem that carries his name with the triangular formula of a2 + b2 = c2. It is one of the most proven theorems of all time, however, there is evidence that the concept predates Pythagoras by centuries, if not millennium. Regardless, Pythagoras name is etched in historic and mathematical stone at this point. However, my current interest revolves around beans, to which Pythagoras had a particularly peculiarly relationship.

Pythagoras was a vegetarian, but also did not eat beans, in part because he did not believe they brought inner personal harmony, what with all the intestinal gurgling, but also because he thought beans and humans shared some commonality in characteristics. In fact, he buried some beans (likely fava beans) in mud and because they looked like fetuses when he dug them up several weeks later, so proved his point that beans and humans are related in some way. And because he believed humans and beans were related, eating beans was analogous to eating human flesh, and to damage beans in any way was like harming a human. He is even rumored to have talked a hungry ox out of eating beans, much to the owner’s humor. The herder later reported that ox not only never ate beans again but also ended up living much longer than the average ox. However, the most incredible story about his own devotion to his teachings regarding the sanctity of beans comes from the last moments of his life. While being chased by a crazed mob intent on killing him, his path of escape was blocked by a field of beans. He refused to harm the beans by crossing the field, the mob descended on him, killing him next to the field of beans. That’s what I call a commitment to one’s beliefs.

Email houston@avantlard.com with questions/comments.