Town?s changing dining landscape

While there might be plenty of things in this town that need fixing right now, one aspect of our local lifestyle that continues to excel is the local restaurant scene.

Perhaps it doesn?t do to get too gushy at the risk of seeming overly parochial, but we do have a large number of good restaurants. It reminds of an item written by this newspaper?s esteemed columnist of years back, Bill Soberanes.

Somewhere in the mid-1980s Soberanes wrote that Petaluma was becoming the restaurant capital of northern California or some such because it was getting a Sizzler restaurant.

The San Francisco Chronicle?s revered scribe, Herb Caen, pounced upon that tidbit with great glee, implying in the process that we were just a little bit backward in appreciation of fine food.

That, however, was then, and this is now, and while we may not be winning stars in the Michelin guide, the quality, creativity and ambience of many of our local establishments is impressive.

It has been one long road to get to this point, however.

About 40 years back, dining in Petaluma was pretty limited. There was the Old Adobe Room near the Best Western, Sonoma Joe?s (now the 101 Casino), Little Hills and Little Germany downtown, Old Mexico on the Boulevard North, Showers and Beasley?s downtown, and a few that survive today, such as Pinky?s Pizza, Mister Magoos and Three Cooks. There was a smattering of other eateries that came and went, just as they do today.

I?m sure I?ve overlooked some of them, but you get the idea.

It is almost an act of kindness to describe the food in some of the restaurants as ordinary. This was a town that didn?t spend money on dining out, and the fare in local establishments reflected that.

It all began to change in the late ?70s-early ?80s, with the advent of some new ideas (at least locally) in dining. The biggest splash was the opening of the Steamer Gold Landing in the Petaluma Mill. It was the town?s first truly modern restaurant and seemed to demonstrate that a moderately upscale restaurant could succeed here.

Le Poulailler, a French restaurant, opened on Western; 610 Main opened first as a lunch place, then became a very good French restaurant; and De Schmire opened. The Eggery out on Bodega Avenue provided some rural ambience with breakfast and lunch.

Only DeSchmire survives.

These tentative first steps showed the way for a great many more restaurants to come, including a spate of fast- food places. Petaluma went from ?just a few places to dine? to a town with an overwhelming number of places, and as the years have gone on, a town with a good-sized number of really good places.

To a great extent, restaurants can take credit for the health and revitalization of our downtown area, sharing the honor with specialty shopping. Twenty years ago, it looked like nothing could save the stretch of Petaluma Boulevard, from Washington to Western, from becoming a slum of second- hand stores and boarded up storefronts. The regular retailers and banks (Woolworths, Sears? catalog outlet, J.C. Penney, BofA, Wells Fargo, Medico Drugs) had given up on that stretch of street.

Then Graziano?s opened and became a successful operation and piece by piece, other restaurants interspersed with specialty shops have, so far at least, kept this area intact.

There is a lesson here for our City Council majority which seem to think they are saving downtown by not letting chain stores come to Petaluma.

Downtown is not going to be saved by forcing Petalumans to travel to Novato, Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa, or elsewhere to buy clothing, TVs, refrigerators and anything else at a price the shopper wants to pay.

Downtown is going to be saved by attracting people to its features ? restaurants and specialty shops, and to a great extent that means tourism, and generating local wealth to support the area.

Note: Last spring, the council gutted funding for tourism marketing and, while promising to reinstate at least some of the program, has delayed awarding contracts for several months.

(Don Bennett, a business writer and consultant, has been involved with city planning issues since the early 1970s. He serves on the Sonoma County Planning Commission. His e-mail address is dcbenn@aol.com.)