Dierk's Parkside Cafe
Mark Dierkhising cooks a Country Benedict and a duck confit hash on Santa Rosa Avenue, and finishes with his grandmother's cinnamon-sugar pull-aparts.1
Why go
Dierkhising opened this in 2006 and has cooked in Sonoma County for decades, mixing classic diner cooking with European habits.1 He comes out of the kitchen to talk to tables and will carry a plate out himself if he thinks it should not wait.1 The cafe says it has been voted Best Breakfast in Sonoma County seven years running, crediting The Press Democrat and the North Bay Bohemian, and it prints no year for any of it.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Country Benedict.1
- Order: the duck confit hash, which is where the European half of the cooking shows.1
- Order: the pull-aparts, his grandmother's recipe.1
- Avoid: peak weekend brunch without a plan. This is the room Santa Rosa defaults to.
Good to know
- Call-in orders on 707-573-5955.1
- No prices are published on anything I could read.
Verdict
could-visit — Mark Dierkhising has cooked in Sonoma County for decades and has run this breakfast room since 2006, and the three dishes he is known for tell you what kind of cook he is: a Country Benedict, a duck confit hash, and his grandmother's cinnamon-sugar pull-aparts. That is a diner with a French habit rather than a diner with a big griddle. The cafe claims seven straight years of Best Breakfast, crediting two local papers, and prints no year for any of them, so I would take the dishes as the evidence and the trophies as a claim. Held here because I could not find anyone outside the cafe writing about it.