Willi's Wine Bar
Mark and Terri Stark were running small plates out of an 1886 roadhouse from 2002. The Tubbs fire took the building in October 2017 and the room came back nineteen months later, iron sign and all.2
Why go
The old Willi's burned to the ground in the October 2017 fires.2 It reopened in May 2019 at the Town & Country Center, and the forged iron sign from the roadhouse went back up over the new door.1 The format has not changed. Small plates, a local wine list, a full bar, a heated patio, and a menu that will take you from a Moroccan-style barbecued lamb chop to ahi tuna tartare in two orders.1 Nobody has reviewed the new room in anything I read, so what it tastes like now is an open question.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Moroccan-style barbecued lamb chops, which the restaurant leads its own menu on.1
- Order: the ahi tuna tartare.1
Good to know
- Open daily, at 1415 Town and Country Drive.1
- The patio is heated, which matters here more months than you would think.1
- No prices are published on the page I read.
Verdict
could-visit — Mark and Terri Stark opened Willi's in 2002 in an 1886 roadhouse and were running small plates in Santa Rosa before that was a thing anybody said out loud. The Tubbs fire took the building in October 2017. Sonoma Magazine puts the gap at nineteen months, and the room came back at Town & Country in May 2019 with the original iron sign over the door. What is on the menu now, Moroccan-style barbecued lamb chops and ahi tartare, comes from the restaurant's own page and nowhere else. No critic has written about the rebuilt room in anything I read, so the cooking is untested from outside and the rung reflects that rather than the history.