One day in 2004, when Sol Food first opened in San Rafael, a customer—a regular!—left behind the worst kind of tip. In a now-infamous letter that has been posted at the restaurant ever since, he rued the brightly painted exterior as a “lime green blight” on the presumably subtler palette of Marin County.

Nearly a decade later, to say that Marinites have embraced the bold brushstrokes and flavors of the Puerto Rican eatery would be a gross understatement. To keep up with her customers’ ravenous appetites over the past decade, owner Marisol “Sol” Hernandez opened two more locations in San Rafael, all within walking distance of each other.

So it’s little surprise that Sol Food recently opened in Mill Valley to great aplomb, including lines out the door and lauds in Sunset magazine. Though tucked into a neutral-hued commercial space, expect the same cheerful pastel doors, drippy foliage, sumptuous island fare, fizzy drinks and warm, friendly service.

In another far-flung corner of Marin (where Sir Francis Drake meets Highway 1), the quaint white farmhouse of the Olema Inn has been revamped into the Olema, featuring the new small-plates restaurant Sir and Star.

To pair with the taxidermy birds on the dining room walls, why not stomach something just as fowl: the “faux gras,” a mousse made of local duck liver, which the menu warns is “so delicious it should be illegal.” With a playful menu that reads more like cheeky haiku—there’s Marrow in the Bone with an Onion Jam of Tales That Once Wagged Nearby and A Neighbor’s Quail Plumped with Kale Nested in Wild Greens Pillaged Within Reach—it’s nice to see dedicated locavores taking themselves lightly.

Farther north, in Bodega Bay, where the fried-fish joints and windblown foliage don’t change much, it’s hard to miss the new spooky-looking sign for the Birds Cafe, perched snugly between Highway 1 and the bay across from Pelican Plaza. Owned by Bodega Bay native Melissa Freeman, a former real estate agent turned caterer and home-delivery meal professional, the cafe serves up all the coastal standards (fish ‘n’ chips, clam chowder, fish tacos). Also on offer are slices of deep fried pies, which can be enjoyed with a view of the bay on the large outdoor deck—just watch out for those seagulls!

Santa Rosans, take heart: your (long overdue!) downtown bagel shop has arrived. Again. After closing due to a tragic fire on the corner of Brookwood and Fourth in 2009, the longtime Sebastopol-based favorite Grateful Bagel has opened another Santa Rosa incarnation, this one right smack downtown in the former Hot Dog City spot. Pesto pizza bagel? Check. Morning Bun, the love child of a croissant and a cinnamon roll? Check. Your favorite cream cheese? Er . . . last time I popped in, they were out of both veggie and berry, but were more than happy to improvise with jam.

And speaking of improvisation, what do you get when you partner up an expert smoothie-maker with a research geek? Why, liquid nitrogen ice cream, of course! Tucked into the unassuming Dave’s Market on Third Street at Dutton, NitroKarma serves up quick-freezing ice cream with a conscience. Former social workers Renee and Madeline aim to “create good karma through utilizing happy scoops . . . to empower others in their lives.” That’s right, each scoop of cucumber lime and house-roasted butter pecan brings them closer to their goal of subsidizing social programs for youth.

Thanks to the downtown riverfront overhaul and culinary revival, the city of Napa is no longer playing second fiddle to its quainter neighbors St. Helena and Yountville. Exhibit A: Empire, the new restaurant and cocktail lounge located inside the Andaz Hotel, Napa’s newest (and, at five stories, tallest) overnight destination.

The décor is Old World swank, with antique organ pipes backing the bar, a knight’s shield, leather-clad walls and an old-fashioned marble and chrome beverage cart. Live jellyfish bob in tall glass tanks that lend a neon blue hue to the candlelit surroundings. Though the cocktail takes center stage (egg whites and bitters and Germain-Robin Craft Method Brandy, oh my!), small plates are served until 2am on Friday and Saturday nights. Think roast turkey breast sliders, cauliflower fritters, and a do-it-yourself mashed potato featuring seasonal accompaniments.

In another nod to the past, Odalisque Cafe in San Rafael draws its inspiration from a 17th-century French painting denoting the Ottoman Empire. (Although the coy, graceful woman depicted in La Grande Odalisque is a far cry from the historical odalik, a Turkish female maidservant or concubine). On the plate, this translates to an amalgam of French, Mediterranean and North African flavors in dishes like tagine of lamb and fennel soup. Appropriately sharing a building with Art Works Downtown, the cafe—from the shiny wood flooring to the silver coffee trays and geometric-patterned throw pillows—is itself a work of art.

Whether you’re a dedicated gourmand or casual nibbler, and whether your taste runs urban chic or rustic harbor, there’s no better time to try something new. Just be sure to leave the right kind of tip.

[page]

LOCAL HONORS

Not a single North Bay restaurant made OpenTable’s Top 100 Hot Spot Restaurants list, and that’s just fine by us. Who in the world wants to compete for elbow room at a mega-crowded “hottest place in town” when there’s cool, relaxing outdoor dining to be had? Alas, OpenTable’s just-released Top 100 Outdoor Dining list bestow honors on four local restaurants with exceptional open-air seating, and we couldn’t agree more. To wit:

Auberge du Soleil Rutherford, Napa County

Corks Restaurant at Russian River Vineyards Forestville, Sonoma County

L’appart Resto San Anselmo, Marin County

Rustic, Francis’s Favorites Geyserville, Sonoma County

In related news, Zagat has just released its “30 Under 30” list of Bay Area food-world up-and-comers, which includes a handful of more-than-deserving North Bay faces:

Heidi Brown culinary liason at the Restaurant at Meadowood

Jessica Entzel pastry chef at Morimoto Napa

Ryan Harris sales and marketing manager at Fatted Calf Charcuterie

Erik Johnson sommelier at Thomas Keller Restaurant Group

Collin McDonnell and Shane Goepel (pictured) founders and brewers at HenHouse Brewing Co.

Cappy Sorentino bar manger at Spoonbar, h2hotel

Suddenly, sparkling. Have you noticed? In just a few years, the trend in wine country’s tasting rooms has gone from, “Hi, are you here for tasting?” to “Hi, may I offer you a glass of sparkling wine?” (Why, yes, you may indeed.) Unlike many other trends, however—unoaked Chardonnay, say, or chocolates with Cabernet—a single company has made much of this possible.

It was not always so, this sparkling boom. Long before the gold rush on Napa Valley vineyard real estate began, there was the Gold Rush. As in ’49ers, with bags of gold, whooping it up in old Frisco. Despite the stereotype of a grizzled prospector leading a mule train past your mind’s eye, when the ’49ers partied, they downed enormous quantities of Champagne. Within months, savvy entrepreneurs were looking for ways to supply them from a little closer in. Buena Vista Winery’s Champagne cellars are relics of this era; somewhat later on, the brothers Korbel career-shifted from lumber to liquid gold, a success that lasts to this day.

After Prohibition, Paul Masson was “fermented in the bottle,” and the little old winemaker tippled Italian Swiss Colony’s pink Champagne—both big brands nationally advertised on television. Besides a few determined individuals like Napa’s Hanns Kornell, that’s been the sparkling story hereabouts—and after Schramsberg made headlines in the early 1970s with its Blanc de Blancs, the heavies from Reims moved in.

Since then, we’ve seen an explosion of boutique cellars, family farmers turned winemakers, and renegade garagistes. We have Zinfandel specialists, cool-climate Rhône rangers and dabblers in Aglianico. So why leave sparkling wine to the big guys?

Because the barrier to entry is high in expensive equipment and expertise, says Mark Garaventa, vice president of business development at Rack & Riddle, a custom crush facility in Hopland that offers full-service méthode champenoise wine production. Making sparkling wine is not as easy as homebrewing a batch of beer, says Garaventa. In the past, some do-it-yourselfers took losses of up to 100 percent of their vintage, if done incorrectly.

“We would like to think we’re partly responsible for wineries getting involved at a small scale,” Garaventa says.

It’s an understatement. “The equipment to do this properly is so very expensive that I do not know any grower-producers that are doing all of this themselves,” Kathleen Inman explains. At her property in Santa Rosa, she grows the Pinot Noir for Inman Family Wines “Endless Crush” Brut Rosé Nature, and trucks the grapes up to Hopland. Clients also may bring their finished wine to Rack & Riddle, where their winemakers oversee the tirage and riddling processes.

“I believe that people like Norm at Flying Goat and Wes at Clos Pepe, myself and Thomas George are at the leading edge of a ‘grower bubbles/farmers fizz’ trend in California,” Inman says, referring to the slang term for Champagne’s small-scale bubbly phenomenon. They’re quickly being followed by dozens of others.

The appeal of vintage-dated, sparkling wines from a grower’s own vineyard is powerful, says Rack & Riddle’s Cynthia Faust. “It makes you feel like you’re a valued customer,” she says, when someone at the tasting room immediately greets visitors with “May I start you with a sparkling?” If they walk out and don’t buy it, there’s no second chance at the supermarket.

“These clients are not competing with the mass markets and BevMos of the world,” says Garaventa. “It’s a hand sell.” Indeed—besides traditional Champagne region grapes Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, clients bring in oddballs like Malbec, Grenache, Syrah and Merlot—sparkling Merlot! “The Merlot turned out really nice,” Faust notes. “He was really happy with it.”

Cynthia Faust has started her own stylish label, Breathless, with her sisters. Rebecca Faust and Bruce Lundquist, both with experience in the sparkling wine business, co-founded Rack & Riddle in 2007. It’s grown from 5,000 cases to some 75,000 in five years, not including a big contract with Piper Sonoma. The cavernous facility, formerly leased by the Fetzer brand for cold storage, is packed with tanks from 500 to 50,000 gallons, deep canyons of stacked crates, and automated ridding machines that coax the spent yeast into disgorging position.

So you wanna be your own Dom Pérignon? Serving commercial clients, Rack & Riddle isn’t in the one-barrel, “vanity label” business, not yet (see sidebar). But they will sell you a bottle of their own North Coast sparkling wine, in four flavors: Brut, Rosé, Blanc de Noirs, and Blanc de Blancs, which recently won Best of Class in Sunset magazine’s wine competition.

Although they’re set up more as a working office than a hospitality center, they do welcome occasional visitors, who may buy a bottle or, yes, a Rack & Riddle baseball cap. Attentive fans of Trader Joe’s brand of sparkling wine will note this as the source, where the price ($20) is somewhat more than at the discount market.

“It’s our belief that every winery should have a sparkling wine in their portfolio,” Garaventa suggests. To that end, Rack & Riddle sells “shiners,” finished and bottled wines that lack only for a label. Wineries can slap on their own, and voilà! One even won a state fair gold medal with theirs. But deception is not the object. Many clients, having jump-started their sparkling program, return with their own grapes, because, why wouldn’t they? “Because bubbly makes people happy,” says Garaventa. “Bubbly kicks off the party.”

[page]

BUBBLE IT YOURSELF

So the bubbles have gone to your head, and you want your own Cuvée Luxury? If you have enough grapes or wine, Hopland’s Rack & Riddle can do it—but deals in minimums of 500 gallons. If you have a reseller’s license, you can purchase as few as 132 cases of shiners.

But if you just need a few cases because you’re throwing a big party, wedding, sending out holiday gifts to business clients, or you just like stealing away to your “cellar” to produce wines with labels that read, “from the cellar of J. R. Puffinpride” for dinner guests, there’s Windsor Vineyards. Founded in the way-back by Sonoma County icon Rodney Strong, Windsor Vineyards still offers personalized labels on North Coast appellation bottles of sparkling wine or a set of darling little single-serving, 187-milliliter party favor bottles. (Windsor Vineyards, tasting room at 308-B Center St., Healdsburg. 800.289.9463.)

But no. Your head is lousy with bubbles. Mad with mousse. You’re a fermentation warrior and you’re going to do it yourself. It can be done, but first, get some advice. “We help people make champagne all the time,” says the Beverage People’s Nancy Vineyard.

The first thing you need to do is make a low alcohol wine, about 19 percent. Then dose it with sugar so that it creates carbonation in the bottle. Unlike homebrewing beer, however, sparkling wine requires two to three times the amount of sugar. “We recommend a little lower pressure than commercially used—for safety and because it will be enough carbonation,” says Vineyard.

An innovative solution for a riddling rack came from a Beverage People customer—standard milk crates with wooden dowels fit through the slots to create a grid in which the bottles can rest, sort of a miniature version of Rack & Riddle’s wire crates. The store sells many of the rest of the supplies needed—a large bottle capper, plastic plugs called bidules for disgorging—but you may wish to head to the hardware store of the more important items: goggles for eye protection. Watch where you point that bottle! (The Beverage People, 1845 Piner Road, ste. D, Santa Rosa. 707.544.2520.)

Jazmin Hooijer knew exactly what to do with the bounty of figs delivered straight from the backyard tree to the ice cream cart—caramelize the figs, add a dash of verjus (the tart juice from unripe grapes used for centuries in European and Middle Eastern cooking) and swirl it all up in a mascarpone ice cream.

That flavor is just one of the delicious concoctions on Nimble & Finn’s Ice Cream menu after Hooijer, who lives in Cazadero with her family, launched the tiny business in May 2013. Summer flavors range from a bright and tangy lemon verbena and Meyer lemon olive oil with dark chocolate chips to more traditional offerings like blueberry cheesecake, chocolate with salted pretzels and one of the most authentic tasting mint ice creams I’ve ever come across. “I like to take classic flavor profiles and do something new and unusual,” explains Hooijer, as she describes a woodsy, sweet and earthy tasting coriander ice cream with a vanilla base.

Made with mainly seasonal, organic and local ingredients, flavors shift on a weekly basis. “We wanted to have a homemade feel, but really nicely homemade and extra delicious,” says Hooijer, a baker who shifted to ice cream after taking time off to raise her two children, now two and four. Her plan is to continue selling at farmers markets while expanding into festivals and private events, with a possible storefront in the future.

“Selling ice cream, well, it doesn’t get much happier than that,” she says. “People literally squeal and dance and scream for joy when they see what I have.” Nimble & Finn’s Ice Cream is available at the Occidental Bohemian Farmers Market and West End Farmers Market. www.nimbleandfinns.com. 707.217.5885.