Authenticity Perfected:
SingleThread Farm-Restaurant-Inn

English text by Irene Luo
Chinese text translated by Yi-Chun Lin
Pictures Courtesy of SingleThread

At SingleThread, the menu does not alternate with the usual four seasons. Instead, it changes every five days. The chefs at SingleThread use a Japanese calendar with 72 distinct microseasons, so the ingredients are always at their peak. With two Michelin stars, SingleThread’s 11-course tasting menu is an ode to the beauty of California’s Sonoma wine country—its flavors, its terroir, and its year-round agricultural bounty.

Co-owned by high school sweethearts Katina and Kyle Connaughton, SingleThread combines a 52-seat restaurant with a farm and a five-room inn. They’re united by a common thread of selfless hospitality, inspired by Katina and Kyle’s time in Japan.

For years, Katina and Kyle had dreamed of opening their own restaurant and farm, with a few rooms for guests to stay overnight. Katina is an expert in farming and flower arrangements, including the Japanese art of ikebana, while Kyle is an accomplished chef, who has cooked at top kitchens in California and Japan. His crowning achievement before SingleThread was leading the research and development of new dishes for the three-Michelin-starred restaurant The Fat Duck in England.

A few years ago, Kyle and Katina finally returned to California to create something of their own. They planted the crops, mended the soil, perfected every detail of their beautiful restaurant and inn, and in December 2016, they officially opened SingleThread, realizing their two-decade-long vision.

A TASTE OF SONOMA

Years ago, Kyle and Katina fell in love with Sonoma County because it was “one of the few places in the country where the focus is really on food and wine,” Kyle says. Sonoma’s climate and soil made it a place where they could successfully grow vegetables all year round. And it was home to a community of food-focused artisans, winemakers, and organic farmers.

For Kyle, who loved to learn about new cultures through their cuisines, the best restaurant experience was always one “where you really, really get a deep sense of the place.” And that’s exactly what he and Katina sought to achieve with SingleThread. “When you are dining with us here tonight, you really experience what summer on our farm and in Sonoma County is like through the ingredients that we’re using, through the preparation of the dishes, even down to all the floral that’s in the restaurant,” Kyle says.

Every day, Katina and her team of professional foragers gather fresh floral pieces to adorn the dining rooms, the hotel rooms, the rooftop gardens, and even the presentation of the dishes themselves. “The floral pieces, they really speak to what’s happening outside at that moment,” says Kyle.

 

FRESH FROM THE FARM

Pushing the envelope of the farm-to-table trend, Katina and Kyle don’t just source locally. They built a farm of their own. Overseen by Katina and her team, SingleThread’s five-acre farm supplies 70 percent of the produce used in SingleThread’s kitchen, including vegetables, fruit, herbs, flowers, honey, eggs, and olive oil.

At SingleThread, vegetables and fruits are complemented by the meats and seafoods, instead of the other way around. When crafting a dish, Kyle always chooses the produce first, based on what’s fresh and in-season, and picks the meat and seafood ingredients afterward.

SingleThread’s menu is driven by the farm, “so we can always be using those products at the peak of their ripeness and the peak of their flavor,” Kyle says. “The morning it comes in, that day we’re serving it,” says Kyle.

ROOTED IN JAPAN

Although Californian at heart, SingleThread cannot be separated from Katina and Kyle’s time in Japan. In fact, they both discovered their passions while in Japan.

Kyle, at 9 years old, was captivated as he watched a sushi chef at a restaurant in Japan. Since then, he has immersed himself in Japanese culinary traditions, studying at the California Sushi Academy and the Sushi Chef Institute and interning in several Japanese kitchens in Los Angeles and western Japan.

It was during the couple’s three-year stay in Hokkaido that Katina gained exposure to farming. Living in this agricultural center of Japan, she discovered a world she’d known little about while growing up in the suburbs of southern California.

When Katina and Kyle designed SingleThread, they drew from wisdom they found in Japan, a country known for its exquisite craftsmanship and timeless traditions, in the culinary arts and beyond.

Everything in their restaurant and inn was artfully tailored for SingleThread. They asked a Kanagawa-based ceramic artist to create the custom coffee and tea service sets. The Nagatani Family of Iga, 8th- generation master potters in Japan, hand made all the earthenware pots. Even the tiles lining the walls were handmade—with clay from the couple’s farm. “Everything that we have here, we know where it came from, and who made it, and how they made it,” Kyle says. “They feel very at home here, rather than something that we just found and purchased.”

Inspired by the Japanese spirit of selfless hospitality, Katina and Kyle hold themselves to similarly high standards. This Japanese ideal, known as “omotenashi,” has two readings: One translates to “not holding anything in your hand,” to serve with no motive but a genuine desire to serve; the other translates to “not showing your back.” In traditional Japanese culture, one never turns one’s back to the guests while serving them, even when exiting a room. More metaphorically, it means you don’t turn your back on a guest’s needs.

Every day, before the guests arrive, Kyle writes down individualized versions of the 11-course tasting menu for all four dozen guests based on each guest’s preferences and allergic restrictions.

A night at SingleThread is not merely a dinner. It’s an experience imbued with warmth, courtesy, and sincerity. “We want them to not just enjoy great food,” Kyle says, but also “connect with the companions that they are dining with and relax and decompress and feel that they can switch off the outside pressures of the world for a few hours.”

Katina and Kyle designed the kitchen to be completely visible, so guests can interact with the chefs and watch as their food is prepared. It may be a fine-dining restaurant, but the pair hope it will feel more relaxed, like “a dinner party in our home.”

Just as they emphasize seasonality in their menu, Katina and Kyle know that their guests today will not be the same as the ones tomorrow. Every guest comes for a single, special night, “and that night is never going to happen again.”