They're transforming a stretch of Highway 128 in Mendocino County
Chef Perry Hoffman got his first job at the French Laundry at age 5. Yes, he knows how crazy that sounds.
A typical day began with cleaning the iconic Napa Valley restaurant and then embarking on Perry's "prep list": roasting bell peppers, slicing baguettes for bruschetta, peeling citrus, and picking and chopping Italian parsley.
It was the late 1980s, and his grandparents, Don and Sally Schmidt, still owned the French Laundry, which they had founded in Yountville in 1978.
"She had such faith in him," Hoffman said of the task his grandmother entrusted him with at such a young age. "It captivated me, and I fell in love with it."
In high school, he cooked at a restaurant in Napa Valley. After graduating, he joined his uncle Johnny's Boonville Inn & Restaurant, a modern roadhouse nestled on four picturesque acres in Mendocino County. In 2009, at the age of 25, Hoffman took the helm of Domaine Chandon's Étoile in Napa Valley, becoming the youngest chef in the United States to earn a Michelin star. The following year, the San Francisco Chronicle named him a "Rising Star Chef." In 2012, he won Food & Wine magazine's "People" award for Best New Chef in California.
Pizza and pasta are the stars at Offspring, located in the historic Farrer Building complex in Boonville, Calif.
Fast forward to 2019: After nearly two decades at the Boonville Hotel, Hoffman has returned. Today, he's the executive chef of the hotel's restaurant, known for his seasonal cuisine that blends Californian and French influences. Earlier this year, he officially opened Offspring, a pizza and pasta shop, just across the street from the town off Interstate 985.
Of course, a lot happened between these milestones for the Hoffman and Schmidt families.
The Next Yountville
In 1994, the Schmidt family sold their beloved French Laundry to Thomas Keller. That same year, Don, then-Mayor of Yountville, told the Napa Valley Register that his children, ever since childhood, had a pioneering spirit and were always searching for the next Yountville.
Apparently, they found it near Boonville. Today, the Schmidt family seems deeply involved in just about every restaurant-related business there, including their 32-acre apple farm in Philo. Don and Sally bought the land in the mid-1980s, anticipating a post-French Laundry life. Karen Bates, the Schmidt daughter and Hoffman's aunt, continues to manage the ancestral apple orchard with her husband, Tim.
The Schmidts' son, Johnny, who had cooked in France and worked at his mother's French Laundry, opened the Floodgate Café in Philo with Jerry and Kathryn Cox in 1985. Three years later, they teamed up to open a restaurant at the Boonville Hotel, with Schmidt's then-wife, Jenny Eliades, also involved
Although others have since left the hotel and restaurant, Schmidt, who remains owner and head chef, wanted to say goodbye to the kitchen about seven years ago and approached Hoffman, who had already honed his skills as sous chef under Robert Curry at the Michelin-starred Auberge du Soleil in Rutherford, earned a star at Étoile, and earned acclaim as culinary director at the Shed in Healdsburg.
He agreed. Hoffman, 41, had always imagined returning to Boonville—just not soon. "That's where I'm going to retire," he said as we sat in Adirondack and butterfly chairs in the hotel's garden, where herbs and other ingredients for the restaurant are grown. "I figured I'd come back here when I was in my 50s and the kids were grown."
But following the Shed's closure in 2018, Hoffman's pace and surroundings changed. Hoffman's return echoed his grandparents' move to Anderson Valley—they were eager for a better work-life balance—and his dining style now more closely resembled his grandmother's.
"She wasn't trying to do fine dining," he says. "I don't think we can do that here, and I don't want to."