Willi’s emphasis on quality adds up

Somewhere between a tradition and a fresh face, at 403 Healdsburg Ave. has become a standby in the local dining scene since it opened in 2004, and social scene as well. A nearby sister operation in Santa Rosa is Willi’s Wine Bar on Old Redwood Highway just north of the city. But while our town’s Willi’s also focuses on small plates and great drinks, the difference is in the fish.

The Santa Rosa Willi’s leans toward international cuisine, but Healdsburg’s looks to the sea for its inspiration. It even goes so far as to feature a “raw bar” of oysters and clams on ice, ready to slip off the shell onto the tongue.

“All our seafood is as fresh as possible,” said Nick Izzarelli, general manager of Willi’s Seafood, “caught the same day if it’s available. We get fish delivered five days a week instead of maybe three times like most places. Since we don’t have a very large refrigeration area, the fish keep moving through quickly.”

It’s easy to taste why. The “small plate” menu means instead of a $20-$32 entrée to drive a meal, customers order two or three small plates for variety, at about $10 each. It’s perfect for a group of friends, sharing servings of flash-fried fresh calamari with orange chili gremolata; charred rare ahi with cucumber, avocado and truffled soy; or almond crusted petrale sole with lemon caper butter and wilted spinach as casually if they were sharing pizzas.

Not only is there variety but the dishes are created with inventive flair, drawing on the Asian and Latin influences of “California cuisine.” The current menu is largely the work of chef de cuisine Hunter Bryson, like Izzarelli a graduate of Monti’s Rotisserie and Bar on-the-job training. (Monti’s is the flagship of the Stark restaurant empire – well, dukedom. Stark’s Steakhouse in Railroad Square is the fourth so far.)

The restaurant itself is popular enough to warrant its imminent expansion into the space on the other side of the south wall, formerly Spirits in Stone (most recently ). The additional floor space means 30 more seats or so, and the main entrance moved to the corner-facing doorway at North and Healdsburg Ave. The raw bar will have more visibility, too, wrapped around into the new space and expanded, with better display of the uncooked delicacies.

Now when you put “bar” in your name, like Willi’s Seafood and Raw Bar does, people are going to expect the long wooden kind where you drink cocktails, meet old friends and make others. Again, Willi’s won’t let you down, if only because they pay attention to detail as much at the bar as they do in the kitchen.

Bartender Dan Knight is an practitioner of handcrafted cocktails using, you guessed it, fresh ingredients. Like home made syrup (not the mass-produced stuff we hide in our own cupboards) and fresh-squeezed juice instead of concentrate. As you might expect, the bar has its own following, especially for those who like the seasonal drinks menu – right now they’ve got a blood orange martini you might need to try.

While this is not the place to satisfy your beer jones – usually just three on tap, as few in the bottle – the wine list can cause some serious damage. Nearly all of the 40 or so wines are available by the glass, half-bottle carafe or bottle, so you can change your wine choice as your small plate palate changes during the meal.

Like the small plates menu, with its shifting elements shifting with the seasons, the wine list too is in a state of gentle flux. “85% of our wines are from local wineries,” Izzarelli said. “Which means we’ll change the available wines 4 or 5 times a month. Some of these wines are small production and don’t last very long.”

There are also, it should be noted, small plates of non-fish, too – baby back pork riblets, hanger steak in chimichuri sauce, bacon-wrapped scallops, even artisan cheeses with white truffle honey. Just as there is a fully stocked spirits selection, and a dessert menu to cap your small plate carousel.

In fact, the whole place is pretty hard to resist, and its hours – open seven days a week from 11:30 a.m. through 9:30 or 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, serving throughout – makes it reliable, too (it’s one of the few places in town open on Tuesday nights).

When Willi’s busts out that south wall at the end of March and floods into its new expanded floor space, there’ll be more of it to love.

As to whether Willi’s is a tradition or a fresh face? “We’re really at home here in Healdsburg,” Izzarelli told me.

I know what he means.