You have a lot of options when you go to Rancho Nicasio on a Friday night. You can listen to rollicking music. You can sit at the bar and enjoy a generous serving of Maker’s Mark on the rocks. You can eat off the typical Rancho menu: spinach dip, a barbecue chicken with sweet potato fries, a Caesar salad, a New York steak.
Now you can also walk past the glazed look of mounted animal heads—a moose, a jackalope, a longhorn—that line the dark wooden walls and walk into the Western Room. The recently renovated space is still unpretentious but, instead of barbecue chicken, you can expect upscale, Japanese-inflected cuisine like hamachi crudo or braised rabbit tortellini with salty parmesan foam reminiscent of ocean spume that jiggles in the wind on the beach.
The menu in the Western room—which recently had carpet torn out, wooden floors refurbished and leather banquettes installed—is the work of Ron Siegel, a well-known chef in San Francisco who has run kitchens at pricey, haute cuisine establishments. Mr. Siegel not only presides over the Western Room but is now a business partner in Rancho with longtime owner Bob Brown.
In a statement, Mr. Brown said that Rancho “has been a family affair for over 18 years, and while it’s been a wonderful experience, we’re ready to offer our community more.” Mr. Brown’s son, Max, is still overseeing the remainder of the restaurant’s goings-on.
Mr. Siegel’s philosophy at Rancho is that “less is probably more. I’m not trying to overthink it too much. I just want people to be happy.”
He started working in kitchens when he was about 15. Instead of going to college, he kept working. That included stints at delis and butcher shops, at upscale establishments like the French Laundry in Napa, where he was a sous chef, and at city establishments like Charles Nob Hill, Masa’s and Michael Mina, where a tasting menu is about $125 a person. While the Western Room isn’t cheap, the price point is noticeably lower than that. Four courses would probably run you around $60 not including wine, which, at around $7 to $10 a glass, is reasonably priced for Marin.
Mr. Siegel, who lives in San Anselmo, was getting weary of the commute to San Francisco. But he also wanted a different kind of change. “Part of it is that I wanted to be somewhere that’s more accessible to more people,” he said. “It depends on your definition of affordable, but to me and to everyone I’ve talked to, they’re like—yeah, it’s different.”
His training was steeped in traditional French cuisine, but a well-publicized trip to Japan deeply influences his aesthetic. In the 1990s, he was chosen to compete on Iron Chef. In the Japanese show, a challenger goes head-to-head against one of the show’s four chefs—who each specialize in a different kind of cuisine—by cooking dishes in a single hour that feature a surprise ingredient. Mr. Siegel beat the French Iron Chef. (The ingredient was lobster.)
He said he almost declined the invitation to compete, but the trip taught him that “[the Japanese] are very, very serious about food … that changed a lot about my philosophy. They focus on ingredients and simplicity, but it’s really, really good.” He returned to Japan many times.
Mr. Siegel largely creates menu around what’s available at farmers markets or from local farms. “It’s the most beautiful scenery ever out here. It doesn’t even look real. But there are amazing things that happen just in the [area], from Quiet Valley Farm to Nicasio Valley Cheese Company to Devil’s Gulch Ranch, Brickmaiden Bread, Stemple Creek. There’s a lot of incredible things going on here and people are incredibly passionate about food.”
He can wax poetic about leafy greens he sources from Quiet Valley. “The lettuce that lady grows up the hill is so beautiful. You look at it and you almost think we’re not worthy of her lettuce.”
Mr. Siegel’s veneration of aesthetics is little surprise, given the carefully curated dishes he presents at the Western Room, which are divvied up into small bites, first courses, entrées and dessert.
The rabbit liver small bite last week was served as a trio of perfectly cut, barely square-inch petit fours with three layers: a base of almond flecked cake, earthy paté and hibiscus jelly. The trout starter comes not only with shiitake and daikon but is served with a cup of miso broth, to pour to your liking. Hamachi crudo is topped with crumpled rice crackers and accented with citrusy yuzu sauce. The Dungeness crab small bite is curled into a sort of sushi roll on one end of the plate; on the other end, the chunks are reminiscent of two overlapping paws.
Not all of the dishes have such a strong Asian influence, but it’s still there. The roast duck and nutty purple barley sports a little lemongrass and the halibut is served with a few fiddlehead ferns, not uncommon in Japanese cuisine. All the dishes seem to maintain a lightness, a manicured simplicity, perhaps not unlike what you see when you drive past the green rolling hills of Nicasio. Though, of course, nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
The Western Room is open Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. For more information call: 415-622-2219 x16 or visit RanchoNicasio.com.