Food at The Lodge at Dawn Ranch. Credit: Dawn Heumann

Wine Country Dining Without the Script

7 Minute read

11 Aug 2026

Flora Tsapovsky

Writer

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At The Lodge at Dawn Ranch, Juliana Thorpe and Ignacio Zuzulich replace regional convention with South American memory and a welcome sense of freedom.

Here’s a take some might find controversial: For all its Michelin lore, Northern California’s Wine Country, primarily Napa and Sonoma, isn’t exactly a destination for adventurous dining. Sample one, two, or three high-end restaurants in the area, and you’re likely to fill up on crudo, risotto, duck, and premium chocolate crémeux, all exquisitely executed but creatively muted. The small river town of Guerneville has never been at the center of the area’s culinary narrative. Yet it’s there, of all places, that the familiar template begins to give way. Stroll down the main drag past the antiques and woo-woo clothing shops, continue beyond the Safeway, and duck into The Lodge at Dawn Ranch, where executive chefs Juliana Thorpe and Ignacio “Nacho” Zuzulich are doing things a little differently.

The restaurant is located at Dawn Ranch, a well-appointed but not opulent property offering cabins, cottages, and a spa on the banks of the Russian River. The resort is the latest iteration of a historic Guerneville property formerly known as Murphy’s Guest Ranch and, later, Fife’s Resort. Across its two tasting menus, the eight-course This and That and the 12-course All That, the departures from Wine Country convention reveal themselves gradually. The menus follow a familiar progression of amuse-bouches, vegetables, proteins, and desserts, but their contents are anything but predictable.

Instead of Parker House rolls, there are dadinhos de tapioca, a beloved Brazilian snack of fried tapioca cubes served here with chili jam. Instead of mignonette, the obligatory oyster course is doused in kiwi leche de tigre. As the evening progresses, the menu’s vocabulary shifts further from the Wine Country norm: moqueca, picanha, and ajo blanco, each connecting the experience to the chefs’ cultural backgrounds or years spent cooking abroad.

Neither chef is a California native, nor did either grow up with the state in mind. Thorpe was raised in Matutu, Brazil, while Zuzulich hails from Córdoba, Argentina. The two are also a couple, and between them, their résumés include restaurants familiar to anyone following the World’s 50 Best Restaurants or tracking Michelin stars, from Mugaritz in Spain to The Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley. Since arriving at The Lodge in 2023, they have remained true to their roots.

“If a dish doesn’t connect to our memory, our culture, our family, it doesn’t stay,” says Thorpe. “More than flavors, what we try to create is a feeling, something that comes from somewhere real.” The menu at The Lodge feels deeply personal and free of concessions to regional convention, with minimal, striking presentations that showcase the central ingredient without a frenzy of farm-to-table garnishes. Thorpe says those dishes are rooted in lived experiences: “Sometimes it’s a product, sometimes it’s something as small as a cookie we used to eat as kids, sometimes it’s a place, like the streets of Bahia and that unmistakable smell of dendê oil in the air, or dishes we discovered along the way.”

Zuzulich says his Argentine background gives the menu an almost instinctive honesty, as well as “depth, and a certain rawness that we try to preserve.” Consider the Snake River Farms picanha. Tempting as it might be to surround the cut with additions showcasing the local bounty, the beef is served boldly bare, accompanied only by a green sprig and avocado purée. In other dishes, the couple takes a layered, multicultural approach informed by their years cooking abroad. “Every year, we revisit the asparagus,” says Zuzulich. This year, burnt bread cream, which the chefs learned to make in the Basque Country, “brings a subtle bitterness that lifts the whole dish,” he says.

The restaurant’s wine program, led by 24-year-old sommelier Genaro Gallo, is similarly playful. Although Gallo is departing the property in August, his Sommelier Notebook will remain. The hand-drawn guide organizes bottles into categories such as “Smooth Talkers” and “Effervescent Flirts,” bringing more personality to the selection process than is typical of fine-dining wine lists. Gallo also created a tasting-menu pairing with vintages spanning more than a century, including a special pour of Madeira dating to 1902.

“We’re not interested in a rigid idea of perfection,” says Thorpe of both the wine list and the restaurant as a whole. “We want things to feel alive. A big part of the experience comes from Genaro and his work. What happens on the floor completes the kitchen in a very real way.” When people think of Wine Country, precision, structure, and a certain formality come to mind, she adds. But in Guerneville, a town shaped by the Russian River, towering redwoods, a vibrant queer community, and a rough-around-the-edges sensibility, “something is different,” Thorpe says. “There’s a kind of freedom that allows us to do something thoughtful and detailed, but without rigidity.” In Wine Country, that freedom can feel quietly radical.