Is This America’s Best Restaurant?

Ever since it opened in 2018, SingleThread Farm-Restaurant-Inn has accumulated recognition, plaudits and even stars, of the Michelin variety. The restaurant and farm—co-founder Katina Connaughton runs the Dry Creek farm, Kyle Connaughton the Healdsburg restaurant—have made a rapid if not unprecedented rise in the world of haute cuisine since the business opened in 2016.

As Healdsburg’s celebrity has grown, so too has SingleThread’s. Now the destination restaurant at the corner of Center and North streets has attained a new honor: It’s been named as one of the World’s Best Restaurants, sharing the honor with one other U.S. restaurant, La Bernardin in New York City, and seven more establishments on the global shortlist.

Other Best Restaurants include Guy Savoy in Paris, Cheval Blanc in Basel and Matsukawa in Tokyo. A second restaurant in France, La Vague d’Or in St. Tropez, was also named, as well as L’Enclume in the U.K., Lung King Heen in Beijing and Schwarzwaldstube in Germany.

The incursion of Asian cuisine into the global list has been growing ever since “Iron Chef” hit cable in 1993. Kyle Connaughton’s own culinary education began in an established Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles; he trained as a sushi chef and worked in Hokkaido, Beverly Hills and an exhaustive list of other kitchens. 

Combining Passions

Meanwhile Katina Connaughton studied sustainable agriculture during their global journey. They combined their talents and passions with the creation of SingleThread, which opened in 2016. The restaurant earned two Michelin stars within months, and its third in 2024.

The restaurant and a five-room hotel are in a modern Italianate building at 131 North St., on the site of the former post office that was destroyed by fire in 2010. SingleThread is not however a community gathering place, as the post office was; its prices are quite high, either for dining ($600 for a 10-course tasting menu, wine flights extra) or residence ($1600/night). Access to the restaurant is through a key-coded, unmarked door, and smoked windows and potted plants preserve the diners’ privacy from passing pedestrians.

But Connaughton puts Healdsburg front and center in his success, saying that to see Healdsburg “next to these Old World cities famous for gastronomy, like Paris, Tokyo, and Geneva, gives us an incredible amount of pride for the work we have been doing for our guests these past eight years. We wouldn’t have imagined when opening we could have achieved this type of recognition, so it’s both humbling and exciting for the future.”

La Liste is a privately owned ranking guide founded in 2015, whose grades are compiled by data-processing algorithms from a number of other services and media. By issuing its selection, La Liste claims to be “consolidating its position as an authority in international gastronomic assessment. This year, nine excellent establishments in seven countries share first place, illustrating the richness and diversity of the world’s haute gastronomy.”

Vertice Sides

The Connaughtons co-own the restaurant-farm-inn with Tony Greenberg, CEO of Vertice Hospitality. In the past several years, Vertice has made other investments in Healdsburg, including buying the remodeled River Belle Inn on Front Street, former home of wine doyenne Isabelle Simi Haigh. It purchased the historic building in 2022 for a reported $7.25 million, and while for the past two years Vertice maintained it, it recently stopped taking bookings after the first of the year.

Though there has been no announcement, real estate sources suggest that Vertice plans to embark on a considerable renovation, and plans are to reopen by the end of 2025.

In July 2023, Vertice took out a 25-year lease on 415 Center St.—the former Raven Film Center, shuttered since the pandemic. At the time it had no stated plans for the 15,000-square-foot building in the Mitchell Center, and despite holding a public meeting in the now-closed movie theater (screening room 2), its plans remain unknown.

At the same time, Vertice purchased the former Rosenberg department store at 150 North St. on the corner of East. Again, no plans for this building have been announced, and no papers have been filed with the city building or planning department for any work.

Despite this habitual opacity, in May, the Healdsburg City Council issued a proclamation recognizing SingleThread for “receiving its three Michelin Stars (and Keys, for their hospitality at the Inn) and for their Contributions to the Community.”

It is one of the top 25 revenue generators for the city through the sales tax of its receipts. Other restaurants on that list include Spoonbar, the Matheson, Vallette, Montage and Willi’s Seafood & Raw Bar.