The news that the Italianesque Molti Amici on Healdsburg Avenue was the latest café to fail spread like olive oil through our fair city early this week, proving that Restaurant Roulette continues to “be a thing” in Healdsburg.
The coming and going of popular local eateries (and an entrepreneur’s gamble in opening one) has almost become a betting game in town. Is it Risk? Blackjack? Craps?
At the start, Molti Amici gave every indication of hitting Bingo. The location was much-loved by locals, having housed Ari Rosen’s Campo Fina for 10 years and A Divine Affair, a Ukrainian restaurant, prior to that. It was only a few steps off the Plaza, and featured not only a large stone pizza oven but a bocce court as well (both left over from Campo Fina).
Jonny Barr, the former SingleThread general manager who waxed enthusiastic over the opportunity to open his dream restaurant in Healdsburg—where in 2023 he vowed to live forever—enlisted other high-profile local foodies to help with the menu. Sean McGaughey and Melissa Yanc, alumni of the SingleThread universe as well, signed on as co-executive chefs at the new restaurant. And the initial response was through the roof.
However, the glow soon faded. McGaughey and Yanc quietly slipped away, to attend to their own projects at the Troubadour bakery across the street from the restaurant, and the Quail and Condor bakery farther down Healdsburg Avenue.
Yelp reviews began to slip, with negative comments first about the indifferent service, then the food and the prices, and even Barr himself. While most diners gave it high marks, a persistent undercurrent of disappointment dragged the numbers down.
Over the summer, Molti Amici scored a couple of status points in the form of a mention in the Michelin Guide’s list of recommended restaurants for 2024, as well as a Bib Gourmand designation for “good quality, good value cooking.”
Those plaudits were almost immediately tarnished by a report in the Healdsburg Police weekly log that one co-owner had accused another of embezzlement, to the tune of $60,000, between September 2023 (the restaurant opened in June) and February 2024.
The two owners in question tried to walk back the charges (“Everything has been resolved. We just found truth to the matter,” Barr told the Press Democrat in July. “Molti Amici will continue to be open and thrive”), but in a sense the catfight was out of the bag.
The sudden closure, announced Sunday on social media, surprised the local foodie community, and a storm of speculation resulted. One possibility: Rosen said last year he couldn’t afford a doubling or tripling of the lease, so he closed Campo Fina. A more optimistic Barr, nourished by the high-end atmosphere of SingleThread and the surge of attention that Healdsburg had been receiving from the national culinary press, thought he could make it work.
However CEO and co-owner Jason Cutrer, who is likely one of the co-owners involved in the June 4 embezzlement report, told the press this week that the restaurant “was just not in a good financial position to continue.” Tension between the two was evident, and Barr moved to Indiana in June, forsaking the town where he once vowed to live forever. (The Tribune was unable to contact either Barr or Cutrer directly.)
Though a green Health Department inspection sticker is still posted in the front window, the restaurant at 330 Healdsburg Ave. is dark, quiet and closed. Soon it will be for lease, at terms yet to be determined. And an optimistic, perhaps more experienced or well-financed restaurateur will roll the dice again.
