When Cafe La Haye owner Saul Gropman announced his retirement in December 2024, Sonoma Valley collectively clutched its pearls. The bespectacled host had been a welcoming presence in the intimate dining room since the restaurant opened in 1996 — a rare fixed point in a county where the culinary landscape is always in flux.
Nearly a year later, the restaurant hasn’t missed a beat. The dining room is still packed with locals who reliably show up for pork chops and risotto.
Inside, little has changed: it’s the same art, the same menu and the same cozy split-level room that has made it a neighborhood favorite for nearly three decades. And that’s precisely why it still works under new husband-and-wife owners José López Nuñes and Marta Elena Echeverría Bacab.
Chef José has spent nearly 25 years in the pint-sized kitchen, learning his craft under its inimitable founding chef, John McReynolds. Though McReynolds left La Haye in 2007 and died in 2024, his bistro-classic sensibility and gregarious energy still hover over the line like a cheerful patron saint…