A great tasting menu is a performance that shines a spotlight on a chef’s vision and abilities. At its best, it showcases ingredients, techniques and identity. And for anyone sitting down to the table, it’s a pause button, a space to gather with people and share an extended experience devoted to the joy of food.
The spirit of the tasting menu shines in Sonoma County at Charlie Palmer’s Dry Creek Kitchen, the Healdsburg town square spot helmed by Chef Shane McAnelly. This Michelin-guide restaurant‘s traditional six-course tasting menu is a parade of fresh and local ingredients from land and sea. But parallel to this standard tasting menu is yet another more unexpected option: a tasting menu oriented entirely around pasta.
For Chef McAnelly, it started with an obsession. “I’d be in the kitchen making yet another pasta and also realizing this is not a pasta restaurant.” Without room on the restaurant’s a la carte menu to keep up with his pasta-making passion, he came up with another option: create a five-course pasta tasting menu to live alongside the restaurant’s already-popular main tasting menu.
The pasta tasting menu debuted in the summer of 2025 and attracts a dedicated local following in addition to curious visitors. As on the main tasting menu, the lineup changes regularly on the pasta menu. Pasta, McAnelly, notes, is “a great canvas to showcase what’s peaking in season.”
Though the rest of the pasta tasting menu shifts to celebrate these peak-season ingredients, one dish remains a constant: the Cocoa Trifoglio. The big bold statement pasta of the menu, occupying the penultimate spot reserved on traditional tasting menus for the headlining dish. Cocoa-infused clover-shaped tubes of pasta pair with a duck confit and madeira cream sauce that McAnelly says started as a sauce of a steak dish early in his career. “I liked the idea of the bitter cocoa in the pasta to play off the sweetness of the Madeira and brandy,” he say. Hazelnut praline adds a sweet note without sacrificing the savory depth of the dish.
On a chilly night in February, I tried the tasting menu with a group of friends, some of whom opted for the traditional tasting menu and others who, like me, were curious to try the pasta-focused option.
I was a little worried about how I’d feel after so much pasta, but each dish was portioned perfectly: enough to feel like a course but not so much that I dreaded the next. And my concerns that this could too easily slip into being a one-note dinner evaporated as each new dish brought an entirely fresh approach to the experience. I’ve never eaten so many pastas in one sitting, and I loved seeing how the particular pairing of shape and flavors changed the experience of each dish.
Linguine paired perfectly with saffron, Meyer lemon and shrimp. The wavy ridges of Cresta Di Gallo held the gentle kick of Aleppo pepper in a hearty dish of fennel sausage and broccolini. Squash agnolotti in a brown-butter sage sauce found wintery depth with wild mushrooms and black garlic. And dessert, a non-pasta dish, married winter and summer flavors: a rich chocolate boca nero cake with tropical elements of passion fruit, mango and vanilla bean.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. Individual courses are also offered a la carte at the bar, but I wouldn’t miss the chance to take that pause and go deep on the magic of pasta crafted as a multi-course story bursting with creativity and a strong sense of place.
