Young chefs talk about farm-to-table like it’s something new, but John Ash was doing it in Sonoma County in the 1970s. Like his contemporary Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, he was before his time, focusing on fresh, seasonal and local ingredients when most American restaurants were still cooking from cans. He also championed local wines from Sonoma and Mendocino and emphasized how essential it was for the food and wine to complement each other.
Ash, who is rightly considered the father of wine country cuisine, died Aug. 7 of a heart condition after a brief illness. He was 83.
Ash became a beloved figure in Sonoma County over the years. He didn’t yell in the kitchen, opting for a calming voice and a professorial demeanor, a gentleman in the best sense. “His passion, creativity and generosity were felt by all who had the honor to know him and he will be dearly missed,” the team at Hog Island Oyster Co. posted on social media. He was a board member of the company and wrote The Hog Island Book of Fish & Seafood, released in 2023.
I first got to know Chef Ash in the early 1990s when I was food and wine editor for the Santa Rosa newspaper, the Press Democrat. His national reputation was established by then, boosted when Food & Wine magazine named him one of America's hot new chefs in 1985.
After starting at the Courthouse Café in downtown Santa Rosa in the 1970s, he opened John Ash & Co. nearby in 1980. It was an immediate hit and, within a few years, the restaurant moved to a more upscale location at a Santa Rosa resort. The restaurant remains today, but Ash only stayed in the kitchen for a few years before moving on.
By the 1990s, Ash was in his 50s and wanted to focus on writing, traveling and teaching. He was a natural teacher, I always thought, and he could speak to both home cooks and professional chefs with the same aplomb. He twice won James Beard Awards for books: Culinary Birds in 2014 and John Ash Cooking One-on-One in 2005. He wrote four other cookbooks.
I remember him best as the culinary director of the former Fetzer’s Valley Oaks Food and Wine Center in rural Mendocino County. It was a bucolic spot with towering old trees and a six-acre organic garden. Ash worked from a large demonstration kitchen next to the garden, in what must have been a dream come true. It was a special place, drawing food, wine and agriculture journalists from around the world. Julia Child cooked in the kitchen for one event, and Emeril Lagasse shot an episode of his Food Network show near the garden.
It lasted only a few years. Fetzer's then-owner Brown-Forman closed the culinary center and garden in 2006.
I last crossed paths with Ash in 2016 when he was honored by Santa Rosa Junior College. It was great to see him. He contributed a regular food and recipe column at the Press Democrat.
When I moved to Sonoma County nearly 37 years ago, the wine boom was just taking off, and Northern California wine country was fast becoming a tourist destination. Ash was a foundational character in that movement and, in many ways, in my life in food and wine, as well.
