The Chili Crisps and Handmade Bao Spicing Up Sonoma County's Food Scene

Over the past year, I’ve been watching classic episodes of Japan’s 1990s-era “Iron Chef,” revisiting the pro wrestling-style competitions and both old-timey and cutting-edge takes on cuisine that accompanied them. I was recently struck by a comment made by French chef Bernard LePrince, who was leading the legendary Parisian restaurant, La Tour d'Argent when he competed on the show. To the bemusement of the Japanese hosts, he confessed that he’d never tasted soy sauce before.

LePrince was far from a culinary ignoramus. He was running one of the oldest restaurants in France (we’re talking centuries), a place that had fed Henry III and made pressed duck with blood sauce a classic gourmand’s bucket list meal. My point is that in the mid-90s, you could reach the top of the Western culinary world and remain innocent of a condiment that has seen millennia; seen multiple human empires peak and then crumble to dust. Your average teenaged TikTok user could probably name more Asian ingredients than LePrince could. That shift, from a food culture organized around a single canon to one with many centers, is what's reshaping places like Sonoma County.

In the past few years, Asian American purveyors, chefs, and restaurateurs have found a stronger foothold in Sonoma County, and the scene is so much richer for it.

Why? For one, demographics have changed. In search of more space, post-2020 transplants from the rest of the Bay Area arrived with different palates and expectations of the food scene. It shifted in response, in big and small ways. Cotati's Asian market expanded its gochujang selection from one variety to four. Hang Ah Dim Sum in Santa Rosa, once a quiet neighborhood spot, started drawing lines every day. 

According to census data, between 2010 and 2020, Sonoma County's Asian population grew from 17,777 to 22,239 — an increase of roughly 25%, even as the county's overall population stayed nearly flat. (That said, at 4.5% of residents, Sonoma still sits far below California's 15% average.) 

"When I moved into Sonoma County, all of the Asian people just kind of knew each other," says Lani Chan, who came to Sebastopol in 2020 and started Hei Ma, her line of chili crisp oils, in 2021. "We all found each other within a month or two. There was, like, this fist bump situation when we saw each other out." 

That network, which includes farmers, cooks, tea vendors, and pastry chefs, has since grown into something more organized. The Asian American Pacific Islander Coalition of North Bay, which began in 2021 to combat a pandemic-sparked wave of anti-Asian sentiment and violence, has found its calling in doing immigrant advocacy work and putting on cultural celebrations. Last year it put on the Many Moons Festival, which brought 2,800 attendees (60% of whom were AAPI) to Sebastopol. Farms led by Asian Americans, including Radical Family Farms, Gohyang Seed Campus, and Farmer Mai in Sebastopol, are growing the ingredients that make all of it possible.

So there’s the context. What follows is just a sliver of the newest Asian American food makers and purveyors in Sonoma County. The purveyors below represent just one thread of a much larger tapestry — and, it should be said, a distinctly Chinese-leaning one. Consider this a first dispatch, not a census.

Hei Ma 
Lani Chan’s burgeoning chili crisp business, which started in 2019 as Big Spoon Sauce Co., got its first big break when the salsa vendor at the Sebastopol farmer’s market went on maternity leave, freeing up a space. (Affirming the unspoken rule that every market must have at least one spicy thing in a jar.) But in 2025, it took a major hit: A peanut butter company with a similar name took legal action to force the brand to change its name. So now, it persists as Hei Ma: dark horse in Mandarin.

The “basic” chili crisp sticks with lip-tingling, Sichuan flavors, while the seasonal Main Squeeze pairs lemongrass and galangal with lemon drop peppers from Triple T farms and locally sourced Meyer lemons. The peppers and alliums that add piquancy and umami to the sauces come from local farms — some of them run by Asian American growers like Scott Chang-Fleeman and Kristyn Leach — which gives the whole enterprise the same terroir-driven cred as a great bottle of wine. And much like a winery, there’s a club for this, too.

Hei Ma. Find online, at local retailers, or at the Sunday Sebastopol Farmers Market.

Bazaar Sonoma 
Sean Quan cooked at Alinea, Somni, and SingleThread before starting Bazaar Sonoma with wife Jenny Phan, a writer and designer, in Forestville. Their kitchen burned down last year, but that hasn’t stopped them: The operation is now roving around the county, with pop-ups at Marla Bakery in Santa Rosa and Rainy Day Chocolate in Forestville, where they continue their work of serving unapologetically Chinese cuisine, from dumplings to hotpot to fried youtiao in soy milk.

On a recent weekend at Marla, the team ran "four noodles, four regions," bowls of fresh noodles anchored in the culinary traditions of Beijing, Chengdu, Xi'an, and Wuhan. For sides, there was a spectacular, garlic-drenched, no-fucks-given smashed cucumber salad and a Sichuan-style cold dish of crisp shredded potato. I’ve also been eating Quan’s chili crisp (secret ingredient: cornflakes!) on everything at home.

Bazaar Sonoma. Check Instagram for pop-up dates and locations.

Two Trees Tea House 
Adrian and Chris Lewis-Chang opened their tea house on the main drag of tiny Occidental in March 2025, after the couple stepped away from their high-pressure design careers. “We started Two Trees as our contribution to rewriting the narrative of the tea industry, its colonial history and supporting its reclamation by the radical tea growing partners we represent and support around the world,” they declare on the shop’s website. 

The space is spare and unhurried; the teas are single-origin and ethically sourced, steeped at the right temperature in antique drinkware sourced by the couple. Here, waiting is kind of the point: You’ll listen to Adrian tell stories about how he rediscovered himself through tea; breathe deeper as the many houseplants in the space silently fill the room with fresh oxygen; savor the notes of burnt wood, citrus, peach flower, and rose that emanate from the shop’s inventory. The tea tastings are donation-based.

The tea house is all about community: with casual events, like go-playing sessions and tarot readings, and full-on parties, like the Beltane festival held there at the beginning of May. 

Two Trees Tea House. 3597 Bohemian Highway, Occidental. Open Monday, by appointment; Thursday and Friday, noon–5pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 11am–5pm.

Jimtown and Then Sum 
Until 2020, when previous owner Carrie Brown decided to close up shop, the Jimtown Store in Healdsburg was where you’d go for a pit stop as you wound your way through the Alexander Valley, maybe a little bit tipsy from all the wine and craving a ham and brie sandwich to soak it all up. Last year, it reopened, and new owner Michelle Wood brought in something unprecedented in the building’s 133-year history: bánh mì and dim sum. Classically American stuff, like breakfast burritos and deli sandwiches, are still on the menu. You can dig into a plate of steamed bao and follow it with a slice of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

There’s a lot of that juxtaposition here: On shop shelves constructed from reclaimed wood, local wines share space with crocheted dumplings. The philosophy here is that there’s space for all of it.

Jimtown and Then Sum. 6706 CA-128, Healdsburg. Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner Thursday through Monday.