Sardines make a splash

At the new Restaurant Eloise, two East Coast cooks get acquainted with a very West Coast fish.

By Jan Newberry, Photograph by Ed Anderson

“Cod is big back east—but out here, there are so many little fish to be had,” says Ginevra Iverson, who, along with her husband, Eric Korsh, recently left New York (where the couple worked in the kitchen of popular East Village bistro Prune) to open Restaurant Eloise in Sebastopol. As the two cooks are discovering, the local waters offer a whole new kettle of fish: in particular, sardines from the Monterey Bay. “They’re so fresh,” says Iverson, who recalls that the sardines she served in New York were imported from France. At Iverson and Korsh’s new restaurant, the silver-bellied fish are offered with sushilike simplicity, fanned out on a plate alongside lightly toasted walnuts and slices of celery tossed with walnut-oil vinaigrette. Seasoned with sea salt and bathed in Arbequina olive oil to heighten, rather than hide, their flavor, these little fish make a very big impression. 2295 Gravenstein Hwy. South, Sebastopol, 707-823-6300