Brigitte Bistro is a Petaluma darling, acquiring superlatives from critics. Yet, chef and owner Nick Ronan — despite his own success over two decades and multiple restaurants — is nervous about Thursday. In less than 24 hours, his Petaluma bistro will be featured on the Nov. 20 episode of PBS show, “Check, Please!”
In fact, Ronan’s menus have been on “Check, Please!” before, the first time 17 years ago. He also ran three restaurants in San Francisco, as well as a farm and cooking school in Pope Valley. But then Ronan decided to quit the industry. Until not too long ago, he was sleeping on a bed in an unfurnished apartment, divorced, exhausted, and supporting himself as a private chef, living month to month. Then his mother died in 2023. He said he had no intention of ever returning.
Petaluma revived him, he said. “It was magical for me.”
“Petaluma stamp”
For many years, the Water Street Bistro was Petaluma’s French restaurant. People who learned that he was French and a chef would urge him to open a French restaurant, as though the lack of more was an open wound.
Ronan is from a region in southwest France. The closest large city to his village of 3,000 people is Carcassonne, known for its medieval citadel, La Cité, whose likeness covers the outside of his Petaluma bistro. “My cooking is from there. My palate is there,” he said.
Carcassonne is the base for the dishes he serves: full, rich, familial. The restaurant should be noisy and lively. “It’s a community,” he said. Dishes that are too perfect frighten people, he added. His dishes should be “an explosion of flavor.”
If Ronan was going to open another restaurant, it had to be in Petaluma. It had to have an open floor so that people could be near enough to each other to have a conversation or at least say hello. And it had to have a story, a soul, and a “Petaluma stamp” on it.
He found what he wanted in a squat, white-washed stucco building on Petaluma Boulevard North in the shadow of the Shelling Grain and Feed lot — and its smells. The Wishbone restaurant was the last to occupy the building, which still carries the sign of an even earlier incarnation as “Three Cooks.”
The windows were so dirty when the landlord showed Ronan the building that he couldn’t see through them. “I walked in and saw the room opening,” he said. The bistro is named after his mother. Likewise, the menu is a nod to the “flavor memories” of his childhood — duck confit, cassoulet, escargot, beef bourguignon, and foie gras.
His menu changes with the season, but there are non-negotiable dishes, including his signature onion soup, “which can’t be changed” without the ire of regular customers. His Humboldt goat cheese salad, he said, is “impossible to change.” The black cod is not negotiable. “I change that and people will hate me.” A review of the restaurant praised the dish. But it was the Celery Root Millefeuille, the only vegetarian entree on the menu, that captured the food writer. “I still haven’t gotten over it.” Ronan changes the sauces served with his frites, but monthly. “Sauces are crucial,” he said. “Even though they take me forever.”
People in Petaluma love food, completely adore food,” Ronan said. “They also know their food, the flavor.” They give him 99 percent confidence in his bistro. Yet, he can’t help being a tiny bit nervous about whether what he is doing will be understood by those who will pass judgment on Brigitte Bistro Thursday on “Check, Please!”
For their part, the producers wrote that Brigitte Bistro channels the flavors of Southern France through Chef Nick Ronan’s childhood memories, “think soupe à l’oignon, steak tartare, and île flottante, all infused with a spirit of love and joie de vivre.”
In addition to Brigitte Bistro, the show will include an East Bay and San Francisco restaurant.
Downtown Berkeley’s Pizzeria da Laura led by Chef Laura Meyer is a three-time World Pizza Champion and the first woman and first American to win Italy’s teglia category. DACHA, in San Francisco’s Lower Nob Hill, pairs Eastern European dishes with California flair like syrniki brulee and sweet or savory blinchiki, alongside an elaborate mixology program, in a sleek, modern setting.
The show airs Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. on KQED channel 9.
Dining and Cooking