Chef Erik Anderson, the man about to open the most ambitious restaurant Calistoga has seen in years, told a reporter this: "There are some cool, fun little places here, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a food destination right now." He said it while explaining why he was opening there anyway.
That contradiction is the real story of Calistoga this August. Not the heat, not the hot springs, not another list of places to eat. In the space of about three weeks, the town canceled its own election, asked the county for fifty more years of control over its biggest piece of land, staged an inaugural wine competition that stakes a direct claim to the most famous tasting in wine history, and landed a French Laundry and Coi alum who picked Calistoga precisely because nobody else had claimed it yet. None of these things were coordinated. All of them point the same direction: this is the town deciding, on several fronts at once, that it's done being defined by everyone else's terms.
The Wine Event That Skipped the Resort
Calistoga already has a wine event with a track record. Calistoga Food & Wine ran its twelfth year on June 7 at the Four Seasons Resort and Residences, a walk-around tasting presented by the Calistoga Wine Growers Association that paired nine local restaurants, including Michelin-starred Auro, with nearly thirty wineries. It's an established, resort-anchored showcase, and it's a good one.
The Calistoga Wine Festival that debuted on August 15 is a different animal, and the difference is the point. It's inaugural. It's held at the Brannan Center rather than a resort ballroom. And it named its centerpiece competition "Judgement of Calistoga," a direct nod to the fiftieth anniversary of the 1976 Judgment of Paris, the blind tasting where California wines beat their French counterparts and put this whole valley on the map. Proceeds go to UpValley Family Centers, a local nonprofit, not a resort marketing budget. A precursor evaluation ran July 15, feeding into the August public tasting and awards ceremony. Where Food & Wine invites you to Calistoga's hospitality, the new festival asks you to judge Calistoga's wine on its own merits, on its own turf.
A Council Nobody Voted For, With One Clear Priority
Calistoga's city council changed hands this month without a single ballot cast. The council voted on August 19 to cancel the November 3 election because exactly three people filed for exactly three open seats. Councilmember Kevin Eisenberg, first elected in 2022, begins a two-year term as mayor. Scott Cooper, also first elected in 2022, starts a second four-year term. The new face is Lana Richardson, a member of the city's Housing Advisory Committee since 2021 and a nearly thirty-year Calistoga resident who moved from the East Bay to start Gourmet Retreats at CasaLana, a culinary-classes-meets-vacation business.
Richardson was specific about what she wants to do with her seat: get long-term planning moving on the Calistoga Fairgrounds, a 70.6-acre property the city bought from Napa County in 2024, including chasing grant opportunities and building an actual master plan for the site. An uncontested election handed a private-business owner a council seat and a land-use mandate in the same afternoon.
Fifty Years, Not Twenty-Five
Nine days after that appointment, the fairgrounds question got a lot more concrete. On August 28, the Press Democrat reported that Calistoga is asking Napa County to double the maximum lease term on that same 70.6-acre property, from twenty-five years to fifty. The county sold the fairgrounds to the city in 2024 for $2 million under specific terms: a 25-year lease cap, a requirement that the city preserve historical uses like fairs and car races, and a buyback right if the city tries to lease, sell, or rezone the land beyond those terms. Outgoing mayor Donald Williams and incoming mayor Kevin Eisenberg made the city's case directly to the county Board of Supervisors on August 25.
"Allowing longer leases actually strengthens and supports the essential purpose of the transaction"
That's Williams's argument for why more control, not less oversight, gets the property back into public use. The county took the request up in closed session and gave direction to its CEO, Ryan Alsop, without taking formal action. Meanwhile the city has already started moving on its own: the council approved a request-for-proposals in June to find an operator for the fairgrounds golf course, one of the assets Williams says a 25-year cap makes hard to lease out professionally. The city bought this land two years ago. Now it's negotiating for the freedom to actually decide what happens on it.
| Old read on Calistoga | What changed this August |
|---|---|
| A drive-through before the flashier towns | A chef with 11 Michelin stars on his résumé picked it anyway |
| County holds the leverage on the town's biggest asset | City is negotiating to hold it for fifty years instead of twenty-five |
| Wine tourism happens inside the resorts | The newest wine event moved to a community venue, proceeds to a local nonprofit |
| Council seats get decided by voters | This year's seat, and its fairgrounds priority, arrived without a ballot |
Two Restaurants Betting Against the Common Wisdom
Calistoga's only Michelin star currently lives at Auro, inside the Four Seasons Resort, where executive chef Evan Neumann runs a seven-course tasting menu that earned its star within eight months of opening in October 2022. It's a genuine achievement, and it's also, structurally, a resort restaurant, built for guests already staying on property.
What's coming this fall is a different bet entirely. Chef Erik Anderson, an alum of the Bay Area's Michelin-starred French Laundry and Coi, is partnering with Theorem Vineyards owners Kisha and Jason Itkin to open two restaurants on Lincoln Avenue itself, Calistoga's downtown drag. Ilora, the fine-dining half of the pair, is going into a building at 1364 Lincoln Ave built in 1888 that had sat empty for years. Anderson is aiming for a Michelin star there too, and he plans to draw on Theorem's culinary garden and the Itkins' twenty-thousand-acre Wagyu cattle ranch in Montana for a beef program built around every cut of the animal. TR Bar, the casual counterpart, opens alongside it for lunch and dinner. Anderson made his skepticism about Calistoga's food scene public before he'd even opened. He's betting on the town anyway, on Main Street, in a building that's been dark for decades.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
None of this requires you to do anything, but it's worth knowing what to expect. Parking and foot traffic near the Brannan Center will be tighter around wine festival weekends going forward if this year's inaugural event becomes an annual one. The fairgrounds conversation is a public process moving through the Napa County Board of Supervisors, and Richardson's push for a master plan means there will likely be public meetings worth attending if you have opinions about what a revived golf course, RV park, or fairground calendar should look like. And downtown Lincoln Avenue is about to get a second wind this fall when Ilora and TR Bar open, which means more evening foot traffic and a wider dinner reservation window in a town that has historically closed early outside resort hours.
Calistoga has spent years being described in relation to Napa, St. Helena, and Yountville, the towns with the bigger reputations and the longer restaurant waitlists. This August, in governance, in land control, and in who's willing to open a restaurant here, the town made a case for being read on its own terms instead.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property values, timing, or what a specific parcel near the fairgrounds or downtown corridor might be worth, that's a longer conversation, and it's the kind of conversation Kevin M. Properties has regularly with people who already call Calistoga home. Reach out any time you want to talk through it.
