Drew Trautmann - Chef of Sonoma Restaurant & Wine Bar

Sonoma’s top chef knows his sourcing

If Drew Trautmann is proud of the charcuterie course he offers on the menu of Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar, he has every right. His selection comes from a purveyor in New York, whom Trautmann picked because he knows precisely how it should taste. He, himself, used to make charcuterie at a restaurant in Seattle.

So he can anticipate how much pleasure a diner will have, introduced for the first time to a slice of finnochiona. It’s an unusual salami made to a Tuscan recipe and flavored with fennel seed. Sonoma’s cheese course? He’s unearthed local goat milk Cabra La Mancha, Appalachian Spring sheep cheese and a cave-aged cheddar for a board boasting a choice of 12 cheeses all made by local artisan producers.

As the name of the restaurant and wine bar suggests, Trautmann brought that California drive for good food, locally sourced, seasonally harvested, to Capitol Hill. Ever since he began cooking professionally, Trautmann has worked in restaurants where menus changed at the very least seasonally to keep pace as locally sourced produce changed through the year.

He began his cooking not in the Golden State, but in the evergreen one. He picked the Seattle Central Community College to take his associate’s degree in culinary arts because his wife, whom he had met and married while getting his bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas, Austin, was set to go to school in Washington state.

In Austin, Trautmann had far more fun smoking briskets and chickens and devising elaborate barbecues for parties in the house he shared than studying political science (his major) and German (minor). When he graduated, he realized that he preferred to make cooking his career, and that anyone with a good food résumé would be able to get a job almost anywhere.

In Seattle, he worked under James Beard Awardwinning chef Tom Douglas, who taught him the importance of supporting local producers.

The couple lived in Seattle four-and-a-half years until Trautmann’s wife went for her master’s degree at the University of New Mexico. Trautmann cooked his way alongside her at restaurants in Albuquerque and Sante Fe.

Until he arrived in New Mexico, the menus he worked with were primarily “New American” in style. In Sante Fe he began to incorporate a contemporary French influence while still keeping to the principles of buying seasonally and locally. His lists of small producers in the Northwest and Southeast must be worth their weight in artisanal cheese.

Although as a child his grandparents exposed him to very fresh food, Trautmann hadn’t always been so attuned to how satisfying a part of his life it could be. Born in Denver, he is the great-grandson of German immigrants. His grandparents grew strawberries and salad makings in their small yard. An uncle nearby had a much bigger one — large enough to accommodate sweet corn and a range of vegetables. “We used to live for about six years about 200 miles from them. We’d go down and stay a few weeks in summer. My grandmother made her own pickles. She was a good cook. I guess it rubbed off on my mother. I liked cooking, but I didn’t think of it as a career.”

Sante Fe was a beautiful place to live, with wonderful weather, says Trautmann, but very seasonal. “There were probably four, five months of summer. But over winter it really closed down. On Sunday, a lot of places closed at 9 o’clock, even in summer. You haven’t had dinner? Then you’re out of luck.”

So when his wife graduated, they wanted to find someplace where they both could work. In 2002, she was offered a job at the National Museum of the American Indian here in Washington, and it seemed, says Trautmann, like a nice place to live. He already knew that with a cooking résumé like his, it wouldn’t be hard to get a job. He was right. At the end of a five-day visit, he was offered a post at Restaurant Nora, in charge of banquets and special parties.

“Nora [Pouillon] helped me learn about producers in this area,” Trautmann says. And his list of connections grew longer.

Later that year, he moved to Mendocino Grille & Wine Bar as executive chef. The owner sold after a year, and when a new pair took over, Trautmann was free to rework the menu. Appetizers and main courses began to reflect his take on New American cuisine with a French-Italian influence. The menu emphasized the fresh, local and seasonal ingredients that had become part of his canon. And when Eli Hengst and Jared Rager then also opened Sonoma Grille, Trautmann, who lives near Lincoln Park, went too.

It’s a long room with a bistro look of glazed bare brick walls, thick wood tables and a broad bar to belly up to or dine at and pretend you’re in San Francisco or Marseilles. Trautmann likes the neighborhood feel of the space. The diners make an interesting crowd — and one very interested in his food. He cooks lunch five days a week and dinner seven and changes his menu once a week. The day we spoke, there was a pasta on it made with the chestnut flour traditional to the Ligurian coast of Italy.

But he does get some time to himself. Then he’ll head with his wife to Centrale or Poste, where, he says, his friends the chefs won’t let him off with a simple meal. They’ll strut their culinary stuff for him over the course of a three-hour feast. So if he’s feeling a little less peckish or time-constrained, what does he like to eat? Well, the Mexican food in town isn’t up to scratch, he thinks. He’d rather drive across town to Meiwah at New Hampshire Avenue and 23rd Street NW for a Chinese feast.

Sonoma Restaurant & Wine Bar (202-544-8088;sonomadc.com) is located at 223 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. Main courses cost $13 to $33.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.