"There are some cool, fun little places here, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a food destination right now," chef Erik Anderson told the San Francisco Chronicle last September, describing the town he was about to bet on. Anderson had just partnered with Theorem Vineyards owners Kisha and Jason Itkin to open two restaurants on Calistoga's Lincoln Avenue: a tasting-menu spot called Ilora and a casual sibling called TR Bar. A year later, Anderson's name has come off Theorem's team page, and both restaurants are on hold while the winery works through a city planning process. Meanwhile, the rest of the block kept filling in.
That's the part worth sitting with if you live here and have spent the past year half-following restaurant news between errands. Two restaurants opened for real business this year on Lincoln Avenue. Neither belonged to an outside chef chasing an underserved market. Both belonged to people who already had their names on something else in town.
What's Actually Serving Dinner Right Now
If you want a straight answer to "what's open," here's where Lincoln Avenue and its immediate side streets actually stand this fall:
- Eight North, at 1374 Lincoln Ave., opened in November 2025 in the old Brannan's Grill space, vacant for nearly a decade before that. It's owned by the mother-daughter team of Betsy and Sarah Lawer of Lawer Estates, whose Calistoga and Knights Valley vineyards supply much of the wine list. Executive chef Abby Burk, who came over from Sam's Social Club at Indian Springs Resort, runs a wood-fired menu that leans on the Lawers' Alaska roots with fresh Alaskan seafood alongside local produce.
- Five Senses, at 1227 Lincoln Ave., opened in July after a soft launch, serving modern Japanese food from a 25-foot sushi bar. Owner and chef Spencer Conaty built the menu with small plates starting at $10, rolls mostly $12 to $25, and a $35 Flannery Farms New York steak as the ceiling. His happy hour, all wine half off from 3 to 5 p.m., has become a regular window for locals rather than tourists.
- Lovina, run by Jennifer Bennett out of a historic craftsman house on the same street, is still doing its handmade Bolognese and wild halibut under a tip-free pricing model.
- TRUSS Restaurant + Bar, Anderson's earlier and more casual project at the Four Seasons, is still open and unaffected by what's happening with Ilora and TR Bar.
- Auro, the Four Seasons' Michelin-starred kitchen, lost executive chef Evan Neumann to a departure earlier this year. The restaurant is operating under new leadership, and whether it keeps its star is not yet settled.
- The Calistoga Inn, on the Napa River, is still running its live music schedule on the patio from May through October, same as it has for years.
None of this is a changeover. It's infill, a building that sat empty getting used again, a new tenant moving in next to an old one. What makes it worth tracking is which projects made it to opening night and which didn't.
The Building Still Waiting on a Property Line
Ilora was supposed to open this fall inside a building at 1364 Lincoln Ave. that dates to 1888 and had sat vacant for years. TR Bar, the more casual half of the pair, was slated for the 1887 Odd Fellows building across the street at 1343 Lincoln, with Theorem Vineyards also buying the vacant lot next door at 1339 Lincoln in 2025.
According to reporting from Calistoga Currents, the holdup isn't really about the kitchen. Greg Desmond, the city's planning and building director, confirmed that Theorem is working to merge the Odd Fellows building and the adjacent lot into a single parcel, and that the merger is still moving through the planning process. The restaurant plans themselves have paused while that happens.
The timing lines up with something else: Anderson's name has quietly moved. He no longer appears on Theorem's team page, and multiple San Diego outlets now list him as culinary director of a project called Roseacre in La Jolla, which is preparing to open. Napa Valley tourism listings updated in May still had him attached to both Calistoga restaurants, with Ilora slated for a fall 2026 debut. Whether he's still involved, and whether Ilora and TR Bar are moving forward, paused, or off entirely, isn't something anyone has said on the record.
Two Openings, Two Projects Still in Planning
Theorem Vineyards is not an outside investor. Like Lawer Estates, it's a winery putting its name on a restaurant. Local ownership is common to both, and what separates them today is timing. Eight North and Five Senses are serving guests, while Theorem's two buildings are still moving through city planning.
Eight North has a general manager, Neil Robinson, who came over from the opening team at Fleetwood at the Calistoga Motor Lodge, and an executive chef who was previously running the kitchen at Sam's Social Club a few blocks away. Both are part of the day-to-day team. Five Senses is owner-run: Conaty opened without outside investors, using his own savings and taking on debt, and converted a former antique store in about six months. His wife, Rita, is a third-generation Calistogan whose family ran Carl's Auto Body Shop for years. He's said that once the wine he bought out from a closed Mendocino coast restaurant runs down, he plans to pour only Calistoga labels. He has said he priced the menu with residents in mind.
Anderson's earlier project, TRUSS at the Four Seasons, is open and running. For Ilora and TR Bar, the stated holdup is the parcel merger, and the city has not said when it expects further direction from the owners. Anderson has been identified as culinary director of the Roseacre project in La Jolla, and no one has said publicly how that fits with the Calistoga plans. Until Theorem or the city says more, the timeline for both restaurants is simply unknown.
What Just Happened on the Avenue
Calistoga's Harvest Table, the annual thousand-foot communal dinner that takes over Lincoln Avenue every second Sunday of September, ran on September 13 this year. It's the one night the town's restaurants and wineries set a shared table down the middle of the street, and it's a reasonable proxy for who's actually operating and who isn't. The restaurants that opened this year are the ones with the staff and the standing to show up for something like that.
A few blocks over on Washington Street, Bubbles Calistoga, a sparkling wine tasting lounge from founder Gregg Lamer, was aiming for a mid-September opening at 1120 Washington St., according to state Alcoholic Beverage Control filings for a beer and wine license. If that timeline held, it's now pouring. And the historic Calistoga Depot, built in 1868 and the second-oldest train station in California, has reopened with a partial roster of tenants after sitting underused for a while.
Further out, October brings the fairgrounds' first multiday rock festival, launched under a five-year agreement between the city and local promoter Ripe Productions. The city bought the 70-acre fairgrounds property from Napa County for $2 million last year and is charging a base fee of $12,500 per event day, rising to a share of ticket sales once attendance passes 3,500. It's organized by Calistoga resident and music producer Gary Himelfarb alongside local winemaker Seth Cripe, and it's meant to start small, a two-day lineup this year, before expanding.
None of that resolves what happens with Ilora and TR Bar. The parcel merger will finish on the city's timeline, not the restaurant's, and until it does, that stretch of Lincoln Avenue stays exactly as full as the people actually running it have made it, no more and no less.
If you're the kind of owner watching how a building's status moves through a city planning process, or you're weighing what a stalled parcel merger actually means for a commercial timeline in a town this size, that's a conversation The Elite Club has with hospitality and business owners across Napa Valley all the time. Request a private consultation when you're ready to talk specifics.
