The former Acacia House at the Alila Napa Valley will reopen in mid-May as Violetto, a fine dining experience with tasting and a la carte menus. Executive Chef and Director of Culinary Thomas Lents, whose resume includes Michelin-star restaurants in the Midwest, a stint at Joel Robuchon’s Mansion restaurant, and Quince in San Francisco, will head the reimagined eatery.
The menu is focused on Northern Italian cooking with California influences. It offers a variety of dining options — from simple to long and luxurious — including a $95 prix fixe dinner menu featuring dishes such as squash blossom bucatini with Santa Barbara sea urchin, rigatoni with lamb sugo, truffled Petaluma hen with fiddlehead fern, braised Wagyu beef cheek and Agnolotti de Violetto, described as a “nose to tail and steam to seed” pasta of the house.
Violetto’s $130 dinner tasting menu ups the game with a smoked sturgeon tartlet, Liberty Farms duck, spot prawn and sea urchin with white asparagus budino, and a chocolate torte for dessert. A la carte options include many of the prix fixe items offered individually.
The hotel restaurant will also be open for weekend brunch from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., as well as a more casual lunch.
Chef Chris Cosentino previously helmed the hotel restaurant as the well-received Acacia House from 2017 to 2022. The restaurant was noted as a Top 100 restaurant by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2018. Cosentino is best known for his elevated everything-but-the-squeal menus at San Francisco’s Cockscomb and Incanto, both now closed. He won Top Chef Masters in 2012. In August 2023, Cosentino revamped the menu at Marin’s historic Nick’s Cove seafood restaurant.
Violetto is located at Alila Napa Valley, 1915 Main St., St Helena.
