"Four floors, four registers, one address — The Matheson is Healdsburg's most complete dining destination, where the rooftop cocktail and the basement chef's counter exist in the same impeccably conceived building."
About The Matheson
The Matheson occupies a converted historic building on the street that bears its name, one block from Healdsburg's central plaza, and has managed something that few multi-concept restaurants achieve: genuine coherence across four entirely different dining experiences under one roof. Each floor operates with its own identity, its own energy, and its own reason for existing — yet all four feel like expressions of the same considered intelligence.
The ground floor cocktail bar is where Healdsburg begins its evenings. The natural wine selection is serious and the cocktail program draws from the county's distilleries and producers with the same commitment to local sourcing that defines the kitchen above. The main dining room on the second floor is where Chefs Nate Davis and Dustin Valette express the micro-seasonal wine country menu that changes to reflect what the farm and the market are offering that week. The cooking is modern and confident — wood-fired preparations, composed plates that reference the season without performing it, protein sources documented by producer and provenance.
The rooftop is The Matheson's most publicly celebrated asset, and deservedly so. Views across Healdsburg's terracotta rooflines to the surrounding hills provide a backdrop that distinguishes it from any other rooftop bar in Sonoma County. The cocktail and small-plates menu up top is lighter and more social than the main dining room — intended for aperitivo culture rather than formal dining, though the quality of the food is sufficiently high that many guests make the rooftop their entire evening.
In the basement, a twelve-seat chef's counter offers the most focused and intimate dining experience in the building: a front-row view of the kitchen's most technically demanding preparations, served in a tasting-menu format that allows the kitchen to demonstrate what it can do when it isn't also managing a full dining room. The basement counter is the best-kept secret in Healdsburg — book it for solo dining, for a couple willing to commit fully, or for two colleagues who want to talk seriously about something important over food that commands equal attention.
Best Occasion Fit
The Matheson's multi-floor configuration makes it uniquely suited to birthdays that want to move through an evening — drinks on the rooftop with its views across town, dinner in the main dining room, dessert and digestifs back upstairs as the night settles into something more relaxed. The kitchen accommodates birthday preparations without making them feel like an imposition, and the service team understands how to calibrate an evening's pacing for a celebratory group.
For team dinners, The Matheson offers the ability to configure an entire floor for private use, allowing a group to inhabit the restaurant at whatever social register they prefer. The combination of a genuinely excellent kitchen, a wine program that gives the sommelier genuine material to work with, and a building that provides natural transitions between spaces makes it one of the most seamlessly managed group dining experiences in the county.
Reserve a Table at The Matheson →