What's New on the Sonoma Plaza This Summer

Two of the Plaza's most storied corners have new tenants this season, both from chefs who already have a following in Sonoma. The Tuesday farmers market is back on First Street East. And the weekend of July 17 alone carries an anniversary festival, live theatre in the hills above town, and a race weekend at the raceway. For anyone who walks the Plaza a few times a week, summer 2026 is the season when the addresses you already knew changed hands without changing character.

The old post office reopens as a restaurant

The corner of First Street East and East Napa Street has been quiet through most of the pandemic era. The long-ago post office at First and East Napa streets, most recently home to Maya Mexican Restaurant for more than two decades, has been reimagined as a modern California eatery with just a hint of postal noir. That building reopened yesterday, July 16, as Dead Letter.

The operators are familiar. Owners John Toulze and Sondra Bernstein, of The Girl & The Fig and Poppy, offered a preview of what has kept curious locals peering through the glass for months. Head chef Jeremy Zimmerman is running the kitchen, and the format is deliberate. Most of the larger dishes are meant to land in the middle of the table, encouraging people to share, talk and reach across one another with forks rather than quietly contemplate their own plates. "We're removing food envy," Zimmerman said.

Menu specifics from the preview:

• Iberia pork steak with tomatillo crudo, Anaheim relish, and hominy
• Chicken karaage on tahini hummus
• Butterflied trout in red curry with cucumber yogurt

Open from 5-9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, 5-9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. 101 E. Napa St., Sonoma. Reservations run through deadlettersonoma.com.

A restored 1910 bank is now a burger counter

Two blocks west, the Taub Family Outpost has been another slow reveal. The Taub Family Outpost building that SMASH will occupy is a restored 1910 Spanish Colonial bank at 497 First Street West, on the town square. The ground floor opened in May as SMASH, from a team most locals associate with a very different price point.

Ari Weiswasser, the chef behind Glen Ellen Star and Stella, is rolling out a fast-casual smashburger and fried chicken concept called SMASH, set to take over the Taub Family Outpost building on the square. The menu at SMASH will zero in on smashburgers and fried chicken sandwiches, backed up by fries, milkshakes, craft cocktails and "boozy shakes." Weiswasser is a French Laundry alum and a 2025 James Beard semifinalist, which makes the shift to counter service the interesting part of the story rather than the burgers themselves.

The building itself does double duty. In addition to the ground-floor restaurant, the team will also operate The Beacon, a speakeasy located on the second floor of the building. One practical note for anyone planning an evening on the Plaza: the area allows open container alcohol consumption during certain daytime hours, giving customers the option to take drinks and food into the plaza.

If you want a sense of what has actually changed on the Plaza over the past few years, it helps to line up the addresses:

Two of those three corners are now run by chefs who built their reputations elsewhere in the valley and are choosing to expand toward the Plaza rather than away from it. That is the pattern worth noticing.

The restaurateurs who defined Sonoma dining at Glen Ellen Star, Stella, and The Girl & The Fig are quietly re-tenanting the Plaza's most historic corners with more casual concepts. The addresses feel new and familiar at the same time.

The Tuesday market is back, and it's the rhythm of the summer

The Plaza's summer social calendar still hinges on one weekly evening. May also marks the return of the beloved Tuesday Night Farmers Market on the historic Sonoma Plaza. For residents, the market is less a shopping trip than a check-in with the season. It also means Tuesdays now compete with the new Plaza dinner options in a way they did not a year ago, which is a small but real shift in how a summer week gets planned.

Valley Bar + Bottle, a block off the square at 487 First West, continues to hold down the natural-wine end of the block. Their public hours are dinner 5pm - 9pm Thursday - Monday, weekend brunch 11am - 3pm Saturday and Sunday, and weekday lunch 11am - 3pm Thursday, Friday, and Monday.

The weekend calendar worth clearing

Summer is dense. A short list of what is actually on the books, drawn from the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau's 2026 annual events roundup:

• Gay Wine Weekend, July 17-19. Gay Wine Weekend returns to Sonoma Valley July 17–19, 2026 for a 15th Anniversary celebration. The current weekend, in other words.
• Broadway Under the Stars. This year, Transcendence Theatre Company's lineup includes "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," "Radio Recall," and "Mamma Mia!"
• NASCAR Race Weekend at Sonoma Raceway, including the Toyota/Save Mart 350, along with Broadway Under the Stars, Bear Flag Weekend and Gay Wine Weekend, all clustered in June.
• Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival, now in its 129th year, along with the Sonoma Plein Air Festival in September.
• Oktoberfest on the Plaza in October, followed by the Lighting of the Plaza and Tractor Parade in November.

For readers with dogs, kids, or an unshakable weekend hiking habit, the Sonoma County Regional Parks system has expanded evening programming in July around Spring Lake, Taylor Mountain, and North Sonoma Mountain, including sunset paddles, bilingual dog training, and the return of guided hikes at Wright Hill Ranch, one of the newer regional parks in the county.

What ties the summer together

There is a temptation to read the SMASH opening and the Dead Letter opening as two independent stories about ambitious chefs going casual. They read more accurately as one story. The people who built the Plaza's fine-dining identity a decade ago are the same people re-tenanting its most historic buildings today, and they are doing it at price points that make the Plaza a Tuesday-night option again, not only a special-occasion destination.

That matters for anyone who lives here for a straightforward reason. The Plaza has spent the last several years cycling through closures, restorations, and slow reopenings of buildings like the 1910 bank on First Street West. What was a stretch of quiet windows is now a burger counter with a speakeasy above it, a live-fire California kitchen in the old post office, a natural-wine bar in between, and a farmers market on Tuesdays. The corners you already know are working again.

A working Plaza is what makes the surrounding neighborhoods feel like home rather than a set piece. If you have been thinking about how your own property fits into the next chapter of Sonoma Valley, Mark Stornetta advises vineyard owners, estate sellers, and Wine Country buyers with more than four decades of local perspective. Request a confidential consultation to talk through what a thoughtful, discreet approach looks like for your property.