Adecade after opening its doors in Healdsburg, California, SingleThread remains one of the most distinctive dining destinations in the world. Since 2016, chef Kyle Connaughton and his wife, farmer Katina Connaughton, have shaped an experience that seamlessly blends agriculture, cuisine, and hospitality, earning three Michelin stars along the way. At its core is a simple philosophy: let the land and the season determine the story told on each plate. Guests arrive for an extraordinary meal, but leave with something more akin to a deeply personal connection to place and time. As SingleThread celebrates its tenth anniversary, that philosophy is extending beyond Sonoma County. The team recently debuted SoNoMa at Capella Kyoto, its first international venture, while also preparing to unveil The Selvedge, a new hospitality concept in Healdsburg that signals the next evolution of the brand.
Kyle & Katina Connaughton
Ask Connaughton what surprised him most about sustaining a three-Michelin-starred vision for ten years, and he doesn’t mention accolades. He talks about people.
“Many of our team have been with us since the beginning — some for seven, eight, nine, now even ten years,” he says. “You start with a vision that came from us, and then you bring together a team that layers in their own talents, abilities, and perspectives, creating something that’s so much greater than what you could have ever imagined on your own.”
The other surprise: guests who keep coming back. Not simply to check a box, but to go deeper. They return in different seasons, building what Connaughton describes as genuine, lasting relationships.
If SingleThread has a motto, it’s “the story of today.” This wasn’t something Connaughton launched; it emerged as the truest shorthand for what SingleThread actually does.
"It's become a way to distill what SingleThread is and what the experience feels like for the guest," he explains. "Every day I want to tell the story of the farm because we're receiving that harvest each morning, and Katina is telling her story through her ingredients and flowers, saying this is what's ready and in peak season."
This is the closed loop that defines everything: Katina’s farm doesn’t just supply the restaurant; it authors it. The menu is a translation of what the land offers, not the other way around. Connaughton is careful to keep that relationship intact as the operation grows. “We really only are able to grow relative to what our agricultural production is,” he says, noting that the farm operates entirely at hand scale, producing enough not only for SingleThread but for a farm store and select local chefs and friends. The integrity of the agricultural practice is the ceiling and the compass.
At SingleThread, “thoughtful growth” has a specific definition. Every potential expansion, however small, is run through a rigorous internal filter. “The number one thing is really all about how that helps SingleThread become a better restaurant,” Connaughton says. “How does this make us better? What do we learn? How is this going to create an opportunity creatively?”
The team, many of whom have been with the restaurant for nearly its entire life, plays a major role in that calculus. Growth, here, is about giving a long-tenured team new creative challenges, new experiences, new reasons to stay and invest further in what they’ve collectively built.
The opening of SoNoMa at the Capella Kyoto — SingleThread’s first international venture —arrived as an opportunity that felt, in Connaughton’s telling, almost inevitable.
“It actually wasn’t something we were actively looking for,” he says. “It was proposed to us, and we had many conversations about the philosophy and the direction of the Capella Hotel in this 800-year-old historic neighborhood, and about the heritage and the season of Kyoto.” He consulted mentors and friends within the city before committing. Every signal said yes.
The result is a restaurant through a SingleThread lens, but within one of the world’s most storied culinary capitals. What makes it work is common ground.
“We focus on the things that are the same rather than the differences,” Connaughton explains. “Seasonality, intentionality, warm hospitality, support of good food systems and the artisans and craftspeople who work with us.” Kyoto and Sonoma, it turns out, lead with the same values. The restaurant becomes a mirror, and a living exchange program, with California and Japanese team members crossing between both kitchens, carrying inspiration in both directions.
At the heart of both restaurants is a principle that Connaughton returns to again and again: omotenashi — the Japanese philosophy of hospitality that anticipates the guest’s needs before they’re spoken. “SingleThread and now SoNoMa are not restaurants where we say, sit down and sit back and let us perform for you,” he explains. “It’s really about thinking about the guests and saying this is our home and you’re in our home. This is a dinner party.”
That framing carries enormous implications. It shifts the power dynamic. It makes guests collaborators rather than an audience. And it demands more from every team member: not just execution, but genuine care. In Kyoto, the concept translates fluidly. “Both Kyoto and Sonoma lead with heart,” Connaughton says. At SoNoMa, guests are welcomed into a Japanese home. The warmth is the same. The setting is extraordinary.
Back in Healdsburg, the Connaughtons are expanding with The Selvedge, a new hotel concept that Katina has described, memorably, as posh and punk. The reference point is Vivienne Westwood: the designer who dressed the London punk movement in the 1970s and went on to become one of haute couture’s most revered figures, never losing her edge.
“That’s how Katina and I feel,” Connaughton says. “We’re able to have this very elevated experience that we create, but still have fun.” The punk sensibility here isn’t about rebellion for its own sake — it’s about authenticity. About refusing to let luxury become hollow. “We don’t want things to feel like luxury for the sake of luxury. We want things to feel very tangible and very personal.”
Running a three-Michelin-starred operation at the highest level of sustained excellence creates pressure — on systems, on sourcing, on the human beings who show up every day to make it happen. Human sustainability, Connaughton says, comes down to one thing: the why.
"While we're here to execute our work at a very high level, at the same time, we're here to teach and to share and to mentor." Every detail, every decision, every practice is shared with the team not as a directive but as an explanation. "I think ultimately, the legacy of SingleThread, and of what Katina and I do, is to train industry leaders."
That’s a long view. Rarer still in an industry built on immediacy.
Which brings everything back to Healdsburg. For all the expansion — Kyoto, The Selvedge, whatever comes next — Connaughton’s center of gravity is unmistakably, stubbornly local.
“We dreamed of one day owning a restaurant and farm in Healdsburg when we got married near here when we were 23 years old,” he says. “It’s really, truly our home. It’s where we farm. It’s where we live. It’s where we work, and where our community and our friends and our family are.”
He talks about Sonoma County the way a vintner talks about terroir, as substance. The ingredients, yes, but also the ethos: people who take what they do seriously without taking themselves too seriously. Guests, he hopes, will feel that. “We want them to relax and decompress into the region, the redwoods, the wineries of friends, the particular, unhurried quality of life here that makes everything on the plate make sense.”
SingleThread Farm Restaurant Inn
131 North Street, Healdsburg, CA 95448
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