Home at La Grange
Story: Jon LewisPhotos: Bret Christensen
LA GRANGE CAFE IN WEAVERVILLE
It’s an experience many diners have enjoyed when out of town and looking for somewhere to eat: you ask a local where to go and he or she sends you to that cute little place that serves up a meal so memorable that it becomes the highlight of the trip.
That’s the concept Sharon Heryford aimed for 20 years ago when she opened the La Grange Café in Weaverville. By most accounts, she has hit the mark. The Main Street restaurant has proven to be a mainstay for locals and it continues to delight visitors who find their way to Trinity County.
“An absolute gem of a restaurant in this small gold mining town,” reads one online review on yelp.com. “The staff was all very friendly and we couldn’t have asked for better service at the bar or in the restaurant. The menu is varied (steak, fish, pasta, etc.) and excellently prepared,” says another from tripadvisor.com.
It’s easy to see why the La Grange is so popular at home and abroad. It occupies an 1850s bank building made of brick, situated in the heart of a quaint little town whose residents take pride in the lack of a single stoplight, and it serves up creative, sumptuous meals that highlight locally produced and seasonal fixin’s.
“I enjoy having fun in the kitchen,” Heryford says by way of explaining why she has incorporated buffalo, venison and other non-traditional foods into a menu that also features steak and seafood.
Her longtime customers, including a “very strong Bay Area steelhead fishing clientele,” have to come to expect fun and interesting options on the La Grange menu and Heryford is happy to keep them happy.
That sense of adventure is evident every week from 5 to 7 pm on “freeloader Fridays,” when Heryford and her staff put out a changing and often whimsical array of appetizers. The tradition sprang from a big cocktail party Heryford and her husband, Duane, put on to mark the restaurant’s opening.
Thanksgiving is also a special day at the La Grange, and Heryford doesn’t mind veering from tradition at times; past dinners have featured turkey, duck, quail, goose, venison and even wild boar. Homemade marionberry cobbler is typically the dessert of choice, but other confections find their way onto the menu from time to time.
Heryford says she’s been stocking up at farmers’ markets since day one and emphasizes sustainable, organic and local foods whenever possible. She decided to make buffalo—a high-protein meat known for its low fat and cholesterol levels—a part of her game plan shortly after opening “because we were trying to do things to differentiate us from other places.”
She started with buffalo burgers and added a buffalo meatloaf and a grass-fed buffalo filet mignon. The latter dishes were inspired when her husband entered her in a national buffalo cooking contest in Grants Pass, Ore., and she took third place with ragout of buffalo braised with an Oregon stout beer. That stew also remains on the menu, but Heryford switched to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale since it’s locally sourced.
The La Grange Café also is well known as a watering hole, and even its bar has its own back story. It began as part of a soda fountain in a drug store in Kalispell, Mont., and later found its way onto the set of the film “Heaven’s Gate” that starred Kris Kristofferson. The Heryfords discovered it in a barn in Palo Cedro and made it the centerpiece of their restaurant.
Bar offerings include a nice selection of single-malt scotch, handcrafted microbrews on tap and even absinthe, the preferred spirit of Vincent Van Gogh and Oscar Wilde. Storing an impressive wine selection in the former Bank of Trinity vault adds a little more character to the café.
Heryford moved to Weaverville as a teenager when her father went to work on the Trinity Dam. She was attending Trinity High School when she met her future husband, who was enrolled at Chico State. Heryford opened a floor-covering business in Weaverville and her husband started a lumberyard.
As their four children grew older and more independent, the Heryfords got out of both businesses. Duane Heryford got involved with Superior California Economic Development while Heryford focused on caring for her mother-in-law. She also continued her habit of serving as the principal cook for non-profit events like the popular Chinese New Year’s dinner hosted by the Weaverville Rotary Club.
One day, while Duane Heryford was perusing the Shasta College course catalog and came across the culinary arts offerings, “he said, ‘You might as well learn about what you’ve always done for fun.’” Heryford soon found herself enrolled in the three-semester program.
Upon graduation, she opened her restaurant in the former Alps Café building and named it La Grange in honor of the large hydraulic mine that operated a few miles west of Weaverville. On New Year’s Eve in 1999, she opened in her current location in the Solomon Building.
A fire destroyed the kitchen on July 29, 2006, but the La Grange arose from the ashes in January of 2007 and has been putting smiles on customers’ faces ever since. •
