For fifteen summers, the sound of Glen Ellen in August was a Broadway chorus drifting out of the winery ruins at Jack London State Historic Park. That sound is gone this year. Transcendence Theatre Company has moved its full 15th anniversary season to Sonoma's Field of Dreams, with performances running June 12 through August 30 down on the Plaza rather than up London Ranch Road.
What has arrived in its place is quieter, and closer to the ground. Two of the village's dining rooms have new names and new food. A third just picked up a Michelin nod. The park calendar has filled in around watercolor easels and morning tree walks instead of amplified show tunes. If you live here, the shape of the summer has changed more than the headlines suggest.
The theater left, and the park kept going
The move is not a rumor. Transcendence's 2026 lineup, Ain't Too Proud from June 12 to 28, Radio Recall July 10 to 12, and Mamma Mia! August 13 to 30, all runs at the Field of Dreams. City parks director Dave Jahns told the Sonoma City Council in May that the 2026 programming has been condensed to nearly eliminate July activity aside from one weekend of performances, with total show evenings rising from 24 in 2025 to 26 in 2026. The rationale was noise mitigation for neighbors near the Plaza field, not a Glen Ellen decision, but the practical effect on this village is the same: the winery ruins are dark this summer.
Jack London State Historic Park itself is not. The park is open daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the summer program calendar has quietly turned into one of the more interesting things happening in town.
- Valley of the Moon Music Festival concert at the House of Happy Walls, April 30, 5 to 6:30 p.m.
- Discover the trees that shaped Jack London's ranch, Sunday, July 19, 9 to 11:30 a.m.
- Plein Air Watercolor Landscapes in partnership with the Sonoma Community Center, Saturdays July 25, August 8, and August 22, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
None of these events sell out on Ticketmaster. They are the sort of thing a longtime resident might have overlooked when Broadway Under the Stars was on the marquee, and they are worth putting on a calendar now that it isn't.
The dining rooms swapped identities while nobody was looking
The bigger story for people who actually eat in Glen Ellen is that two of the four rooms that defined the village a year ago now serve different food, from different chefs, under different names. This is not a case of a new spot opening on the edge of town. It is the core of the village turning over.
Poppy, at 13690 Arnold Drive
The Fig Cafe closed quietly in December 2024 after roughly two decades. In its place, Poppy opened May 21, 2025, in the former Fig Cafe space, from The Girl & The Fig founder Sondra Bernstein and president John Toulze, with a menu focused on the classic French dishes the two loved from twenty-five years of trips through rural France, with California touches. The renovation was substantive. Toulze opened part of the kitchen to the dining room, installed window banquettes, painted the molding a smoky gray, and added bamboo-patterned wallpaper. Sondra Bernstein contributed the illustrations of California poppies on the walls.
The old Fig menu of mussels, pizzas, and burgers is gone. Poppy leans into cassoulet, moules, flounder Meunière, duck liver terrine, roasted rabbit, and chicken with wild mushrooms, with weeknight family-style prix fixe dinners Wednesday through Friday. If you were a Fig regular, this is not the same restaurant, and pretending otherwise will get you the wrong table on the wrong night. Reservations are open thirty days out.
Songbird Parlour, at Jack London Village
A block south, in Jack London Village, Songbird Parlour has finished its transition from an event-only venue to a full-time restaurant and lounge. Owner Lauren Kershner's team, with executive chef Eric Moulton, runs Wednesday through Sunday service beginning at 5:00 p.m. and concluding at 9:00 p.m., in what the Bohemian described as a design with high ceilings, a rich green palette, a wine lounge area, and thoughtful Victorian-inspired details including a floral mural and gilded mirrors.
Two things about Songbird are worth knowing if you live in the village and haven't been in a while. First, the wine list is deliberately local: bring a bottle from a Glen Ellen winery and corkage drops to $20. Second, this is now a music room as much as a dinner room, with acoustic evenings built into regular service rather than reserved for special occasions. Clay Bell's fingerstyle guitar sets are the current recurring bill.
Glen Ellen Star, still the anchor
The one dining room that has not changed is the one that just got the loudest signal from outside. Glen Ellen Star was included in the 2026 MICHELIN Guide USA as a Bib Gourmand, the guide's designation for good quality at good value. The room and the wood-burning oven are the same, chef Ari Weiswasser is the same, and the Glentucky Family Farm produce that feeds most of the menu is the same.
What is different is Weiswasser's footprint. He now also runs Stella in Kenwood, in the former Cafe Citti building at 9049 Sonoma Highway, and as of late May 2026 he opened Smash on Sonoma Plaza in the former Taube Family Outpost space, a fast-casual smashburger and fried chicken spot with self-serve ordering and a small patio, with The Beacon speakeasy upstairs pouring cocktails through the same building. For a valley diner, this means the Weiswasser kitchen you knew for one thing now covers three price points across three towns. For Glen Ellen specifically, it means the town's Michelin-recognized restaurant is also the town's most in-demand table, again, and that is not going to loosen up in July.
What the summer looks like when you subtract the theater
Here is the honest version. The village has fewer amplified evenings and more small ones. Bouverie Preserve continues to run docent-led walks on Saturday mornings out of its Arnold Drive entrance. Morton's Warm Springs is open on the creek. The Glen Ellen Village Fair remains an October event, not a summer one, so August will not be interrupted by a parade down Arnold Drive.
The practical rearrangement for a household that already lives here looks something like this. Friday night is now more likely to be Poppy or Songbird than a drive down to Sonoma for dinner and back up for a show. Saturday morning is available for a Bouverie walk or a plein-air easel at the park in a way it wasn't when Transcendence weekends dominated the ranch. Sunday is when Songbird's fried chicken becomes a takeaway option, since the Sunday Signature is Hot Honey Fried Chicken, available for in-house dining or boxed takeaway service.
The village lost its summer chorus and gained a proper restaurant row. Whether that trade holds long term depends on whether the dining rooms stay full through the shoulder seasons, when the visitor traffic thins and the neighbors are the only audience left.
That is worth watching. Poppy and Songbird both opened in a period when the Bay Area was in the middle of a wave of restaurant closings, and the fact that Glen Ellen absorbed two new full-service dining rooms in eighteen months while nearby towns lost tenants says something about the demand base here. It also raises the stakes for regulars. A dining room in a village this small runs on locals in February. If the summer table you take is a first visit, it might be worth a second one in October.
For the summer itself, the answer to "what is there to do this weekend" is smaller and closer than it has been in a long time. Which, if you already live in Glen Ellen, was probably why you moved here in the first place.
If you have been thinking about the value of a home in a village whose dining and cultural calendar is actively reshaping itself, Del Fava Parker is happy to walk the property with you and talk through what the last year has changed on the ground. Request a home valuation when you are ready.
