He opened Dry Creek Kitchen here in 2001, and shortly after moved his family to a farm right outside of city limits. Over the years, Palmer has become a partner in a luxury hotel in the town’s center that earned the prestigious Ivy Award in 2008, and his wife runs a successful travel and leisure store called Lime Stone. Healdsburg might have grown in popularity with more diverse and sophisticated offerings, but one constant remains true: There’s always a well-set table at Dry Creek Kitchen.

This festive rooftop affair also highlights Ellis’s love for gardening and his prolific network of local purveyors. Expect to find heirloom tomatoes on the menu, gems from the restaurant garden, along with a variety of vegetable crudité and local cheeses. There will be Chesapeake favorites like crabs and peel-and-eat shrimp and a not-as-welcome bay resident, a blue catfish. That’s where things get interesting.

The blue catfish is an invasive species introduced into Virginia’s waters in the 1970s as recreational sporting fish. Because they can grow into the triple digits, it made sense on paper. However, the catfish quickly started to impact the decline of many native fish species, including the American shad, striped bass, blueback, herring, and prized blue crab.