Discover a Petaluma Pearl

Chef-owners Brian Leitner and Annette Yang shake up Petaluma’s culinary scene with their intricately woven tapestry of Eastern Mediterranean-North African cooking accented with Southern French and Spanish flair at Pearl Petaluma.

The daytime café intrigues with unexpected recipes, like amaranth waffles dolloped in ricotta and cranberry apple lavender jam, or brightly spiced Persian meatballs atop adassi (lentil) rice with braised cabbage, walnut-Meyer lemon relish, and a sunnyside-up egg.

The couple met when Yang was general manager and Leitner was sous chef at the former Gordon’s House of Fine Eats in San Francisco. While they live in nearby Schellville, Yang and Leitner feel like Petaluma is their home and consider their staff and customers as family. “We feel like it’s completely the right place for us,” says Yang. “The community is totally genuine and positive. We’ve been in other ‘hot’ cities like San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, but we’ve never felt as supported as we do here.”