Sonoma’s Edge Restaurant Serves Up Flavors from Around the World

EDGE in downtown Sonoma is making waves after morphing from private supper club to full-fledged restaurant last year.

Growing up in Arequipa, Peru, chef Fiorella Butron knew her life was unusual. Her mother was Peruvian, with a French great-greatgrandmother. Her grandpa on her father’s side was Italian, and her grandma was Palestinian – they met in Peru after the grandma escaped during the Israeli—Palestinian war in 1948. “I have a blend in my blood,” Butron explains.

The different cultures in her childhood household always came together in the kitchen, Butron says.

That experience would come to shape her world, as she embarked on a career that spanned continents, finally taking her to her current position as executive chef at EDGE in downtown Sonoma, a spot making waves after morphing from private supper club to full-fledged restaurant last year.

“Peruvian cuisine is already so unique,” Butron says. “But going to school, I would see that whatever my family did for the holidays or parties was so different than what my friends did. My grandma was the cook, and she would make Middle Eastern food, and also Italian, and also some Peruvian, with so many spices everywhere, and the dishes were all mixed up.”

Today, it’s little surprise that Butron’s own cooking is difficult to define. At EDGE, it’s California cuisine, but also French. And Peruvian —and Asian, Spanish, Mexican, Hawaiian. Expectations are high for the 42-seat restaurant, which offers a seven-course, prix fixe meal for $250, including wine pairings. It’s demanding work for Butron, 40, who is also a certified sommelier, and who changes the menu weekly, treating every element like a work of art, down to the sea salt-finished cultured butter that takes five days to make. Even her intermezzo is a study in style: Rather than simple shaved ice, she crafts a much more complex note, such as a smoky, fermented plum-mezcal sorbet sprinkled with Hawaiian sea salt that sparkles on the tongue.

This article was written by Carey Sweet and published in Sonoma Magazine, May 2022. Click here to read the full article.