For nearly ten years, one address did most of the heavy lifting for a night out in Occidental. Hazel opened at 3782 Bohemian Highway in 2015 and turned into the kind of place regulars measured time by: birthdays there, holidays there, the fried Brussels sprouts a fixture on more anniversaries than anyone could count. Then the building sold last fall, and the town lost its anchor restaurant overnight.
What happened next is not the story of a restaurant closing and a new one opening in its place. It's the story of one closure turning into two restaurants, on the same short stretch of highway, each one now doing something the old Hazel never tried to do. If you live here, the practical upshot is this: the block didn't get smaller. It got wider.
The Building Sells, and Hazel Goes Looking
When the owners of the building at 3782 Bohemian Highway sold in the fall of 2025, Jim and Michele Wimborough closed Hazel after nearly a decade in that spot. They looked at spaces in Sebastopol and Guerneville. At one point they considered walking away from restaurant life and going back to regular jobs. In the meantime, they ran pop-up dinners at the Inn at Occidental, keeping the name alive one event at a time while they searched.
Their first choice, the whole time, was staying in Occidental. That search ended when the long-shuttered Barley & Hops Tavern space at 3688 Bohemian Highway came up for rent. It was a full-circle moment for the couple. They had actually looked at that same building back in 2015, before choosing the spot down the street instead.
Hazel reopened there in August 2026, less than a year after closing. The space carries real history: a converted 1879 Victorian with a bar that predates most of the town's current business owners. Michele Wimborough repainted the walls a deep turquoise, hung brighter fixtures, and pulled the Edison bulbs that used to hang over the old brew-pub bar. "Our customers are more food-focused," she told the Sebastopol Times, explaining why she wanted a room built for full meals rather than just pints on the porch.
Almost all of the back-of-house staff returned, along with about half the front of house. The menu came back largely intact: pot roast, vegan Caesar, the Hazel Sundae. New dishes are folded in alongside them. Wimborough also pointed to something practical the move solved. With Negri's and the Union Hotel not keeping the hours they once did, she said it's been a little bit of a nighttime food desert here, and she was glad Hazel could fill that gap again.
The Old Hazel Space Doesn't Sit Empty
Here's the part that makes this a different story than a simple relocation. The old Hazel address didn't wait around for another casual restaurant to move in. It became something Occidental has never really had: a serious tasting-menu destination.
Todd and Erica Kniess, the couple behind the fast-casual Acme Burger locations in Cotati, Santa Rosa, and Petaluma, backed a new concept called Bohemian Bistro in the old Hazel room. Erica Kniess called it a passion project, and neither of them plans to run the kitchen day to day. The initial chef was James Millar, formerly of Violetto at the Alila Hotel in St. Helena, with plans for five- and seven-course prix fixe dinners plus a more affordable Wednesday locals' night.
By the time the restaurant actually opened in June 2026, the kitchen had a new lead. Twenty-nine-year-old chef Ray Martinez took over, bringing time spent at Michelin-noted Harbor House in Elk and Troubadour in Healdsburg. Martinez sources ingredients from within 15 miles of Occidental, which means the tasting menu changes with whatever farmers and foragers bring in that week. A Sonoma Magazine review from his opening weeks described a strawberry shortcake riff that had already been swapped for raspberry mousse with fermented raspberry sauce two weeks later, and locally sourced king salmon that gave way to braised lamb with Rockwell beans. The four-course prix fixe, plus an amuse-bouche, runs $88.
Erica Kniess framed the whole project as a way of paying something forward. It's a chance to give someone else the chance he was given, she said of handing Martinez the kitchen. Todd Kniess, for his part, isn't stepping away from the burger business. He consults on menus but keeps his focus on the Acme locations.
Same Hundred Yards, Two Very Different Nights Out
This is the part worth sitting with if you live in town. A few months ago, walking down Bohemian Highway meant one obvious dinner decision: Hazel or somewhere else. Now the same stretch offers two restaurants that don't compete with each other so much as split the evening in half.
Hazel is open Wednesday through Monday, five to nine, and it's built for the version of a night out most people actually want most of the time: a glass of wine, familiar plates, a room that still feels like the old brew pub even with the new paint. Bohemian Bistro runs Wednesday through Sunday, with a shorter Wednesday seating from five to seven that lines up with the locals' night the owners planned from the start, and full five-to-eight service the rest of the week. It asks for a different kind of evening, one where you're sitting through four courses and letting a 29-year-old chef with Michelin-kitchen training decide what showed up at the farmers market that week.
Neither restaurant is trying to be the other. That's the actual shift. Occidental used to have one restaurant doing most of the work of "special occasion" and "regular Tuesday" at the same time. Now it has one doing the regular nights and one doing the occasions, in rooms that used to be each other.
What Else Anchors the Block
The rest of the town's dining didn't change shape this year, and that's part of what makes the swap noticeable rather than routine. Union Hotel Restaurant, family-run for more than a century, still turns out its thin-crust pizza and carrot cake. Negri's has been a fixture for locally recommended Italian dinners. Howard Station Cafe still handles the daytime crowd, and The Redwood keeps its wine bar hours for anyone who wants to nibble rather than commit to a full sitting.
None of those places changed their hours or their identity because of what happened at 3688 and 3782 Bohemian Highway. What changed is what's available after those places close for the night, or when you want something other than what they've always done well. Michele Wimborough's read on the nighttime food desert wasn't really about Hazel's old menu disappearing. It was about the town needing somewhere open after dark that wasn't a bar. Now it has two, doing different jobs.
The Practical Read for Anyone Who Lives Here
If you're deciding where to eat this month, the short version is simple. Want a casual weeknight dinner with a returning favorite dish and a bar that still feels like the old Barley & Hops crowd? Hazel is back, five nights a week, no drama. Want to book ahead for something that changes weekly and treats a Wednesday night like an event? Bohemian Bistro is a hundred feet down the road, in the room where you might have eaten your last decade of birthdays.
Occidental is a town small enough that most people know both stories already, at least in pieces. What's easy to miss is that the town didn't just replace one restaurant with another. It ended up, for the first time, with a real split between its casual anchor and its ambitious one, on the exact same stretch of highway where there used to be only room for one.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these shifts because you actually live here, you already know how rare that kind of range is in a town this size. Kris Lepore spends most of his time on this same stretch of the Sonoma Coast, watching towns like Occidental change one storefront at a time. If you ever want to talk about what's happening here, or anywhere along the coast, Kris Lepore - KJL Coastal is easy to find. Let's Connect.