Ravenous Cafe and Lounge

Worth the trip to Healdsburg, just for lunch! Best salads and hamburgers in Sonoma county! High quality local slow food.

We came here for dinner with 7 friends. The food was amazing! Everyone was pleased with their dishes. Several people ordered the sea bass and everyone one of them loved it. Two people ordered the pork and both loved it. I ordered the chicken dish and was totally amazed with the flavors.
We got 3 desserts: cobbler, crème brûlée, hot fudge Browne. Not too impressed with the Browne but everyone loved the cobbler and the crème brûlée was excellent as well.
Don’t miss this place!

My mom was visiting the bay area, so we did a mother-​daughter trip to Healdsburg. Had lunch here and totally enjoyed it. The restaurant is very small. We were lucky that we didn’t wait long since we were on the late side for lunch. The food took a little longer, but, WOW, totally worth the wait!

Flat iron steak was delicious with awesome potatoes and perfectly cooked green beans. asked for rare to med rare and got just that. service was very good. The place has a quirky vibe with photocopied menus and yellow walls. The one thing missing was AC.

When you get to Healdsburg, drive by all others and go to Ravenous. We have been eating there for 15 years and it has always, always been a delicious experience. It never let’s us down and always exceeds our expectations after all these years. We are foodies who lived in SF for many years and are very selective about fresh and delicious. It won’t break the bank it is consistently good. While I am hard pressed to tell you what to order I will tell you that the crab cakes are the best this side of the Chesapeake Bay. The burgers are thick and fresh and juicy. The pork quesadilla is excellent and the blta (Blt with avocado) on homemade bread is fantastic. The soups are always a highlight. The wine list, even by the glass is noteable and reasonable by restaurant standards. Do not miss this tiny gem. It is an extremely small place so make sure to make a reservation.

We lucked out last weekend to walk by this place while looking for somewhere to have dinner. Small place, but big flavors! What a hidden gem. Two in our group of four had the hamburger, which I normally don’t eat for dinner, but I got a bite and wow was it special. I had a flatiron steak that just melted in my mouth. They have a small menu but a big variety, so everyone should be able to find something. Wine list was not expensive, and we had a nice bottle of wine from it.

The BEST crab cakes in the Bay Area. .. even better than The Fog City Diner! Only 8 tables this is a cute and quaint find. .. almost makes you feel you’re in another country. Loved this place!

So very torn on this review.
This is a small restaurant. We counted 17 seats. They had 2 waiters who appeared to bus their own tables. I’m not sure who was washing dishes. It seems like 2 should be able to handle that level but they could not. It was terribly slow and the business mind in my head kept watching them turn away people when they could have turned my table so much faster and still without rushing me if they had just paid attention.
The food was average to very good. The chicken piccata was a overcooked. The crab cakes and seafood linguini were both very good. The crème brûlée was heavenly.
The wine? Wow. Just pay the cork fee and bring your own. The selection was really bad.
Overall we can only give this an average rating. The service was way too slow and the wine list way too weak. Maybe if they recognize you as a local they will move a bit faster for you.

Love this place! Really small cozy setting. Don’t go here enough. The seafood dish I had hear last time was out of this world. Don’t hesitate one second about coming here.

went on a recommendation from the folks where we were staying, and it was really yummy!
I had the seabass, which they politely modified for my distaste of olives! so tasty, with the black rice. perfectly cooked fish, went great with the house chardonnay.
she had the roasted poblano dish, and it disappeared very quickly from the plate!
dimly lit, mellow vibe.
service was sweet & all smiles, which, coming from SF, really makes us happy.
nice and small, intimate place, with reasonably priced food that is really tasty.
Go for it!

Sweet little café. Ambience is very intimate it’s very small little place but it has amazing food and a great wine list. Order the crab cakes they are the best I have ever had! Me and my husband went to dinner there and walked next door to the raven cinemas it worked out perfectly for a date nite!

The menu is definitely hit or miss. While the crab cakes and short ribs are exceptional, the smoked salmon and poblano were very mediocre. Such is the case with a seasonal menu which changes so regularly that it is actually handwritten daily. The restaurant is very small, seating only about 20 people max. The service is good and the parking is pretty easy with plenty of on street spots located around the restaurant. Oddly the restrooms are actually located in the movie theater next door which, depending on the timeframe you are there can get a little complicated. There is a $ 20.00 corkage which is a little much for a wine country restaurant in my opinion but this is the wave of future for most new restaurants and will likely be on the cheaper side in the coming years.

My previous reviews of Healdsburg restaurants have always left me lamenting on how my quest for even a good meal in this supposed food mecca left me always disappointed.
Finally, I have found the perfect dining experience in Healdsburg!
It is Ravenous, a very small, maybe 10 to 12 table gem of a restaurant. Service was exceptional, and the food memorable. Crab cakes were to die for, we wish we ordered our own instead of sharing. The short rib was braised to perfection. My honey’s linguini with prawns was so delish, he cleaned the plate, not even a speck of sauce leftover.
We split a chocolate bottomed cream brulee, again dish completely devoured! I do not know how we were able to walk into this place on a saturday night and get a table, it must be Healdsburg’s best kept dining secret.
Was not impressed with the small wine list, corkage is 20 dollars if you bring your own favorite wine.
Bottom line, best meal we have ever had in Healdsburg, and we definitely will be back for more!

Joy made me a Ravenous burger with cheese and bacon because, it’s Ravenous. I got a short pour of the Montepulciano Italian wine. Wife had the fish tacos and a white sangria. The salad was jicama and lightly pickeled carrots.
Look at the krinkle cut of the french fries and the dusting of red pepper. The tomatoes on the burger were sweet heirlooms. Man that woman cares about making food right.
Give Joy a Michelin star. I’ll drive out of my way to eat there. Oh wait, I always go to Healdsburg anyway, cause it’s awesome.

Went when my sister in town. We enjoyed our food (service not so good) I ordered a bottle of Pinot for $ 31.00 and later that week found the same bottle of wine (limited lot) at St Johns market for $ 7.99 really people? A $ 23.01 dollar mark up! I had no idea! They may have 7 tables but they make big bucks selling the wines. Never again. I can see $ 10.00 maybe $ 15.00
The 2 nd time the service was not great. The waitress is more concerned to help the bus boy clean and clear tables then putting the customers needs first. I saw several people standing there, including myself looking stupid as they were wondering if they were going to be helped. I had to ask for a menu and I never did get any bread but every other table did. (have no idea why) didn’t want to ask for that too, so I skipped the bread. The chickpea cakes were very dry and not a good choice on the menu but generally all their food is generally good. But hated the service that day anyway.

We came in with a last minute reservation for a party of 7, on Sunday eve @ 8 pm.
They seated us & took such great care!
For how small the kitchen was, they brought out delicious & beautifully presented entrees out for all of us, such quality! We are impressed & will come back!

This place was good, but didn’t quite live up to the hype.
Service: Not great. We had a reservation, but our table wasn’t quite ready. But the place was too small to stand inside, so we had to wait outside in the cold.
There was one waitress for the whole place, and it definitely affected the service.
Food:
crab cakes– average
cheeseburger– my boyfriend said it was delcious. i tried his fries, they were good
short rib-​came with mashed potatoes and fresh green beans.
flourless chocolate cake– the best thing we got. really, really good. everything on the dessert menu looked amazing.
overall, the place was kind of forgettable. it’s not that ravenous is bad– it’s that everything else is so good.

The Ravenous Café has moved to their old location next to the theater. Now the space is the home of Bravas Bar de Tapas.
Try it. It’s awesome.

Finally had the opportunity to try Ravenous, stumbling in on a Sunday night without reservations. Definitely a cozy restaurant with a lot of potential.
We started off with chick pea cakes (falafel, basically) on a bed of mixed greens with some feta cheese and hummus. This was pretty tasty. The entrees ordered by our group were chicken cacciatore, linguine with prawns and grilled seabass with fennel and black grain rice. My friends seemed happy with their meals. However, I had the seabass which was a tad too citrus-​y for my tastes. While it was moist, it needed some more seasoning and one portion of it was slightly cold…
I understand that it is a small location – but it’s strange that it shares the restrooms within the performing arts center nextdoor. Clearly there is a connection between the two, but the atmosphere of each are so strikingly different that the lobby to the theater kills the ambience of Ravenous if you have to step out to use the restroom.
Although the waitress was very friendly, it took a while to get water and place our order. Given the stiff competition in Healdsburg, I’m not sure I would turn in the near future. Disappointing given the history that I understand the restaurant to have with the town.

You will be ravenous by the time your food arrives!
The small restaurant has a great menu of comfort food using fresh, seasonal ingredients. My friend and I stopped by for brunch and were lucky to have procured the last open table when we walked in. After a short wait, we both ordered the corned beef has with poached eggs (it was St. Patrick’s Day!) but there were quite a few tempting items on their brunch menu.
After a 50 minute wait, our waitress came over and started to ask us if there was anything else we would like, but then caught herself and realized that we hadn’t yet received our food. Oops! She quickly headed to check on our order and our food arrived 5 to 10 minutes later. Looking around, I noticed that some tables received their food really quickly (sandwiches) but others encountered the same problem we were experiencing.
The food was really good. The corned beef has was chunky, crisp around the edges and perfectly seasoned. This was not a meat and potato patty but large chunks of potato, meat and onions seared to perfection. The eggs were poached the way I like them — medium and not too runny. Portion size was just right. This was one of the best interpretations of corned beef hash I’ve ever had and I order this dish quite often.
As for the service, our waitress was friendly and did the best she could but she was the only waitress! She was always busy and trying to get around to every table, but that left a lot of patrons waiting a long time for their food. After the aforementioned query, she stopped by one other time to tell us the food was on its way, but other than that we were pretty much left alone.
We weren’t offered any bread but saw that other tables had received some so maybe we had to ask for it if we wanted it.
This place seems to be well patronized by locals. Quite a few of the tables were occupied by diners reading books or newspapers and in no rush to leave.
I would come back for the food but it would to be at a time when I was not rushed for time.