Farm to table · Est. 2016

Terra Kitchen

Forty-two seats, one oak fire, and a menu that changes the week the farms change it. We cook what Santa Clara Valley and the Central Coast are actually growing, three blocks off Lincoln Avenue.

Dinner
Tue–Thu 5:00–9:30 · Fri–Sat 5:00–10:30
Sunday
Brunch 9:30–2:00 · Supper 5:00–9:00
Address
1147 Bellhaven Row, San Jose, CA 95125
Reserve a table Read the menu

Walk-ins welcome at the eight-seat bar. For parties of seven or more, call (555) 218-4470.

Illustration of plated forms and produce Layered terracotta and olive shapes suggesting a plate rim, a halved stone fruit, artichoke leaves and a bowl of greens.

Tonight: the last of the delicata, and the first nettles.

Our story

Forty-two seats and a standing order

We opened on a Tuesday in March 2016 with forty-two seats, one oak fire, and a standing order from two farms. The menu that first week had six dishes on it. It changed on Thursday, because the artichokes came in early and it seemed wrong to hold them back for a printing schedule.

Ten years on, the shape of the thing is the same. When cardoons show up from Gilroy, we cook cardoons. When the Blenheim apricots come off the last few orchard blocks left in this valley — and there are fewer of them every July — we buy more than is reasonable and spend three weeks putting them in everything, from the mostarda to the tart to the vinaigrette on the chicories.

The fish is landed at Moss Landing and driven up Highway 1 the same morning. The lamb comes from a family operation outside Hollister that raises maybe sixty head a year. Our bread is mixed at four in the afternoon for the following night, which means the loaf you tear at seven has been alive for about twenty-seven hours.

We don’t write the menu and then go looking for the food. The food arrives, and then we write the menu.

Marisol Vance · chef and owner

Willow Glen is a walking neighborhood, and we cook for people who walk here. That means a bar you can sit at alone with a glass of Santa Cruz Mountains chardonnay and a plate of croquettes, and it means a dining room quiet enough that a table of six can actually hear each other. There is no music after nine because there does not need to be.

Everything on the menu is made in the building except the bread flour, the olive oil, and the salt — and we can tell you exactly which mill, which press, and which stretch of coast those three came from.

Where it comes from

  • Stone Corral Farm Gilroy · squash, cardoons, brassicas, dry-farmed tomatoes from July
  • Coyote Creek Growers South San Jose · little gems, chicories, herbs, green garlic
  • Tilden Creek Ranch Hollister · grass-finished beef and lamb, whole-animal delivery every other Monday
  • Harkins Slough Farm Watsonville · strawberries, artichokes, fennel, the first favas of spring
  • Cala Verde Creamery Pescadero · goat chevre, sheep tomme, ricotta pulled Thursdays
  • Moss Landing day boats Monterey Bay · rockfish, halibut, sand dabs, whatever the swell allows

In the kitchen

Marisol Vance

Chef and owner

Marisol grew up outside Hollister on twelve acres of apricots and a bad-tempered flock of chickens, which is a longer way of saying she learned to cook because there was always too much of one thing and never enough of another.

She spent six years in San Francisco kitchens — three of them on garde manger, which she says was the only real education she got — and two more in Emilia-Romagna learning to roll pasta by hand from a woman who refused to let her use a machine even once. She came back down the peninsula in 2015 looking for a room with a chimney, and found one on Bellhaven Row that had been a hardware store for fifty-one years.

She still writes the menu by hand every Tuesday morning, still breaks down the whole lambs herself, and still gets to the restaurant before the bread does. If you sit at the bar, she will probably ask you what you thought. She means it.

Line-art portrait of chef Marisol Vance A single-weight olive line drawing of a chef in profile, hair tied back, over a terracotta panel.

Tuesday, 7:10 a.m., writing the week.

Hours & location

Finding us

Hours

Monday
Closed
Tuesday – Thursday
5:00 pm – 9:30 pm
Friday – Saturday
5:00 pm – 10:30 pm
Sunday brunch
9:30 am – 2:00 pm
Sunday supper
5:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Bar opens
4:30 pm, Tue – Sat

Last seating is forty-five minutes before close. We close the week of July 4th so the kitchen can go to the coast, and again December 24 through January 2.

Contact

1147 Bellhaven Row San Jose, CA 95125 Willow Glen, three blocks east of Lincoln Avenue

Getting here

Street parking on Bellhaven Row and Alder Crossing is free and mostly available after 5:00 pm. We share a twenty-space lot one door east, entered from Bellhaven Row. The 63 bus stops two blocks west, at Lincoln Avenue. The dining room, bar, and both restrooms are step-free from the sidewalk, and there is a 32-inch clear path to every table.

Hand-drawn map of Terra Kitchen’s corner in Willow Glen Terra Kitchen sits at the corner of Bellhaven Row and Alder Crossing, with the parking lot behind the building and Lincoln Avenue three blocks west. Alder Crossing Bellhaven Row Terra Kitchen Lot · 20 spaces Lincoln Ave, 3 blocks 63 bus stop

Corner of Bellhaven Row and Alder Crossing. The door is the one with the brass handle.

Reservations

Hold a table

We take reservations up to thirty days out and hold six tables and the full bar for walk-ins every night. If the time you want is gone, send the request anyway — we run a waitlist by hand and it moves more than you would think.

Parties of seven or more are booked by phone so we can talk through the menu: (555) 218-4470. Dietary restrictions go in the notes and the kitchen reads every one.

  • Confirmation within one business day
  • Cancellations free up to 24 hours before
  • Large parties 7+ by phone, prix fixe

Shellfish and tree nuts are used throughout the kitchen. Tell us here and we will call you back to talk it through.

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