Wine grapes lured Cris and JoAnn Cherry to Central California in the mid ninties, but it was the quality of life that seduced them to stay. They sold their Mexican restaurant in San Diego and put their efforts into renovating a dive bar on a prime corner of the downtown Paso Robles city park. In the spring of 1998 the Cherrys opened Villa Creek, a restaurant dedicated to showcasing the area's finest local products.
The family's history is rooted in the Central Coast. Villa Creek Ranch was once the home of a bustling, ocean front dairy in Cayucos, CA. Cris's great grandfather Romelio Muscio was born on that ranch and more than a century later it was the site of the Cherrys' wedding. Though the ranch is no longer in the family, Cris and JoAnn have kept the Villa Creek tradition alive. The Cherrys' 60 acre, Paso Robles ranch, known as the Maha Estate is home to dairy goats, meat and laying chickens, Berkshire pigs and a large garden of vegetables and fruit trees. Maha products frequently make their way to the table at Villa Creek.
Chef Tom Fundaro joined the team in 2001, shortly after Cris and JoAnn started Villa Creek Cellars.
Closing the Circle
Villa Creek is dedicated to minimizing it's impact on the planet. Vegetable trimmings are fed to the Cherrys' pigs and composted. Chicken, meat and game scraps are transformed into pet food. Used cooking oil is refined into biodiesel for farming equipment. These simple efforts have effects of global proportions.
