Central Market

About the Business

Specialties

Farm to table California-Mediterranean cuisine. Everything is made in house from scratch, including our ciabatta and baguets, which are baked fresh each morning in our wood fired oven. House specialty is pork from the chef's own farm - sometimes as a pork confit served over stewed runner beans and buttermilk onion rings; on another night maybe as chorizo in housemade pasta. Warm, knowledgable service and a great wine selection featuring equal parts local and international wines.

History

Established in 2003.

Chef-owner Tony Najiola opened Central Market in 2003. It is housed in the 1918 brick Maclay building in the heart of downtown Petaluma.

Meet the Business Owner

Business owner information

Tony N.

Business Owner

Chef Tony Najiola was born and raised in New Orleans, the great grandson of a Sicilian vegetable farmer. Like just about everyone in New Orleans, Tony loved food from an early age. So at 17 he got his first restaurant job. At 21, he moved to Manhattan, and by 27 he had his first executive chef job at a little restaurant in the West Village called the Village Green. In 1991, he moved to San Francisco where he became Chef at Brasserie Savoie and then Executive Chef at Ernie's. In 1995 he became Winery Chef at Ravenswood in Sonoma County. In April 2003, he opened his own restaurant, Central Market.Tony was drawn to Petaluma because of its rich agricultural history and the fact that there was farmland in close enough proximity to the downtown to be able to someday realize his dream of owning a nearby farm to support the restaurant. In 2011 his plan came to fruition when he started Muleheart Farm on the outskirts of Petaluma.  Today it provides produce, flowers & pork for the restaurant.