Truckee’s modern New American restaurant continues to deliver on its creative culinary journey

Chef-owner John Weatherson has developed direct relationships with the farmers who grow ingredients for the restaurant, photo by Nyna Weatherson

Trokay is Paiute for “everything is all right” or “everything is well.” John and Nyna Weatherson carefully chose the word, which is also the origin name for Truckee, for their modern New American restaurant in historic downtown, where their mission is to showcase hospitality, craft of cooking and culinary artistry focused on sustainable, locally and regionally sourced organic ingredients.

After graduating at the top of his class from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, John honed his skills under Manhattan’s celebrated chef-restaurateurs David Bouley and Christian Delouvrier, as well as with Daniel Boulud at his three-Michelin-star restaurant, Daniel. Nyna is the former head cheesemonger at the renowned Murray’s Cheese in the West Village, where, as the manager responsible for menu development, she produced New York Times award-winning breakfast and lunch items. 

“Daniel Boulud told me as a young cook that the best thing you can do as a chef is to go work at the best restaurant that you can, and then to take what you learned and go somewhere where that doesn’t exist,” says John. “And if you do that, you’re making food in the United States better. Nyna and I had dreamed of relocating to Truckee for years, and when we saw the opportunity, we knew the timing was right.”

The couple opened Cafe Trokay on Donner Pass Road in 2011 and two years later expanded across the road into the former OB’s Pub space, which they designed and decorated from the ground up. All the aesthetic choices of the 78-seat exposed stone, brick and beam building, which they redubbed Restaurant Trokay, were made to make the space feel natural and intrinsic to Truckee. The baseboard molding and door framings are made with wood that was removed from the historic Chinese herb shop that once occupied the space. The bar is lodgepole pine, the base reclaimed from a barn in Sierraville, and tabletops are Douglas fir from an old Northern California sawmill. 

“The goal was always to create a restaurant that spoke to the experience of being in Tahoe and express those flavors through food,” says John. “Along the way, we tapped friends to help—woodworkers, an artisan potter and a florist with an aesthetic as whimsical as the cuisine.”

Trokay aims to evoke a little bit of the Sierra in every course, photo by Nyna Weatherson

Indeed, dinner here is full of surprises; the seasonally changing four-course prix fixe menu and chef’s showstopping 10-course tasting both bring a little bit of storytelling to each bite. An á la carte menu is also available at the handsome seven-seat bar.

Inspired by fresh ingredients, the Weathersons have a nearly symbiotic relationship with their purveyors, who provide them with unusual and hard-to-source items. For many years, they relied on Suzanne Ashworth of Del Rio Botanical in Sacramento, Yolo County’s first organically certified farm, for wild and specialty produce.  

Ashworth had the world’s largest gourd seed collection and grew everything from Chinese dates and ume plums to yuzu and the sweetest Muscat grapes they’d ever tasted; a pair of Pakistani mulberry trees fed the La Mancha goats for her Manchego-style cheese. The direct farmer-to-chef relationship and visits to her farm, where everything down to the buzzing bees seemed in balance, shaped their menus—and family memories. Ashworth’s passing in 2021 and the closure of her farm were a huge blow.

In the meantime, Dan and Rachel McClure of Nevada’s Own have stepped in, growing ingredients for Trokay on their Smith Valley farm. 

A USDA prime beef tenderloin is accompanied by a ratatouille of sorts of sweet corn, baby zucchini and piquillo peppers, photo by Sue Rock

“They’ve provided us with extraordinary produce for over a decade—most notably their strawberries, which are five to six times sweeter than typical ones,” says John. “Their fruit is so exceptional, we’ve served it to every guest in season for the past three years as an amuse-bouche.” Cue the naturally sugary strawberry afloat in hyssop flower tea tinged with lemon and ginger oil.

Meals also include a nod to Truckee’s Chinese-American history: A tiffin box—a round metal container still used to transport meals in Asia—serves as a breadbasket of sorts, bearing an assortment of grissini topped with Hatch chile spices, buttermilk biscuits and gougéres, along with a mini mason jar of burnt red onion jam. 

Trokay’s creatively composed offerings are constantly evolving, with some flavors and techniques regularly appearing in the rotation: Mount Lassen trout smoked with locally foraged Sierra juniper, perhaps alongside a trout tartare-topped huckleberry, garnet yam and lovage, and Morro Bay halibut plated with an artistic arrangement of chanterelle, potato, chard and black truffle béarnaise. Grass-fed lamb from Anderson Ranch was recently prepared with wild ramp and black garlic. Wolfe Ranch quail, which appears on the menus of Thomas Keller, Wolfgang Puck and Alice Waters, is also a mainstay.

Courses are delivered on dishes handmade by local potter Alanna Hughes. Service, which includes both Nyna and John moving about the floor, is choreographed and interactive, with a little bit of theater. For example, a roasted carrot bisque, smoky with flavors of cumin and ras el hanout, is poured tableside, into a shallow bowl of crispy mini chickpeas.

Restaurant Trokay’s offerings are artistically arranged on dishes handmade by local potter Alanna Hughes, photo by Nyna Weatherson

Toward the finish of the full chef’s tasting menu, Nyna’s brioche—a sweet and savory French toast topped with a healthy portion of sustainably raised Tsar Nicoulai caviar from the Sacramento area—is served with a pine cone bud scented syrup. Those opting for the wine pairing will enjoy a 27-year-old 1998 Sauternes with it, juxtaposing the salinity of the caviar with the sweetness of the wine.  

“We like terroir-driven wines,” says John, who selects the impressive list based on compatibility with his menu. “We like native yeast, minimal intervention, old vines, biodynamic and organic wines. We want the wines we serve to be the most pure expression of a place and moment in time, just like our food.”

Final sweet finishes include a sorbet of white fir needles that tastes of sorrel and grapefruit and a simple quenelle of woodsy sweet woodruff crème anglaise ice cream touched with extra virgin olive oil and sea salt. Dessert might include an arrangement of Valrhona grand cru chocolate with kombu cremia (a Japanese-style soft serve of sorts) and miso caramel. The tiffin boxes reappear, this time containing mignardises—small, delicate, bite-sized desserts.

Going on its 15^th year, Trokay’s longevity may be a testament to changing tastes in the area. 

“The dining landscape of Tahoe was much different when we moved here, and we’re honored that our success has spawned area restaurants like Smoke Door, Great Gold, Tangerine, Sylva and the new Mark Sullivan project Savoie at the old Pfeifer House, almost all of which are backed by renowned restaurant groups (Flour & Water, Spruce, Smoke Door Yokohama),” says John. “We believe that we were influential in proving the viability of Truckee and Tahoe for a higher level of cuisine. If you build it, they will come, and the drastic improvement in the caliber of dining in North Lake Tahoe has very much come to fruition in the post-pandemic era. We are most honored to be a part, if not founders and revolutionaries, of that change.”

Restaurant Trokay is open for dinner Friday to Tuesday from 5:30 p.m. Reservations strongly recommended. 10046 Donner Pass Road, Truckee, California, (530) 582-1040, restauranttrokay.com.

Susan D. Rock is TQ’s longtime Food & Wine editor.