Meet The Owner and Chef,
Cristina Topham

Chef Cristina's culinary journey began in 1999, when she swapped high heels for kitchen clogs and traded a Wall Street tech career for a life in the kitchen. After graduating from The French Culinary Institute in NYC, she honed her craft at Les Olivades in Paris, The Savoy in NYC, and Julia's Kitchen in Napa.

In Brooklyn, she founded a boutique catering company and collaborated with Morrell Wines on bespoke wine-pairing dinners and tasting events. After nearly 15 years in New York, the call of warmer weather beckoned, and in 2006 she set sail as a superyacht chef. For eight years, she cooked her way through the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and Mexico, navigating foreign markets, haggling with locals over fresh ingredients, and learning alongside locals she met in every port.

In 2014, home called, and she returned to Northern California and planted roots in Sonoma. She launched her catering company, Spread Kitchen, in 2016, blending her Lebanese heritage, global adventures, and love of Sonoma's bounty. The pandemic reshaped Spread into meal kits, prepared foods, and drop-off catering, bringing fresh, healthy cooking to a wider community with plentiful options for omnivores, vegetarians, vegans, and gluten-free diners alike. After selling at the Sonoma and Napa Farmers' Markets, she opened her first brick-and-mortar location in Sonoma in May 2022.

Today, Chef Cristina and her team serve Lebanese-inspired dishes with a California twist: seasonal, local ingredients, handmade with care and a dash of flair. Their work has earned acclaim, including a spot on the San Francisco Chronicle's 2025 Top 25 Restaurants in Wine Country and Top 100 Restaurants in the Bay Area. Respect for ingredients, customers, and team is at the heart of everything they do, and every bite is a love letter to the flavors she has discovered, the people she has fed, and the journey that brought her here.