Could it be the beginning of more Bay Area empire building for chef and restaurateur Stephanie Izard?

News arrived Tuesday that longtime Food Network fixture and 2008 Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard will be expanding her Girl & the Goat empire to the Bay Area next year for the first time. As the Chronicle reports, Izard has signed on to open Valley Goat in Silicon Valley, at the new Treehouse Hotel in Sunnyvale.

The restaurant will be similar in spirit to Girl & the Goat, which takes its inspirations from across the globe and now has locations in both Chicago and Los Angeles. Izard tells the Chronicle that the new menu will feature charcoal-grilled meats, fish, and vegetables in a new Josper oven, and some of Izard's signature goat preparations seem likely to make an appearance as well. (The Los Angeles menu features, for instance, goat liver mousse, goat curry, confit goat belly, and a rhubarb-braised goat shank, in addition to pork, beef, and chicken dishes.)

The team from Boka Restaurant Group, which has backed all of Izard's projects, only says, "Meant to be enjoyed family-style, Valley Goat’s whimsical, vibrant menu will feature a variety of shareable plates that are bold in flavor and bright in taste."

Izard's team is aiming for a 2025 opening, but no timeframe has been specified yet.

The Treehouse Sunnyvale hotel was originally slated to open in 2023, but appears to be significantly delayed.

This is Izard's first foray into running a restaurant in the Bay Area, and she tells the Chronicle she's especially inspired by bounty of produce at the Sunnyvale Farmers Market. "These are the things that make being a chef so fun and exciting," she tells the paper.

She says she had been considering opening something in the Bay Area even before the Treehouse opportunity came along.

Valley Goat will be Izard's seventh restaurant with Boka Restaurant Group. In addition to two Girl & the Goat locations, she has opened the Peruvian concept Cabra in both Chicago and LA ("cabra" means goat in Spanish), the Chinese-American restaurant Duck Duck Goat in Chicago, and Little Goat Diner in Chicago.

Izard now lives full-time in Los Angeles and has spent a fair amount of time in the Bay Area, but primarily in Sonoma County — much of that filming appearances on Guy Fieri's various shows, shot in a studio in Santa Rosa and at his home in Windsor, and the annual Tournament of Champions competition.

Izard won Top Chef Season 4, which was shot in her native Chicago in 2008, and became the first female chef to win the competition. She remains part of a small but elite club of female chefs who have prevailed on Top Chef in its 21 seasons, along with Kristen Kish, Mei Lin, Brooke Williamson, Kelsey Barnard Clark, and the Bay Area's own Melissa King.

Izard went on to win the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes in 2013.

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