By day, Healdsburg’s Troubadour Bread & Bistro is a sandwich shop, albeit an extraordinary one. But come night, it morphs stunningly into a veritable Michelin-starred dining experience.

Yes, the popular downtown cafe, where you can pick up a pumpkin seed dukkah-dusted chicken salad on heavenly bread baked by sister bakery Quail & Condor, transforms into Le Diner, four nights a week. That’s when it serves a French-California prix fixe worthy of blinding the radar of those discriminating inspectors.

That’s because there’s major talent behind this endeavor in the form of the husband-and-wife team that opened Troubadour and Quail & Condor, Executive Chef Sean McGaughey and Executive Pastry Chef Melissa Yanc McGaughey. They both worked previously at nearby Michelin three-starred SingleThread Farms & Restaurant. He was its chef de cuisine, and she was its hotel baker.

The couple also heads up the kitchen team at Molti Amici, founded by Jonny Barr, a former general manager at SingleThread, whose wife Tiffany Spurgeon, another SingleThread alum, runs front-of-house at Troubadour’s Le Diner.

I’ve been a long time fan of both Troubadour’s sandwiches, as well as the flaky pastries and hearty breads at Quail & Condor. This year, I fell under the spell of the team’s new Italian restaurant in Healdsburg, Molti Amici. But last week, was the first time I finally booked a reservation to try Troubadour’s dinner service.

Walk through the doors and you’ll immediately be engulfed in the aroma of fresh-baked bread. The lights have been dimmed, and the tables set with candles and linen napkins.

It’s a tiny space with room for only a handful of tables. My husband and I were actually seated at a table near the deck oven, which was still emitting heat. Coming inside from the 50-degree chill outside, it proved as cozy a setting as that in front of a roaring fireplace.

Dinner is $145 per person, for about four courses (with a couple choices for two of them), plus a few extra treats included. There is no official wine pairing, just a selection of wines by the glass. However, servers are more than happy to create a pairing on the fly, if you so desire.

Everything is served on pretty, mismatched china, adding to the charm and elegance.

The evening starts with three snacks: a porcelain tea cup of warm matsutake broth, potent with intense earthy, pine, and woodsy flavors; skinny slivers of tender, seeded rye bread topped with shaved matsutake and lemon zest; and the restaurant’s version of a tiny Croque Monsieur that is out of this world. It’s like a two-bite gougere, stuffed to the gills with a lusciously thick Gruyere cream and bits of ham, that gets draped with a slice of black truffle.

There is one supplemental course, and you’d be remiss not to spring for it. The Kaluga caviar-topped egg shell ($25 extra, and requires everyone at the table to participate) sits in an ornate egg holder fit for royalty. Inside the shell are the softest scrambled eggs with sweet, diced delicata squash and creme fraiche. It’s like fancy brunch — done extra.

One of the choices for the first course was escargot, which is often on the menu but in different preparations. Here, the escargot had been sauteed in Makrut lime-infused brown butter, then spooned atop a duck egg custard with the soft, jiggly texture of Japanese chawanmushi.

Another choice was the chestnut soup that was like a hug in a bowl. The menu described it as including puff pastry, which made me think it would have a thick top hat of it along the lines of a pot pie. Instead, the crisp, airy pastry was actually much more delicate, formed into an Easter bonnet veil or gilded cage that sat atop the velvety soup, emboldened with chanterelles.

To share, there was a plate of brioche, done two ways. First, a mini round that tasted indulgently buttery. Second, a glossy pretzel epi that was far softer and richer tasting than any standard pretzel. Because house-baked bread is, well, Troubadour’s bread and butter, you will get various breads at certain points of the meal, but in measured quantities, so that it doesn’t steal the spotlight from everything else.

Salad comes next, in the form of crisp greens dressed in a bright and zesty miso-citrus vinaigrette with shaved carrots and thin rounds of persimmons. A dollop of creme fraiche is at the bottom to add rich body. Kombu and black sesame are sprinkled overtop to add deep briny and umami notes.

Slices of pane Siciliano, with its chewy crumb, come with fig-leaf dusted butter and a fig compote. Smear both on, and you’ll wish you could have this every morning for breakfast.

There was a choice of two entrees that evening. My husband opted for the monkfish amandine, wrapped with scallop mousseline in neat greens, and napped in an almond-tarragon sabayon. Super moist, it tasted like a less dense lobster.

My rosy and juicy duck pruneaux was finished with roasted duck jus and accompanied with a mousseline made with aromatic angelica leaves and sweet, winey plum jam.

A bowl of golden, crisp potato rounds was set down to share with the entrees.

Dessert was the epitome of fall: an artsy, spiraled Honeycrisp tarte tatin with Calvados caramel was served with whipped creme fraiche and a quince-apple-rose sauce. Smoking sticks of cinnamon were grated over the top tableside, providing the effect of dessert beside a campfire.

To pair with, Spurgeon poured glasses of Christian Drouin calvados on the house that added yet more floral and warm spiced notes.

The dinner ends with mignardises of sticky, chewy, candied plum on skewers, teeny crispy pirouettes filled with white chocolate and pineapple guava, and melt-in-your-mouth, smooth dark chocolate cubes in which sourdough crumbs were soaked in the ganache overnight to add a touch of toastiness.

After the last guests depart for the night, the tables are cleared to ready the change back to a daytime sandwich shop — just like that.

Call it a little bit of magic, one that’s sure to leave you spellbound.

More: A Visit to Molti Amici

And: A Visit to Troubadour By Day

And: A Visit to Quail & Condor