You can come for the consistently excellent food. You can come for the award-winning wine list. Or you can simply show up to smoke cigars. Tower founded the Stellar Cigar Society in March 1992 with the first of several cigar dinners held in a private room outfitted with heavy duty ventilation equipment. The dinners are designed for 40 people, and each has sold out, Tower says.
Stars also allows smoking in the restaurant, except in the non-smoking section.
If a cigar smoker runs afoul of fastidious fellow diners, however, the staff will move the smoker to the bar area, where cigars are always welcome. Tower is a proponent of good tobacco as part of the life well lived. He once wrote an article describing the perfect dinner, in which he fantasized hiring five people to smoke good cigars by the windows just to produce that aroma in the air. He is one of California's best chefs and most celebrated restaurateurs, a cookbook author, a bon vivant and entrepreneur. Tower studied architecture at Harvard, went west and started cooking at Chez Panisse in Berkeley basically by accident in 1971.