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Farm-to-table Modern American cuisine is the prevalent style in the Napa Valley and Sonoma County, but this encompasses both the delicate preparations of Yountville’s Thomas Keller, whose restaurants include The French Laundry, and the upscale comfort food served throughout the Wine Country. The quality (and hype) often means high prices, but you can find appealing, inexpensive eateries, especially in Napa, Calistoga, Sonoma, and Santa Rosa.
Inside the bright-white 1907 Georgian-style structure anchoring the otherwise contemporary Alila Napa Valley resort, Acacia House serves ambitious cuisine—sea urchin cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper pasta), perhaps, or jamón ibérico schnitzel—that generally lives up to the elegant setting. At lunch, the chefs, who source ingredients from top purveyors (the quality duly reflected in the prices), also turn out comfort fare like avocado toast with trout and a burger with slow-cooked tomato and caramelized onion.
At this low-key dining room with zinc-top tables, superstar chef Thomas Keller offers a changing daily fixed-price menu that might include smoked beef short ribs with creamy herb rice and charred broccolini or sesame chicken with radish kimchi and fried rice (check the website for that day's offerings). Ad Hoc also serves a small but decadent Sunday brunch, and Keller's Addendum annex, in a separate small building behind the restaurant, sells boxed lunches to go (including moist buttermilk fried chicken) from Thursday to Saturday except in winter.
The culinary garden guests pass on their way to the Stanly Ranch resort's main restaurant supplies fruit, produce, and herbs for the artisanal cocktails and well-conceived dishes served inside the stone-and-glass structure. A salmon crudo appetizer exemplifies the approach: each of the pristinely fresh ingredients (yogurt, young dill, raw salmon, trout roe, green apple, Japanese spice) registers well enough separately but soars as an ensemble.
When only a thick, flawlessly cooked New York or porterhouse (dry-aged by the eminent Allen Brothers of Chicago) will do, this steak house inside an 1886 stone building is just the ticket. New Zealand lamb chops are the nonbeef favorite, with oysters Rockefeller, beef carpaccio, and creamed spinach among the options for starters and sides.
A Craftsman bungalow whose 1920s owner reportedly used the cellar for bootlegging during Prohibition houses this restaurant where the pairing of food and drink is as likely to involve a craft cocktail as a sommelier-selected wine. Main courses such as wood-grilled chicken or salmon, wet-aged black Angus rib eye, and the grass-fed G&G burger with Gruyère follow starters that might include corn croquettes, sticky pig ears, and harissa sausage with fry bread and baba ghanoush.
The owner of casual and fine-dining restaurants in Japan and elsewhere, Kobe-born chef Haruyuki Yamashita gained fame within his native land for techniques that modernized Japanese cuisine. At his sparsely decorated Napa location—black, gray, and brown tones, polished concrete floor, gleaming open kitchen—his team prepares prix-fixe multicourse meals, but you can also order sushi, tempura, and other items à la carte.
Even before diners settle in their seats, the Montage resort's glass-walled destination restaurant captures the imagination with exterior views of vineyards, oaks, and far-off Mt. St. Helena and interior haute-luxury touches like chandeliers of locally handblown Czech glass. The Cali-Continental connection comes full circle in dishes—Pacific oysters with a spicy mignonette, perhaps, or halibut with shrimp, corn, and chanterelles—whose French flourishes elevate the seasonal ingredients.
A dress-up multiroom special-occasion establishment that debuted in 1980, John Ash bills itself as Sonoma County's first farm-to-table restaurant, but its legacy extends even further: the namesake founder, no longer involved, was among several pioneering Wine Country chefs who tailored their cuisine to the region's wines. Though eclipsed as a destination restaurant by rivals in Healdsburg and elsewhere, this remains a worthy stop for well-crafted dishes like rack of lamb, pan-seared dayboat scallops, and brick chicken.
Iron Chef star Masaharu Morimoto is the big name behind this downtown Napa restaurant where everything is delightfully over the top, including the desserts. Organic materials such as twisting grapevines above the bar and rough-hewn wooden tables seem simultaneously earthy and modern, creating a fitting setting for the gorgeously plated Japanese fare, from straightforward sashimi to more elaborate seafood, chicken, pork, and beef entrées.
Building on the success of Sushi Koshō across the street, chef Jake Rand opened this "Champagne and bivalves" sidewalk café specializing in raw and cooked seafood accompanied by sides like marvelously crispy duck-fat fries and an iceberg salad Louie with rock shrimp, avocado, smoked bacon, and confit tomato. Straddling two garagelike industrial spaces with indoor and outdoor seating, Oyster opens at 2 pm, making it a good stop for a late lunch or early dinner.
Elegant Santé is the Fairmont resort's restaurant for haute cuisine focusing on seasonal local ingredients. You can dine à la carte, but the intricate dishes on the chef's tasting menu make it worth trading up.
The low lighting, well-spaced tables, and gas fireplaces at this Railroad Square Historic District restaurant create a congenial setting for dining on steak, raw-bar seafood, and sustainable fish. With entrées including 20-ounce prime rib and dry-aged rib eye—plus a shareable 56-ounce rib eye—there's no chance meat eaters will depart unsated, and nonsteak options like ahi tuna tartare and tamarind barbecue prawns surpass those at your average temple to beef.
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