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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.
A roadside stop for specialty cocktails, casual lunches, and evening fine dining, Brix shares ownership with Kelleher Family Vineyards, whose Cabernet Sauvignon grapevines surround the restaurant on three sides. Pan-seared fish, juicy Brix burgers, house-made pasta, and risotto appear on both the lunch and dinner menus, with prime rib the crowd-pleaser on Sunday night.
Sommelier Matt Stamp and restaurant wine vet Ryan Stetins opened this combination restaurant, wine bar, and wine shop. The place has evolved into a hot gathering spot for its youthful vibe and eclectic small and large plates that might include shrimp lumpia (a Filipino-style fried spring roll), half chicken, and the Compline burger, best enjoyed with duck-fat fries—and, per Stamp, Champagne.
This restaurant owes its visual appeal to its clean lines and svelte decor, but the eye inevitably drifts westward to the open kitchen, where longtime executive chef Armando Navarro's team crafts dishes full of subtle surprises. The menu might include ceviche or roasted maitake mushrooms as starters and pan-roasted salmon, fettuccine carbonara, or paella awash with seafood among the entrées.
Anchored by a large heated patio adjoining the pool, the Farmhouse Inn's casual all-day restaurant serves farm-to-table cuisine with ingredients as local as the herbs and vegetables from the on-site culinary garden and livestock from an owners' nearby ranch. Look for avocado toast, brioche French toast, and the hearty farmer's plate (eggs, meat, potatoes) for breakfast, smoked salmon salad and the sandwich du jour for lunch, and quail, bass, or a pork chop for dinner.
Tablecloths, cut flowers, and the soft glow of liquid paraffin candles and strings of lights overhead draw most diners to this casual-elegant restaurant's expansive outdoor patio. Chef Bob Simontacchi relies on local sources for the organic, sustainable ingredients in vegan, vegetarian, and omnivore bistro-style dishes like beet salad, braised red cabbage with bacon and Sebastopol apples, vegetable stew, foraged-mushroom risotto, and duck confit.
Sebastopol’s former Fosters Freeze location, now a 21st-century fast-food palace, won design awards for its rusted-steel frame and translucent panel-like windows. The menu, a paean to coastal California cuisine, includes oysters raw and grilled, fish tacos, ceviche, tostadas, three burgers (beef, vegetarian, and fish), and, honoring the location's previous incarnation, chocolate and vanilla soft-serve ice cream.
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.
In a modern space radiating offhand elegance, the Bardessono's restaurant seduces with sophisticated flavors, many from fruits, vegetables, and herbs grown in the hotel's on-site culinary garden. Although the cuisine is ultimately modern American, the chef might incorporate Japanese, Mexican, or other techniques and ingredients depending on the dish.
Regionally farmed fish and other foraged and cultivated Northern California ingredients go into this restaurant's shareable seasonal plates, turned out in an open kitchen that faces a bar serving large-format cocktails as well as wines by up-and-coming producers and Wine Country mainstays. St. Helena–based designer Erin Martin supplied the mildly offbeat interiors, though most patrons dine on the Tuscan-theme courtyard patio in good weather.
Chef David Bush, who achieved national recognition for his food pairings at St. Francis Winery, owns this barlike small-plates restaurant inside an 1890s storefront, erected as a livery stable, that incorporates materials reclaimed from the building's prior incarnations. Starters often include oysters, ceviche, and deviled eggs with Dungeness crab and homemade yellow curry, meant to be enjoyed before moving on to braised-pork-shoulder tacos, shrimp and cheesy grits, or an achiote chicken sandwich.
Crystal chandeliers and fountains worthy of a French château supply the pizzazz at Restoration Hardware's street-side café, and the all-day menu's starters (charcuterie, shrimp cocktail, crispy artichoke), salads, and mains (from a burger modeled on one from Chicago's Au Cheval restaurant to delicate Atlantic sole in brown butter) easily live up to it. The prosciutto is flown in from Parma and the burrata from Puglia, the greens are ever-so-fresh, and the plating impresses.
The menu at this upscale roadhouse with a sloping wood-beamed ceiling focuses on seafood and meat—beef, lamb, chicken, duck, and other options—with many dishes in both categories grilled. Start with the classics, perhaps a martini and oysters Rockefeller, before moving on to well-plated contemporary entrées that might include crispy-skin salmon or duck breast, a fish stew, or grilled rib eye.
This small spot that melds rural charm with industrial chic serves updated American classics such as fried chicken (free-range in this case), burgers (with Kobe beef), and beer-battered fish tacos (with lemon crème fraîche). The flatbreads, including a smoked salmon one made with fromage blanc, Parmesan, lemon crème fraîche, and capers, are worth a try.
Christopher Kostow's reputation rests on his swoonworthy haute cuisine for the Meadowood resort, but he and his Charter Oak team adopt a more straightforward approach—fewer ingredients chosen for maximum effect—at this high-ceilinged, brown-brick downtown restaurant. With exceedingly fresh produce from Meadowood's nearby farm, this strategy might translate into dishes like red kuri squash with pickled peppers, almonds, and goat cheese; or pork collar with fermented pepper jam (or just go for the cheeseburger and thick hand-cut fries).
Owner-designer Jay Jeffers initiated a top-to-bottom makeover of this restaurant and its same-named hotel but retained the farm-to-table, French-inspired cuisine, the chef freshening it up a little to reflect The Madrona's flashy-elegant look. Inside a 19th-century mansion, with ornate molding and high ceilings but ultracontemporary to the max, diners feast in chic splendor on multifaceted preparations that make ample use of locally raised proteins and the on-site organic garden's fruits and vegetables.
The versatile chef of this concrete-and-glass grazing spot anchoring the SOFA Santa Rosa Arts District satisfies her diverse devotees with American standards and playful variations on international cuisines. Separated on the menu into three main categories—ocean, garden, and pasture, each with a selection of appetizers, salads, and entrées—the dishes change often but might include trout with French lentils, hanger steak with kale gratin, Tuscan-style St. Louis ribs, and mushroom hand pie with leeks and ricotta.
Shades of brown and beige predominate in the Four Seasons resort's classy-casual indoor-outdoor "living room," which serves upmarket casual fare, and the adjacent Auro for an elaborate multicourse tasting menu. The kitchen for both restaurants, visible behind glass walls, turns out seasonally oriented cuisine overseen by Mexico City–born, Napa-raised Rogelio Garcia, previously of The French Laundry and Bravo's Top Chef cable show.
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