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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.
Spouses Andzia and Jenay Hofftin opened this organic restaurant, retail and wine shop, and community gathering spot inside Occidental's oldest building (1872). The "farm-fresh comfort food" menu encompasses everything from egg sandwiches and a yogurt and grain-free-granola parfait for breakfast to vegan bowls and pork melts for lunch and (three days a week) early dinner until 7.
A vaulted wood-beamed ceiling and paper-topped tables set the scene for romance at this softly lit French bistro inside an 1890s boathouse. Look for clever variations on classic dishes such as croque monsieur (grilled Parisian ham and Gruyère) and salade niçoise for lunch, with veal sweetbreads, cassoulet, beef bourguignon, and, in season, steamed mussels for dinner.
Even before charting on Esquire's list of 2022's best new restaurants, the intimate, bungalowlike establishment of New York City transplant Joshua Smookler (formerly chef at his own Mu Ramen and Thomas Keller's Per Se) was already drawing a crowd for its mash-up of Basque, Jewish, and Korean cuisines. Smookler, whose wife, Heidy He, runs the front of the house, consistently delights with idiosyncratic flavor combinations in dishes like feather-cut ibérico pork, lobster in XO sauce, grilled whole turbot, and dry-aged rib eye.
Not one to rest on her laurels, the creative director of this urban-rustic restaurant responded to winning a prestigious fine-dining award by welcoming a new chef, mixologist, and wine lead, all with impressive credentials themselves. The worth-the-splurge cuisine, hinging on hyperfresh local ingredients from superstar purveyors, comes off even more intricate than before in dishes that might include kanpachi crudo or goat-cheese croquette apps or a smoked pork chop with Japanese sweet potato entrée.
Giovanni Scala opened this boisterous roadhouse restaurant in the mid-1990s, and it's still a hangout of Napans who appreciate its Cal-Italian bistro cuisine, prepared with flair by Scott Warner, Scala's executive chef and partner. Warner augments the greatest-hits lineup—fritto misto (deep-fried calamari, onions, fennel, and rock shrimp), spinach ravioli with lemon-cream or tomato sauce, slow-braised lamb shank, and wood-fired pizzas—with daily specials based on seasonal ingredients.
Escargots, cassoulet, steak au poivre (pepper steak), and other French classics are prepared with precision inside this tan-brick country bistro whose flower-filled window boxes, extra-wide shutters, and red-and-white-striped awning hint at the old-world flair and joie de vivre that infuse the place. Regulars often start with the rich tomato soup in a flaky puff pastry before proceeding to sole meunière or coq au vin, completing the French sojourn with crème brûlée au chocolat or another authentic dessert.
Skilled baristas churn out a dizzying array of coffee drinks—drip, cold brew, nitro cold brew, all the fave espresso options—in a clean downtown space with white walls and teal wainscoting. Pastries, tartines, avocado toast, quiche, and egg-inflected sandwiches (some vegan or gluten-free) are the breakfast hits, with banh mi and the like added for lunch.
A casual storefront restaurant on Guerneville's main drag, boon eat+drink has a menu built around salads, smallish shareable plates, and entrées that might include a vegan bowl, chili-braised pork shoulder, and local cod with shiitakes. Like many of chef-owner Crista Luedtke's dishes, the signature polenta lasagna—creamy ricotta salata cheese and polenta served on greens sautéed in garlic, all of it floating upon a spicy marinara sauce—deviates significantly from the lasagna norm but succeeds on its own merits.
The team that created The French Laundry is also behind this place, where everything—the zinc-topped bar, antique sconces, suave waitstaff, and traditional French onion soup—could have come straight from a Parisian bistro. Pan-seared flat iron steak with caramelized shallots and mussels steamed with white wine, saffron, and Dijon mustard—both served with crispy, addictive fries—are among the perfectly executed entrées.
In a postage-stamp-size open kitchen (the dining room, its white walls adorned with contemporary art, is nearly as compact), chef Jeffrey Lloyd turns out understated, sophisticated fare emphasizing seasonably available local ingredients. Meats, pastas, and seafood get deluxe treatment without fuss or fanfare—and the daily risotto special is always worth trying.
Calistoga's flashy 19th-century entrepreneur Sam Brannan built the depot in 1868 to receive spa patrons, but it was looking careworn until his 21st-century equivalent, Wine Country vintner-showman Jean-Charles Boisset, restored the wood-frame building and opened a combination gourmet grocery, café, wine shop, distillery, and wine and beer garden. As at Boisset's historic Oakville Grocery, salads, artisanal sandwiches, and wood-fired pizzas headline.
Cookbook author and Iron Chef judge Domenica Catelli returned home to revive her family's American-Italian restaurant, a Geyserville fixture. Contemporary abstract paintings, reclaimed-wood furnishings, and muted gray and chocolate-brown walls signal the changing times, but you'll find good-lovin' echoes of traditional cuisine in the sturdy meat sauce that accompanies the signature lasagna paper-thin noodles and ricotta-and-herb-cheese filling.
A participant in the Slow Food movement, Central Market serves creative, upscale Cal-Mediterranean dishes—many of whose ingredients come from the restaurant's organic farm—in a century-old building with an exposed brick wall and an open kitchen. The menu, which changes daily depending on chef Tony Najiola's inspiration and what's ripe and ready, might include spicy duck wings as a starter, a slow-roasted-beets salad, pizzas, stews, two or three pasta dishes, and wood-grilled fish and meat.
A curved marble bar spotlit by contemporary art-glass pendants adds a touch of style to this downtown restaurant whose northern Italian cuisine pleases with understated sophistication. Mussels with house-made sausage in a spicy tomato broth, chopped salad with pancetta and pecorino, and the daily changing risotto are among the dishes regulars revere.
From pintxos and paellas to Iberian cheeses and fish à la plancha (flat-grilled), the chefs at this Wine Country offspring of Michael Chiarello's successful San Francisco restaurant Coqueta reimagine Spanish classics with a 21st-century farm-to-table sensibility. The frenetic pace in the flame-happy open kitchen, inside Yountville's redbrick former railroad depot, keeps the mood lively in the relatively small dining space, with the vibe on the patio out back even more so.
A decade after his beloved, same-named Healdsburg restaurant closed, celebrity chef Douglas Keane of Top Chef Masters and other fame reopened a "2.0" version inside an 8,000-square-foot steel, glass, and concrete structure set in an Alexander Valley vineyard. Keane bills his prix-fixe culinary experience as a "dining journey," with guests (couples'-rate only; single diners charged double) changing rooms a few times for multiple internationally inspired courses based on hyper-seasonal mostly Northern California ingredients.
Inside a former residence that received a high-design makeover down to its open-air patio, this restaurant began as an exclusive perk for Stone Edge Farm Estate's wine-club members; though now open to all, it still flies under the radar. Prix-fixe meals built around organically grown ingredients from the winery's nearby farm might include an appetizer like tuna adorned with crispy shallots, kumquats, and cashews followed by a salad of picked-the-same-day greens and a sensitively spiced fish, meat, or vegetarian entrée.
In a high-ceilinged former barn with plenty of outside seating, Farmstead revolves around an open kitchen whose chefs prepare meals with grass-fed beef and lamb, fruits and vegetables, and eggs, olive oil, wine, honey, and other ingredients from nearby Long Meadow Ranch. Entrées might include wood-grilled trout with fennel and bacon-mustard vinaigrette; caramelized beets with goat cheese and chimichurri; or a wood-grilled heritage pork chop with jalapeño grits.
The mixologists at this verdant "bar-focused restaurant" whip up creative "garden-to-glass" cocktails meant for pairing with neo-comfort food whose ingredients, especially the produce, are primarily cultivated in west Sonoma County. "Umami bomb" mushrooms with sticky rice and the tofu with turmeric and peanut velouté entice vegans and vegetarians at dinner, but with lamb sausage, roasted chicken, a smash burger, and pan-seared fish, there's plenty for meat eaters, too.
Gung-ho Culinary Institute of America students in their final semester run this excellent if unheralded restaurant in a historic stone structure. A solid value, the three- or four-course prix-fixe meals—oft-changing, nicely plated dishes—emphasize local ingredients, some so local they're grown on-site or nearby.
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