15 Things to Eat and Drink in Napa and Sonoma

For some wine lovers, Screaming Eagle is the holy grail of cult Cabernet Sauvignon, with a waiting list a mile long for the right to pay thousands for a bottle. Jump the line at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa‘s plush 38° North Lounge, where you can savor the latest vintage for a mere $500 by the half glass or $900 for a standard pour. An outrageous splurge? Maybe so, but at least you can say you tried it.

Chef Charlie Palmer’s trademark lobster corn dog is simple in conception—a lump of lobster surrounded by deep-fried cornbread, served on a stick with pickled-ramp remoulade—yet somehow much more than the sum of its parts. Sure, you can taste this signature morsel at other Palmer restaurants around the country, but only at the Archer Hotel Napa‘s Sky & Vine rooftop bar can you enjoy them with Napa Valley views.

Per an oft-quoted Wine Country adage, it takes a lot of beer to make good wine, a reference to winemakers’ beverage of choice after a hard day in the cellar. To establish Mad Fritz, founder and master brewer Nile Zacherle and his wife, Whitney Fisher, both winemakers, describe turning the phrase on its head, making a lot of wine for boutique wineries before embarking on their now wildly successful craft-brew startup. Mad Fritz specializes in “origin-specific beers,” with the source of each ingredient acknowledged on the back label. Tales from a Renaissance-era Aesop’s Fables edition provide most of the beers’ names and all the front-label illustrations.

Chef Thomas Keller stands tallest among the high-profile artists who elevated the Napa Valley’s status in the culinary world. The intricate Oysters and Pearls (oysters, caviar, pearl tapioca) has been a staple of The French Laundry‘s prix-fixe menu for years, and while the dish is highly recommended you needn’t break the bank to experience Keller’s cuisine.

A few blocks south of TFL at four locations near each other you can sample mussels and frites at Bouchon Bistro, a perfectly golden, buttery croissant at Bouchon Bakery, Oaxacan-influenced plates at Keller’s latest eatery, La Calenda, and (at Finesse, the Store) K+M Extra Virgin Chocolate bars made with olive oil instead of cocoa butter. Still farther south, Keller’s Ad Hoc restaurant and its seasonal Addendum takeout window serve American classics like buttermilk fried chicken.

Speaking of fried chicken, Keller and other chefs of note have raised this guilty pleasure to an art form. At Ad Hoc and Addendum, Keller’s secret involves brining his well-sourced chicken for half a day before frying, also the method of choice in Forestville (Sonoma County) at Backyard, one of whose owner-chefs was on the team that opened Ad Hoc in 2006. Brining helps the chicken stay juicy during the frying process.

The ingredients list alone—butter, fresh local fennel and leeks, Pernod, fennel butter, scallops flown in from Maine, caviar, Champagne beurre blanc (i.e., more butter), and a light and fluffy pastry—sounds heavenly, but it’s chef Dustin Valette‘s sublime execution that makes his namesake restaurant’s signature day boat scallops en croûte a Healdsburg must-try. Food Network chef Beau MacMillan agrees, raving about Valette’s creation on an episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate.

Three parts English muffin, one part doughnut, and also a whole lotta butter, the Model Bakery‘s fluffy, doughy, orgasmically delicious signature baked good seduces on every level. Even Oprah swoons for these muffins, which more than once have made the celeb’s Favorite Things list.

One of the principals in Lovina is also involved with San Francisco’s beloved Zazie restaurant, where brunch isn’t brunch without a zesty mimosa with a scoop of divine blood-orange sorbet. The tradition continues at Lovina, which debuted in 2017 in a Calistoga bungalow. Go for the mimosa, but stay for the fantastic brunch: the something-for-everyone menu is divided into “breakfast kind of brunch” items (try Susie’s Remedy if you had too much the night before, otherwise French toast or a breakfast burrito) and “lunch kind of brunch” offerings, of which the warm duck confit spinach salad and Chef Jenna’s Chicken Tiki Yum Yum (on jasmine rice with sour cream and lentils) stand out.

Chocolatier Chris Kollar might be self-taught, but he’s obviously a quick study: less than a decade after he established Yountville-based Kollar Chocolates, Dessert Professional Magazine named him one of North America’s top-ten chocolatiers. He draws inspiration from European counterparts who favor flavor over sweetness, but he’s just as apt to skew Californian with items like his fennel pollen truffle. The winner of a gold award at an International Chocolate Salon Tasting, the sweet was inspired by the omnipresent roadside fennel Kollar passed on lengthy bike rides through the Napa Valley.

St. Helena’s steakhouse extraordinaire Press can buy meat from anywhere in the world, but the purveyor of choice for an exquisitely marbled dry-aged steak is Northern California’s Flannery Beef. Compound your bliss with an equally well-aged bottle from the restaurant’s extensive lineup of  late-1990s Cabernets—a sturdy 1996 or 1999 from Mayacamas Vineyards on Mt. Veeder, perhaps, or a magnum (mustn’t run out mid-meal) of 2006 Caymus Special Selection from valley-floor Rutherford fruit.

Chef Curtis Di Fede modeled his downtown Napa restaurant Miminashi after the Japanese gastropubs known as izakaya, where sake or cocktails accompany appetizers and small plates. Crispy skewered chicken skin was an early hit, but wok-fried edamame emerged as the starter that regulars craved. The recipe’s deceptively simple: stir-fry over high heat in safflower oil and top with toasted nori and white sesame seeds. The success is all in the execution—and, if desired, the sake that sommelier Jessica Pinzon selects to accompany this clever dish.

Chef Anita Cartagena cites a meal at Yountville’s The French Laundry as the catalyst for her transformation from fashion model into chef, but at Protéa, her fast-casual restaurant on the opposite side of town, she channels the street cuisine of the Caribbean and her native Puerto Rico. Cartagena posts her daily-changing menu on social media, always drawing a crowd when she’s preparing chillo frito (fried whole red snapper).

The energetic chef says this “taste from back home” recalls “mom-and-pop places on the beach where you order fish straight off the line, into the pot, and onto your plate.” As in Puerto Rico, rice, beans, sweet plantains, mixed greens, salsa borracha (drunk salsa), and avocado lime accompany her light, crispy fish.

Most people associate Sonoma County with wine, but for two weeks in early February this is beer country. That’s when thousands of “Pliny pilgrims” stand in line for hours to taste Pliny the Younger, Russian River Brewing Company‘s potent (10%-plus-alcohol) triple IPA. Owners Vince and Natalie Cilurzo describe it as “loaded with hop flavors, bitterness, and aromatics,” and they’re not lying. With the opening of RRBC’s vast brewpub in Windsor (between Santa Rosa and Healdsburg), the lines should move more quickly, though part of the fun is shootin’ the breeze with fellow Pliny partisans while you wait.

“It’s so mushroomy, how does he do it?” ask most patrons at star chef Todd Humphries’s downtown Napa restaurant, the Kitchen Door. When  Humphries, who made his name at top-drawer restaurants in New York and San Francisco, opened this Oxbow District homage to international comfort food (pizzas, rice bowls, duck banh mi sandwiches with duck jus), he anchored the starters with the creamy-rich mushroom soup from a previous restaurant he’d run in St. Helena.

With an ultrachic sister property in Mexico City and rooms in a restored 1907 Georgian-style mansion flanked by contemporary steel, glass, and concrete structures, it’s perhaps fitting that the two signature craft cocktails at Las Alcobas Napa Valley provide the continuity. Imported from Mexico City and the perfect antidote to a day of high-octane Cabernets, the mellifluous Las Alcobas Margarita delights with delicate sea-salt foam and tongue-tweaking lime-skin. The Napa Valley mixologists developed the Acacia Cocktail (gin, honey, crème de violet, sparkling wine), popular poolside in summer.