39 Best Restaurants in Napa and Sonoma, California

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, mussels steamed in aromatic fennel, white wine, garlic, and thyme 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.

Shades of brown and beige predominate in the Four Seasons resort's indoor-outdoor fine-dining restaurant, whose Mexico City–born, Napa-raised chef, Rogelia Garcia, prepares an elaborate multicourse tasting menu based on seasonal California ingredients. The artistry of the flavors and presentation has earned the chef and his team national recognition and the restaurant bucket-list status.

The team that created The French Laundry is also behind this place, where everything—the zinc-topped bar, antique sconces, suave waitstaff, and escargots, French onion soup, and salmon and beef tartare starters—could have come straight from a Parisian bistro. Sole Provençale, pan-seared flat iron steak with caramelized shallots, and mussels steamed with white wine, saffron, and Dijon mustard—the latter two served with crispy addictive fries—are among the perfectly executed entrées.

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 in an Alexander Valley vineyard. Keane bills his flagship prix-fixe culinary experience as The Dining Journey, with guests (two-person minimum; solo diners charged double) changing rooms a few times for multiple internationally inspired courses based on hyper-seasonal, mostly Northern California ingredients.

Inside a soigné Victorian former residence with textured wood walls and adorned with contemporary textiles and artworks, the downtown Sonoma restaurant operated by Stone Edge Farm Estate Vineyards & Winery presents a tasting menu built around ingredients from the winery's nearby organic farm. Founding chef Brian Limoges describes Sonoma County and its rigorously farmed, raised, and caught ingredients as his “muse,” with his New England youth, French culinary training, and turns at four iconic San Francisco restaurants providing additional inspiration.

Inside an ivy-laced old stone building and with good reason atop many a Napa Valley visitor's bucket list, chef Thomas Keller's destination restaurant generally lives up to the hype with intricate yet not overthought cuisine. Some courses on the two prix-fixe menus, one of which highlights vegetables, rely on luxe ingredients such as white quail or shima aji (striped jack); others take humble elements like carrots or fava beans and elevate them to art.

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 like ricotta ravioli or grilled leg of lamb—emphasize local ingredients, in some cases grown a few steps away.

Chef Joshua Smookler and his wife Heidy He, who formerly ran a foodie-favorite New York City ramen shop and later the upmarket Animo in Sonoma, opened this white-walled roadside establishment whose menu favors painstakingly conceived pizzas and pasta dishes. Starters like scallop or tuna crudo and a Bibb salad with produce from a garden steps away whet the appetite for the Italian fare and shareable entrées that might include lamb saddle, whole chicken, or a dry-aged porterhouse.

An upmarket Old West–themed haven for quality slabs paired with muscular cocktails and tannic Cabs, this two-story steak house on Healdsburg Plaza's north side takes its name from a 19th-century Texas Ranger turned cattleman. Appetizers and small plates might include crispy mushrooms with chimichurri, raw oysters, or shrimp cocktail, with sufficient seafood, pasta, and vegetarian entrées to placate diners forgoing the splendid cuts of red meat.

From the limestone floor to the cedar walls and cypress tabletops, most of the materials used to build this downtown Napa restaurant specializing in seasonally changing, multicourse kaiseki meals were imported from Japan, as was the ceramic dinnerware. Delicate preparations with sea urchin, Hokkaido scallops, bluefin tuna, and slow-roasted Wagyu tenderloin are typical of the offerings on the prix-fixe menu, which also includes impeccably fresh, artistically presented sashimi and sushi courses.

A vintage-style neon sign outside this bungalow restaurant announces "Great Food," and the chefs deliver with well-plated dishes served in two buildings, one a Craftsman gem, or on street-side patios that are especially festive during weekend brunch. The offerings at women-owned and -run Lovina change often, but a recent menu's chicken breast and gnocchi with heirloom tomato and vodka sauce and seared wild halibut with gnocchi and wild mushrooms are typical of the imaginative cuisine.

A cavernous casual-chic restaurant with a contempo-barn interior and wraparound patio steps from neighboring vineyards, Press has long been a preferred upvalley stop for a top-shelf cocktail followed by a well-prepared meal paired with a high-scoring local wine. Chef-partner Philip Tessier, formerly of Yountville's The French Laundry and Bouchon Bistro and New York City's Le Bernardin, prepares refined five- and seven-course tasting menus, much of whose produce is grown nearby.

Possibly the most romantic roost for brunch, lunch, or dinner in all the Wine Country is a terrace seat at the Auberge du Soleil resort's illustrious restaurant, and the Mediterranean-inflected cuisine more than matches the dramatic vineyard views. The prix-fixe dinner menu (three or four courses), relying mainly on local produce, might include caviar or diver scallop starters, delicately prepared fish or vegetable middle-course options, and mains like prime beef pavé, spiced lamb loin, or Japanese Wagyu A5.

The 1877 farmhouse that gives this restaurant its name contains two warmly lit dining rooms, one with a wraparound mural depicting the founding family's five generations in Sonoma County agriculture. It's a fitting flourish, given the emphasis in the featured tasting menu (à la carte also available) on produce and proteins so "hyper-local" that the inn's gardener cultivates many of the former on-site and one of the owners raises some of the latter on a nearby farm.

Chef Thomas Keller's culinary ventures include part ownership of Regiis Ova Caviar, whose output is often paired with sommelier-selected Champagnes and sparkling wines at his fancy-casual indoor-outdoor restaurant. In addition to the ever-evolving menu's multiple caviar options, small bites and snacks like Wagyu tartlets and hamachi with finger limes might whet the appetite for barbecued quail, a pork katsu sandwich, and other slightly larger plates.

The seasonally oriented Japanese dinners known as kaiseki inspire the 10-course prix-fixe vegetarian, meat, and seafood menu at the spare elegant restaurant—redwood walls, walnut tables, mesquite-tile floors, muted-gray yarn-thread panels—of internationally renowned culinary artists Katina and Kyle Connaughton (she farms, he cooks). As Katina describes the endeavor, the micro-seasons of their nearby farm plus SingleThread's rooftop garden of fruit trees and greens dictate Kyle's rarefied fare, prepared in a theatrically lit open kitchen.

The late chef-restaurateur Charles Phan's team executes his rarefied Vietnamese cuisine at this Wine Country outpost with the same precision as their counterparts in San Francisco. When the weather's right, the outdoor courtyard is the place to be, and the high-style gray-toned bar is always the right spot for specialty cocktails and solo dining.

The restaurant at Solage attracts the resort's clientele, upvalley locals, and guests of nearby lodgings for sophisticated farm-to-table cuisine served in the high-ceilinged dining area or alfresco on a festive patio warmed by shapely heaters and a mesmerizing firepit. Dishes on the lighter side might include house-made pasta or sake-marinated fish, with crispy pork or a slow-braised short rib among the heartier options.

One of Northern Sonoma's most exclusive and theatrical dining experiences unfolds in a private dining space in the rear of The Matheson restaurant, where a perfectionist yet affable team of chefs and hosts executes and presents an exquisite 17-course omakase tasting menu. Some nigiri selections are conventional, others novel, but each contains a defining element elevating the piece into an artistic realm.

The chef-owners of this neighborly restaurant say their fare "walks the line between comfort and haute cuisine"—mostly California-inspired and "hyperseasonal" items that might include Mt. Lassen trout with leek roulade or local duck breast in Grand Marnier sauce served with fig and potato gratinée. The same could be said for the casual but knowing hospitality and the decor (bare wooden tables yet linen napkins), but it all works: dining here engenders quiet excitement.

Torc means "wild boar" in an early Celtic dialect, and owner-chef Sean O'Toole, who formerly helmed kitchens at top Manhattan, San Francisco, and Yountville establishments, occasionally incorporates the restaurant's namesake beast into his eclectic offerings. A recent menu featured hamachi tartare, romesco risotto, three hand-cut pasta dishes, a side of mushrooms foraged by a local pro, and Maine diver scallops, all prepared by O'Toole and his team with style and precision.

The founders of Healdsburg's Quail & Condor bakery followed up the success of that operation with this boulangerie and restaurant that by day showcases their naturally fermented sourdough breads in sandwiches ($–$$) distinguished by their expressive flavors. Come evening, the kitchen shifts into fine-dining mode, producing multicourse prix-fixe French-inspired "Le Dîner” meals served at counters and a communal table.

Northern Sonoma native Dustin Valette opened this homage to the area's artisanal agricultural bounty with his brother, who runs the high-ceilinged dining room, where the playful contemporary lighting tempers the austerity of the exposed concrete walls and butcher-block-thick wooden tables. Charcuterie is an emphasis, but also consider the signature day-boat scallops en croûte (in a pastry crust) or dishes that might include duck breast, Duroc pork tenderloin, or crispy-skin fish.

A chef with a national reputation applies classic Italian and French techniques to predominantly California ingredients inside the 1907 Georgian-style mansion housing the Alila Napa Valley resort's destination restaurant. Lunch items like a griddled mortadella sandwich or smash burger give way at dinner to more intricate à la carte fare like squash blossom bucatini and Santa Barbara sea urchin or truffled Petaluma hen, but the prix-fixe and tasting menus demonstrate the culinary team's prowess the best.

First in a historic roadside haunt that perished in the 2017 wildfires and now in a strip-mall storefront whose exterior masks the urbane restaurant within, Willi's serves inventive globe-trotting small plates paired with international wines. Pork-belly pot stickers represent Asia, the Mediterranean inspires Tunisian roasted local carrots and Moroccan-style lamb chops, and curried crab tacos straddle two—maybe three—continents.

A San Francisco culinary star with establishments worldwide, Michael Mina debuted his first Wine Country restaurant in 2020, its interior of charcoal grays, browns, and soft whites dandy indeed, if by evening vying with outdoor spaces aglow with firepits and lighted water features. Seasonal regional ingredients—Pacific Coast fish, pasture-raised meats, freshly plucked produce—go into haute-homey dishes, prepared open-fire, that include pizzas, handmade pastas, steaks, and the signature lobster potpie with brandied lobster cream and black truffle.

At this low-key southern Yountville dining room, superstar chef Thomas Keller offers a daily-changing, fixed-price multicourse menu whose mains might include smoked beef brisket with baked beans and coleslaw or sesame chicken with radish kimchi and fried rice. Ad Hoc also serves a small but decadent weekend brunch, and the Addendum annex, in a small building behind the restaurant, sells boxed lunches to go (ultra-moist buttermilk fried chicken) a few days a week from late spring to early fall.

The culinary garden guests pass on their way to the Stanly Ranch resort's main restaurant supplies pristine fruit, produce, and herbs for the artisanal cocktails and well-conceived dishes served inside this stone-and-glass structure. Start with vegetables and dip, raw oysters, or the more unusual bison tartare for lunch or dinner, before moving on to a Wagyu burger or hot chicken sandwich for lunch or scallops, lamb ribs, or quail for dinner.

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.