6 Best Restaurants in Guerneville, Napa and Sonoma

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 vegan risotto, Moroccan chicken, and pan-seared local cod. 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.

West County's most handsome restaurant, softly lit, with a fireplace, an open-trestle ceiling, wooden floors and tables, and long mauve-cushioned banquette benches running down the middle, hides in plain sight at the Dawn Ranch resort. The cuisine is ultimately modern American, but the lead chefs' South American influences reveal themselves in small plates that might include a fried tapioca and cheese appetizer or large ones like Wagyu striploin with house-made chimichurri.

Longtime resident and community favorite Mags van der Veen runs this bakery and gourmet shop, for years called Big Bottom Market, where she serves soups, salads, and sandwiches with well-thought-out flavor combos. The sweet and savory biscuits are her variation on the recipe of a previous owner whose mix made Oprah's Favorite Things list.

An architecturally significant century-old bank now houses the Nimble & Finn's artisanal ice cream parlor and a small room with historical Guerneville displays. Along with cups and cones of ice cream handmade from local organic dairy products, the shop sells cakes, candy, shakes, floats, and coffee drinks.

The roadhouse decor—corrugated-metal walls, Mexican-tile floor, thick-wooden-slab tables, neon beer signs, and Edison bulbs hanging by ropes from the tall ceiling—contribute to this chipper soul food restaurant's let's-party ambience. Crispy fried catfish, buttermilk fried chicken, barbecued pork ribs, and the Yabba Dabba hunk of beef on a single bone top the entrée list; "lighter" fare includes several sandwiches and sides like deep-fried chicken skin with hot sauce.

A clean, white-walled nook ideal for a seafood-oriented lunch or light dinner, Trillium serves oysters raw or cooked (some of the latter pepped up with jalapeño or chipotle bourbon butter), a heavy-cream seafood chowder, hamachi crudo, tinned-fish platters, and a show-stopping crab roll on house-made brioche. The wines range from ones produced down the street to European and South American bottlings; the draft beer selection tilts Californian.