5 Best Restaurants in Yountville, Napa and Sonoma

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 fuel is more than petrol at this gas station–convenience store whose redbrick exterior recalls the heyday of Route 66 travel. The shop inside sells hot dogs, fresh scones from nearby R+D Kitchen, gourmet chocolates, and (in summer) ice cream—gas up, grab some picnic items, and be ever-so-merrily on your way.

A casual order-at-the-counter restaurant (affiliated with Priest Ranch Winery’s tasting room next door) serves filling comfort fare for all-day breakfast and lunch. The novel variations on morning cuisine include gnocchi replacing hash browns in an egg dish flavor-balanced with pickled onions, wild mushrooms, and chili aioli; the hit for lunch is a brisket-and-chuck smashburger on a Bouchon Bakery bun.

With Edith Piaf as his background track, Dennis McInnich spent several months toiling to perfect the macaron, the favorite cookie of his wife, Aubrey. Success selling the resulting confections at farmers' markets and elsewhere spurred the couple to open this shop and café serving their brightly colored treats, along with sweet and savory crepes and a few brunch and lunch items.

Cindy Pawlcyn’s restaurant fills day and night with fans of her hearty cuisine, equal parts updated renditions of traditional American dishes—what Pawlcyn dubs "deluxe truck stop classics"—and fanciful contemporary fare. Barbecued baby back pork ribs and a lemon-lime tart piled high with brown-sugar meringue fall squarely in the first category, and sweet corn tamales with tomatillo-avocado salsa represent the latter.