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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.
Relieve restaurant sticker shock (somewhat) and long waits by ordering bowls, salads, sandwiches, and desserts online for pickup at CIA at Copia's main-entrance takeout window. Some items' herbs, fruits, and vegetables are grown steps away at the culinary institute's garden.
Not to be confused with chef Masaharu Morimoto's flagship sushi palace a few doors south, his pan-Asian restaurant serves dim sum, spicy Szechuan mapo tofu, orange chicken, and a slew of other Chinese-inspired apps, soups, salads, and entrées in a light-filled space with Napa River views. This culinary concept, which worked well for the chef in Orlando and Waikiki, proved a Wine Country hit, too.
Iron Chef star Masaharu Morimoto is the big name behind this downtown Napa restaurant where everything is delightfully over the top, including the desserts. Organic materials such as twisting grapevines above the bar and rough-hewn wooden tables seem simultaneously earthy and modern, creating a fitting setting for the gorgeously plated Japanese fare, from straightforward sashimi to more elaborate seafood, chicken, pork, and beef entrées.
Bookended by culinary gardens and constructed of corrugated-metal former shipping containers, redwoods felled by wildfires, and other ingeniously recycled materials, this 3½-acre open-air hangout has a block-party feel, especially at weekend brunch or when area musicians perform. The gardens inspire the seasonal comfort-food menu—summer tomatoes give way to fall beets in the burrata salad, for instance—with staples like fish tacos, grilled chicken wings, tri-tip, and plant-based variations appearing year-round.
Often spotted at local farmers' markets and his restaurant's gardens, Oenotri's ebullient chef-owner and Napa native Tyler Rodde is ever on the lookout for fresh produce to incorporate into his rustic southern Italian cuisine. His restaurant, a brick-walled contemporary space with tall windows and wooden tables, is a lively spot to sample house-made salumi and pastas, thin-crust pizzas, and entrées that might include seared fresh fish or grilled rib eye.
You can build a meal at Tarla by combining traditional Mediterranean mezes (small plates)—stuffed grape leaves with fresh tzatziki, perhaps, and spanakopita—with contemporary creations such as burrata stone-fruit salad. Entrées include updates of moussaka and other Turkish and Greek standards, along with modern items like beef short ribs braised with a pomegranate-wine sauce.
This small spot that melds rural charm with industrial chic serves updated American classics such as fried chicken (free-range in this case), burgers (with Kobe beef), and beer-battered fish tacos (with lemon crème fraîche). The flatbreads, including a smoked salmon one made with fromage blanc, Parmesan, lemon crème fraîche, and capers, are worth a try.
Tourists and loyalists from a previous location mingle at this lively spot whose perpetually in-motion chefs fry, barbecue, and smoke their way through a Southern-tinged menu that also includes pho, Italian chicken soup, and vinegar chicken. The baby back ribs, fried-chicken sandwich, cheddar-cheese burger, wedge salad, deviled eggs, and fried pickles score high with patrons, who somehow make room for the Q lime pie, brown-butter chocolate brownie, and other desserts.
The strip-mall location of this restaurant couldn't be more modest, but the chef is a charmer and his Nepalese, Tibetan, and Indian dishes are flavor revelations. Pakoras (fritters), samosas, dal soup, and momos (steamed dumplings) all make excellent starters, with meat and vegetable curries, and sizzling tandoori platters among the mains.
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