176 Best Restaurants in Napa and Sonoma, California

Microbrews and river views make a stop at this rough-hewn, overgrown shack enjoyable, especially on sunny days while sipping punchy-named beers like Rat Bastard Pale Ale, Dirty Rat IPA, and Donkey Punch Pils on the patio out back. The pub grub's predictable—chili con carne, garlic fries, corn dogs, hot dogs, and chicken wings starters, plus pork sliders, tacos, and several burgers and sandwiches—but reasonably well executed.

Whimsical art and brightly painted walls set a jolly tone at this casual eatery whose assets include the verdant patio out back. Omelets, biscuits, and waffles are the hits at breakfast, with the grilled cheese sandwich and smoked-duck sandwich, the latter served on a sourdough hero roll with garlic aioli, two favorites for lunch.

The owner-chef at this industrial-looking high-ceilinged spot pushes the envelope with crowd-pleasers like the 15-spice spare ribs with hoisin barbecue sauce and salmon tartare tacos with crispy wonton shells. He and his team also present sushi classics with style, the intricacy enticing as much as the freshness of the mostly local ingredients.

The scent of waffle cones baking draws patrons into this family-run parlor serving artisanal ice cream made fresh daily. Butter brickle, peach custard, Oreos and cream, and salted caramel are among the alternating flavors that include sorbets and sometimes sherbets, and always vegan options.

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.

Sonoma dining—or nibbling, given the portion sizes—received a boost when Azores-born chef Manuel Azevedo opened this retro-contempo tavern dedicated to small Portuguese bites. Dividing his menu into five parts—Cheese, Garden, Sea, Land, Sweet—Azevedo, who also owns the nearby restaurant LaSalette, serves everything from hearty caldo verde stew, pork sliders, smoked duck breast, and salted codfish cakes to São Jorge cheese topped with marmalade.

A microbrewery, a wood-fired pizza stand, and a barbecue joint anchor this downtown food park with indoor and outdoor dining areas, the latter a patio with fire pits. On weekends, food trucks motor over, adding, depending on the day, Greek, Mexican, Filipino, and other cuisines to the mix.

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.

Christopher Kostow's reputation rests on his swoonworthy haute cuisine for the Meadowood resort, but he and his Charter Oak team adopt a more straightforward approach—fewer ingredients chosen for maximum effect—at this high-ceilinged, brown-brick downtown restaurant. With exceedingly fresh produce from Meadowood's nearby farm, this strategy might translate into dishes like red kuri squash with pickled peppers, almonds, and goat cheese; or pork collar with fermented pepper jam (or just go for the cheeseburger and thick hand-cut fries).

Owner-designer Jay Jeffers initiated a top-to-bottom makeover of this restaurant and its same-named hotel but retained the farm-to-table, French-inspired cuisine, the chef freshening it up a little to reflect The Madrona's flashy-elegant look. Inside a 19th-century mansion, with ornate molding and high ceilings but ultracontemporary to the max, diners feast in chic splendor on multifaceted preparations that make ample use of locally raised proteins and the on-site organic garden's fruits and vegetables.

A few blocks south of Healdsburg Plaza at the busy roundabout, Parish's chefs whip up beignets, gumbo, muffulettas, and heapin' po'boys—from fried oyster, shrimp, or catfish to roast beef, turkey, or ham and cheese—along with other New Orleans delights. Borderline decadent breakfasts served inside a white-trimmed yellow house or on its patio include bananas Foster French toast, egg po'boys, and the crawfish and andouille omelet slathered in Creole sauce.

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 versatile chef of this concrete-and-glass grazing spot anchoring the SOFA Santa Rosa Arts District satisfies her diverse devotees with American standards and playful variations on international cuisines. Separated on the menu into three main categories—ocean, garden, and pasture, each with a selection of appetizers, salads, and entrées—the dishes change often but might include trout with French lentils, hanger steak with kale gratin, Tuscan-style St. Louis ribs, and mushroom hand pie with leeks and ricotta. 

Joel Gott of nearby Gott's Roadside purchased a downtown gas station and kept the pumps humming, spiffing up the interior retro style and adding shaded outdoor seating. Start the day with quiche, a chipotle-bacon and egg biscuit, or avocado-and-egg or cinnamon-sugar toast, or drop by for lunch wraps, grain bowls, salads, focaccia, and sandwiches.

At this storefront a block north of Healdsburg Plaza, Japanese-style prints and furniture offset the mildly industrial feel of an enterprise whose offerings include tea flights, light cuisine, and a spalike tea treatment involving a foot soak and a facial mask. Ramen cold or hot and rice bowls are the highlights, the former accompanied by shoyu-marinated egg, fish cake, tofu, and other ingredients as desired.

"The Wurst is the best" is the motto at this glass-fronted fast-food joint with a menu of sausages and dogs with specific toppings like the Detroit Polish (with sauerkraut, beer mustard, and onion rings) or augmented with (choose two) caramelized onions, sweet peppers, hot peppers, or kraut. Burgers are another specialty, with the blue-cheese and smoked bacon and barbecue ones from a local beef purveyor among the top sellers patrons enjoy at communal and single tables inside and on the front patio.

The owners of a local-fave tri-tip food trolley opened this comfort-food restaurant in a 90-year-old building originally a gas station and later an inn. In addition to tri-tip, the New Orleans–inspired menu consists of small bites like white-cheddar grits and larger bites that include smoke-braised short ribs, steelhead trout, fried chicken, and a grass-fed burger with cheese and tomato jam.

Crisp, thin-crust Neapolitan-style pizzas—among them the unusual Positano, with sautéed shrimp, crescenza cheese, and fried lemons—are the specialties of this family-friendly offshoot of the famous, now departed, Tra Vigne restaurant. Hand-pulled mozzarella and a few other Tra Vigne dishes are on the menu, along with the salads, pizzas, and pastas.

Shades of brown and beige predominate in the Four Seasons resort's classy-casual indoor-outdoor "living room," which serves upmarket casual fare, and the adjacent Auro for an elaborate multicourse tasting menu. The kitchen for both restaurants, visible behind glass walls, turns out seasonally oriented cuisine overseen by Mexico City–born, Napa-raised Rogelio Garcia, previously of The French Laundry and Bravo's Top Chef cable show.

A Cali take on a Peruvian cevicheria, this downtown Santa Rosa restaurant with exposed-brick walls and a dizzying tile floor beguiles patrons with nimbly spiced ceviches, empanadas, and other starters that demand one of the two-dozen citrusy craft cocktails on offer. The mains include classics like steak and fries, bean stew, paella, a few pasta dishes, and shredded chicken in a yellow pepper sauce.

The sticky buns at Wild Flour are legendary in western Sonoma—they're often all gone by the early afternoon on weekends—as are the rye bread and sock-it-to-me scones in flavors like double chocolate, espresso, and hazelnut. The coffee at this roadside stop is good, too.

Willi's occupies a corner storefront with street-side outdoor seating and a compact dining room that curls around the full bar. The warm Maine lobster roll with garlic butter and fennel remains a hit among the small, primarily seafood-oriented plates, with the ceviches, local barbecued oysters (also Buffalo-style crispy), and bacon-wrapped scallops among its worthy rivals.

Salads, several hot sandwiches, and filling signature entrées like chicken potpie, the French dip, and spaghetti and meatballs appear on this pale-yellow and lime-green eatery's lunch and dinner menus. Sunday brunch is elaborate, and breakfast the rest of the week—specialties include hot, creamy polenta and house-made granola—is American down-home solid.

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.

Glen Ellen's finer restaurants emphasize seasonal local produce, but instead of riffs on French, Italian, or Cal-modern, the farm-to-table creations at this casual space (open kitchen, paper lanterns, wooden tables and chairs) fuse Indian and Himalayan cuisine. Start with samosas or tomato-based Himalayan pepper pot soup from Nepal—so warming on a chilly day—then proceed to curries, sizzling tandooris, or chicken, prawn, or vegetable biryanis of ethereally aromatic saffron basmati rice.