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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.
Skilled baristas churn out a dizzying array of coffee drinks—drip, cold brew, nitro cold brew, all the fave espresso options—in a clean downtown space with white walls and teal wainscoting. Pastries, tartines, avocado toast, quiche, and egg-inflected sandwiches (some vegan or gluten-free) are the breakfast hits, with banh mi and the like added for lunch.
Calistoga's flashy 19th-century entrepreneur Sam Brannan built the depot in 1868 to receive spa patrons, but it was looking careworn until his 21st-century equivalent, Wine Country vintner-showman Jean-Charles Boisset, restored the wood-frame building and opened a combination gourmet grocery, café, wine shop, distillery, and wine and beer garden. As at Boisset's historic Oakville Grocery, salads, artisanal sandwiches, and wood-fired pizzas headline.
A bright-yellow slice of France in downtown Glen Ellen, this combination pâtisserie, boulangerie, and café takes its name from its husband-and-wife owners, Pascal and Pascale Merle. Pascal whips up croissants, breads, turnovers, and sweet treats like Napoleons, galettes, and eclairs, along with quiches, potpies, and other savory fare; Pascale creates a cordial environment for customers to enjoy them.
Seasonal pies including blood-orange custard with graham-cracker crust are the specialty of this white-walled, brightly lit pie palace with a few tables and barstool window seating. The bakers use heritage grains like buckwheat and farro in the crusts, filling them with local fruits and other ingredients, and, if desired, topping the ensemble with ice cream in flavors from Swiss chocolate and vanilla bean to Thai tea, salted caramel, and almond cardamom.
Delicate pastries and quiches, croques monsieur, and other bistro bites have made locals as passionate about this Highway 116 café as its executive and pastry chefs, who previously worked at establishments in Paris, San Francisco, and elsewhere, are about their cuisine and hospitality. Pastel-green walls, a wood-burning stove, and tables from reclaimed wood lend the small interior space a French-country feel; on sunny days the best seating is on the wooden deck outside.
Pink on the outside, with tutti-frutti walls on the inside and colorful chairs painted by a local artist, Sebastopol’s hands-down favorite for all-natural ice cream and sorbet often appears in feature stories listing the nation's best shops. Mimi's Mud (espresso ice cream, cookies, chocolate chips, and homemade fudge) and strawberry made from local fruit are among the popular ice creams, with lemon, raspberry, and mango among the top palate-cleansing sorbets.
Chef Efrain Balmes attracted such throngs for his "real Mexican food" truck specializing in his native Oaxacan cuisine that he finally went full brick-and-mortar, sharing space with (and pretty much taking over) an existing coffee roastery. The tacos—fish, shrimp, potato, mushroom, pork, and an outstanding lamb one—and the signature mole Oaxaqueño sauce are the must-tries here, the latter with either an enchilada or the "wet supreme burrito."
A longtime Bay Area caterer opened this retail shop serving soups, salads, sandwiches, and a few entrées to go or eat indoors or on the front patio. Supplementing staples like turkey, tri-tip, and roasted portobello sandwiches—the Caesar salad is a town favorite—are surprise items, says the owner, "we just feel like cooking, like pot roast when it rains or Thai wraps on sunny days."
Boston-style slush in flavors from root beer to raspberry that change with the season are the specialty of this shack in southern Healdsburg across from the beach. The owner's nostalgia for New England summers past extends to soft-serve ice cream in ever-changing flavors.
Foodies love this grocery for its breakfast biscuits, clever sandwiches, and savory salads to go or eat here. Everything from butter and jam and mascarpone and honey to barbecue pulled pork with pickles and slaw accompanies the biscuits, whose mix made Oprah's Favorite Things list, and the sandwiches include the Colonel Armstrong (curried chicken salad with currants and cashews on brioche).
There's almost always a line outside the bakery next door to Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bistro. The textbook golden-brown croissants star, and the brownies, macarons, kouign-amanns, artisanal breads, and savory sandwiches are equally alluring.
Longtime upvalley restaurateurs run this down-home diner whose efficient chefs churn out comfort food with a touch more flair than the zingy Cal-hippie decor might lead you to expect. Huevos rancheros and other egg dishes top the breakfast (until 2:30 closing) menu along with pancakes, waffles, French toast, and vegetarian and corned-beef hash; burgers (beef, fish, or black bean), tuna melts, sandwiches, wraps, and several salads headline at lunch, with sides that include crispy-golden onion rings.
Although it ventures out for special events, this walk-up food truck serving Italian-inflected fast food has a steady gig outside the Clif Family Tasting Room. From 11:30 to 4 (until 6 on Wednesday), order salads, panini, or a falafel, mushroom, pork, or vegetarian bruschetta to go or to enjoy in the tasting room or on its back patio.
Two chefs who've starred at fine-dining restaurants shifted gears to open this humble shop, expanded with seating in 2023, where everything's made from scratch, either by them or their vendors. The ingredients are all of the highest quality, which explains the long lines at breakfast for the Ham & Jam (buttermilk biscuits with molasses-brined ham and seasonal jam) and at lunchtime for the Cuban, mortadella, and a few others.
Breakfast, served all day at this bright-yellow French-style bakery and café, includes the signature omelet (sun-dried tomatoes, bacon, spinach, and Brie) and French toast made from thick slabs of cinnamon-walnut bread. French onion soup and cranberry-turkey, chicken with Jarlsberg, and (on the cinnamon-walnut bread) Monte Cristo sandwiches are among the lunch favorites.
The goodness at Karen Waikiki's roadside restaurant, which has more tables outside than in, starts with high-quality ingredients and authentic techniques. The stars include tamales (chicken mole and Niman Ranch pork), tacos filled with beer-battered fish or crispy beef, ahi tostadas poke style, and enchiladas and burritos.
A 1950s-style outdoor hamburger stand goes upscale at this spot whose customers brave long lines to order breakfast sandwiches, juicy burgers, root-beer floats, and garlic fries. Choices not available a half century ago include ahi-tuna and Impossible burgers and kale and Vietnamese chicken salads.
Sebastopol’s former Fosters Freeze location, now a 21st-century fast-food palace, won design awards for its rusted-steel frame and translucent panel-like windows. The menu, a paean to coastal California cuisine, includes oysters raw and grilled, fish tacos, ceviche, tostadas, three burgers (beef, vegetarian, and fish), and, honoring the location's previous incarnation, chocolate and vanilla soft-serve ice cream.
The mile-long list of morning fare at Occidental's neo-hippie go-to breakfast and weekend brunch spot includes order-at-the-counter huevos rancheros, omelets, eggs Benedict, waffles, pancakes, French toast, and "healthy alternatives" such as oatmeal, house-made granola, and quinoa and brown rice bowls with kale and eggs. Soups, salads, burgers, and monstrous sandwiches are on the menu for lunch at this laid-back space with seating inside a 19th-century gingerbread Victorian and outside on its wooden front porch and covered back patio.
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 superb 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.
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