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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.
Giovanni Scala opened this boisterous roadhouse restaurant in the mid-1990s, and it's still a hangout of Napans who appreciate its Cal-Italian bistro cuisine, prepared with flair by Scott Warner, Scala's executive chef and partner. Warner augments the greatest-hits lineup—fritto misto (deep-fried calamari, onions, fennel, and rock shrimp), spinach ravioli with lemon-cream or tomato sauce, slow-braised lamb shank, and wood-fired pizzas—with daily specials based on seasonal ingredients.
Cookbook author and Iron Chef judge Domenica Catelli returned home to revive her family's American-Italian restaurant, a Geyserville fixture. Contemporary abstract paintings, reclaimed-wood furnishings, and muted gray and chocolate-brown walls signal the changing times, but you'll find good-lovin' echoes of traditional cuisine in the sturdy meat sauce that accompanies the signature lasagna paper-thin noodles and ricotta-and-herb-cheese filling.
A curved marble bar spotlit by contemporary art-glass pendants adds a touch of style to this downtown restaurant whose northern Italian cuisine pleases with understated sophistication. Mussels with house-made sausage in a spicy tomato broth, chopped salad with pancetta and pecorino, and the daily changing risotto are among the dishes regulars revere.
The brightly lit dining room's mural map of the Naples coastline signals the chef's focus on frutti di mare (seafood) at this downtown homage to southern Italian cuisine the folks behind valley-fave Bistro Don Giovanni opened in 2023. Raw oysters, cooked whole fish, skillet-sautéed mussels, and halibut soup were among the early hits, along with pizzas hot out of a wood-fired oven.
A neighborhood trattoria with cream-yellow walls, zinc-top tables, and colorful artwork and banners, Baci bustles with tourists during high season, but after things die down, locals continue dropping by for pasta dishes, gnocchi, risotto, and osso buco, saltimbocca, and other stick-to-your-ribs Italian standards. The Iranian-born chef, Shari Sarabi, applies a pan-Mediterranean sensibility to area-sourced, mostly organic ingredients, and his dishes satisfy without being overly showy.
At his softly lit, exposed-redbrick downtown trattoria, which occupies sections of the 19th-century former Groezinger Winery, chef Michael Chiarello (Food Network, etc.) and his team transform local, seasonally changing ingredients into regional Italian cuisine. Staples like ricotta gnocchi with tomato sauce and smoked/braised short rib in espresso agrodolce (sweet-and-sour sauce) served with creamy ancient-grain polenta show the chef at his most rustic yet sophisticated.
After Napa Valley fixture Tra Vigne lost its lease, many staffers regrouped a few miles north at the restaurant (the titular Kitchen) of the Brasswood complex, which also includes a bakery, shops, and a wine-tasting room. Along with dishes developed for the new location, the chefs incorporate Tra Vigne favorites such as mozzarella-stuffed arancini (rice balls) into the Mediterranean-leaning menu.
After a lengthy closure, an insider favorite for modern Italian was scheduled to reopen by summer 2023 with vintners Frank and Karen Altamura remaining as owners and Napa Valley culinary star and longtime Ciccio patron Christopher Kostow of The Restaurant at Meadowood and The Charter Oak stepping in as executive chef. The seasonal growing cycles of Meadowood's herb and produce garden dictate the menu, with fried-seafood appetizers, pasta dishes, and several wood-fired pizzas among the likely offerings.
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.
Long a locals' favorite for traditional Italian-American cuisine, this restaurant has a warmly lit, often packed dining room and a heated back patio with Petaluma River views. The chef, who trained in Italy, prepares several pasta dishes a night, along with mains that might include veal scaloppini or saltimbocca, roasted chicken stuffed with arugula and pancetta, and pork tenderloin with Gorgonzola sauce.
After three decades of serving Tuscan-inspired cuisine, this restaurant with a plant-filled heated and tented back patio has developed a homey patina enhanced by brickwork, a fountain, family photos, and other old-school touches. Likewise with the food, you won't find belabored technique or froufrou preparations, only soulful renditions of northern Italy's greatest hits—veal scallopini, mushroom ravioli, pappardelle with rich duck ragout—from two generations of family recipes.
A dining area with hardwood floors, a pressed-tin ceiling, and exposed-brick walls provides a fitting setting for the rustic cuisine at this Geyserville mainstay. Chef Dino Bugica studied with artisanal cooks in Italy before opening this restaurant specializing in wood-fired pizzas and house-cured meats, with a few salads and meaty main courses rounding out the menu.
A chef formerly with the Stark organization (Willi's Seafood and others) opened this casual restaurant—a good bet for families—whose decor of rich pastels sets a placid tone. Hits here include Parmesan arancini, fried calamari, and burrata with lemon honey starters, as well as shrimp diavolo pasta and halibut piccata entrées.
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.
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