About the Restaurant Listings

There are lots of restaurants in Napa and Sonoma. They range from very cheap to very expensive, excellent to mediocre. It's hard to pick a good restaurant in a place that you don't know and mistakes can be costly and frustrating. To help you make better choices, I don't list the web site of every restaurant in the region.  Every restaurant that is in the links has to pass at least one of these tests:

1. I ate there personally and found it to be a good value
2. One of the San Francisco Chronicle's top 100 restaurants
3. Rated 3 stars or higher by San Francisco magazine
4. A favorite in the San Francisco magazine reader's poll.
5. Recommended by the local newspaper restaurant reviewer
6. Recommended at Gourmet Magazine and Bon Appetit's epicurious web site.

If all else fails and you're in an area where you don't know which restaurant to choose, these are a few of my personal guidelines:

1. Favorable magazine or newspaper reviews posted in the window are a good sign, but they should be recent.
2. Look for the crowds. Bad restaurants don't get much business.
3. If the dining room looks dirty, the kitchen is worse. Leave at once.

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