The 50 Best Things to Eat in Sonoma County

The iconic dishes that define this area and the best places to order them.


There’s no road map to what makes a dish iconic. Instead, it’s a roughly sketched record of personal experiences, memorable moments, and collective consent. We worked as a team to hash out these winners, striving to represent the people, the land, the ingredients, and the point of view of our foodie paradise. At times, a truly outstanding pick came from little more than a gut feeling. Take that humble fried chicken sandwich, for example. Folks make them all over, but Belfare Sonoma’s super-snappy, wolf-it-down-fast version, enjoyed with a glass of rosé along the side of the highway outside the Three Fat Guys tasting room— that’s true Sonoma style.

By Heather Irwin, Michele Anna Jordan, Abigail Peterson, Diane Peterson, Dana Rebmann, and Carey Sweet