Boon Fly's Breakfast — Not To Be Missed

Located in a strikingly red barn/farmhouse, with porch swings hanging from a covered porch, the Boon Fly Café serves comfort cuisine Napa Valley-style. Boon Fly is one of three restaurants on the 27-acre Carneros Inn Complex (one of the best places in Napa to stay for value and location) between Sonoma and Napa. The most easygoing of the three restaurants, it's an idealized version of a place you'd see on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. It maintains the feel of an old roadside diner while serving high-quality food.

Boon Fly is the breakfast place in Napa (and should actually be mentioned in a discussion of the country's best breakfast spots) and not just for the inn's guests — this is a local spot. You've got to get there early, say 7 a.m., when it opens because by 9 a.m. there's already a 30-minute line. Inside are high ceilings, corrugated iron and wood, bar and table seating, and an open kitchen that churns out their famed cinnamon-sugar dusted donuts.

There are several "not to be missed" dishes. The first is their toad-in-the-hole known as Poppa Joe's Eggs In a Hole: griddled sourdough bread with two fried eggs in the center accompanied by breakfast potatoes and either ham, sausage, or bacon. The second is the breakfast flatbread: two fried eggs, bacon, caramelized onions, and mozzarella. They also do "Hilltop" eggs Benedict — three impressive ways: pesto and smoked salmon, prosciutto and Meyer lemon hollandaise, and filet mignon with béarnaise.

Sure, they do dinner, but after such a terrific morning meal it kind of seems beside the point.