The Bar at the Dry Creek General Store, Healdsburg

The wine country is crawling with beautiful dives. We’ve got a dusty back-road bar for every little rural subregion. They serve as community churches of sorts, where locals can come and buy each other a cold one and swap dirt on what’s really happening around here. I, of course, am partial to mine. It’s called The Bar at the Dry Creek General Store, and it’s a beacon of the old way of life in the agricultural Dry Creek Valley outside Healdsburg.

The place is nearly 150 years old at this point. Its walls and ceilings are crawling with old ag paraphernalia—rusty tools, farm signs, hard hats, the works—and enough taxidermy to run off the faint of heart. Some of the barstools are saddles. There’s a “suggestion box” with a hole in the bottom that hangs over the trash can; it was a gift to the bar from a regular named Dry Creek Pat, who lives down the way and wears only camo.

Folks from all walks of rural life commune here: wine bosses, vineyard workers, tractor kings, bikers, fishers, matriarchs, pretty little things, etc. You can take your drink out on the front porch, where the vineyard vista—and the tourist watching—is unmatched.

Rachel, head bartender, runs a tight ship: Act the part of “drunken asshole,” and she’ll cut you right off. But if you just need some food in you, she’ll serve you up a jumbo hot dog with all the fixings—or better yet, a giant chunk of cheese with a pile of saltines on the side. Welcome to the dream life of a Dry Creek barfly.

Spread Kitchen, Sonoma

Most of us from the North Bay Area need the same basic things in order to survive: food, water, wine…you know, the bare essentials of life. But in order to turn that “survive” into more of a “thrive,” diners require just one more surprisingly scarce commodity—a place to manspread those legs and be fed flatbread whilst fighting off a looming sense of impending existential dread. Luckily, Sonoma’s own Spread Kitchen has this particular niche covered.

In Napa and Sonoma counties, the food and drink scene is famously and obscenely good. So good, in fact, that one could easily find one of the best dining experiences of one’s life entirely by accident just by getting blindingly drunk on a wine tasting tour, throwing a dart at a map of the county and eating wherever it lands.

But there comes a time in every foodie’s life, especially those spoilt from living in a climate as culinarily rich as that of the North Bay, where we start to crave something more substantial. And in between bites of gold-filigreed caviar blinis and sips of perfectly paired wine that’s rumored to be as old as the concept of America itself, one can really begin to question whether or not the hole in one’s soul can be filled—at least not without a whole lot more flatbread and room to manspread.

At Spread Kitchen, diners can sit outside with arms and knees akimbo, taking up as much space as possible while enjoying plate after plate, dip after dip and sip after sip.

Spread Kitchen is located at 18375 Highway 12 in Sonoma. To learn more about this authentic yet creative take on Lebanese cuisine, visit the website at spreadkitchensonoma.com, send an email to in**@************ng.com or call 707.721.1256.

Rocker Oysterfeller’s, Valley Ford

If one is looking to get all country and cute with a country cutie, look no further than Rocker Oysterfeller’s restaurant and bar along Highway 1 in Valley Ford, out near the Sonoma coast. This place manages to bottle up what’s so charming about that whole part of the county—that irresistible mix of dairy and beach, equal parts blue-collar classy and down-home hippie.

Enter the creaky wooden roadhouse where Rocker Oysterfeller’s lives and serves, and soon one will spot the star of the show: a little dreamboat of a bar, straight out of a nautical fairytale. It’s just the spot to share hopes and demons with a date while swimming in oysters and bloodys and sparkling things and all else delightful and delicious.

The menu is a wonderland of Southern-style comfort foods; if nothing else, you’d be wise to try the braised pork shoulder. Really, though, you’d be wise to try everything. There are other nice places to sit besides the bar, too—even a fruit orchard and garden, when it’s warm out. There’s also a famous local creamery serving ice cream across the street, if you want to go be cute some more after. Or you could head to the ocean. But why not just stay and slurp oysters at the bar all day? If that doesn’t seal the deal, you weren’t meant to be. — Simone Wilson