The Charter Oak Restaurant
1 / 10

The Charter Oak Restaurant

4.6
·491k reviews·,

Seasonal, family-style Californian fare from a renowned chef, emphasizing open-fire cooking and fresh ingredients from their own farm.

Highlights

Highlights

Must-see attractions

Social content

Social

From TikTok & Reddit

Best Time

Wed/Fri 18-21h

Blue hour photography, calmer galleries

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The Charter Oak Restaurant

The Charter Oak Restaurant

Highlights

Highlights

Must-see attractions

Seasonal, family-style Californian fare from a renowned chef, emphasizing open-fire cooking and fresh ingredients from their own farm.

4.6
(491k reviews)

"Praised as potentially the best cheeseburger in Napa Valley, this is a must-stop in wine country."

TIP

Pace Yourself

Consider pacing through courses to avoid feeling overly full early on, especially with family-style dining.

Outdoor Seating Options

Opt for outdoor seating with heaters or try yurt dining for a fixed menu experience in colder months.

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Quick Facts

Closed·Opens Sunday 11:30AM

Cuisine

Californian

Price

$$$

Phone

(707) 302-6996

Address

1050 Charter Oak Ave, St Helena, CA 94574, USA

Insta-Factor

High

Highlights

Discover the most iconic attractions and experiences

The Legendary Cheeseburger

The Legendary Cheeseburger

Praised as potentially the best in Napa Valley, this double patty burger is a must-try, served with thick-cut fries.

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Family-Style Californian Fare

Family-Style Californian Fare

Experience seasonal ingredients and regional wines in a celebratory, yet casual, family-style setting.

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Open-Fire Hearth Cooking

Open-Fire Hearth Cooking

Dishes are prepared with an emphasis on elemental cooking, utilizing a massive hearth for bold flavors.

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Insider Tips

from TikTok, Instagram & Reddit

Pace Yourself

Consider pacing through courses to avoid feeling overly full early on, especially with family-style dining.

Outdoor Seating Options

Opt for outdoor seating with heaters or try yurt dining for a fixed menu experience in colder months.

Generous Corkage Policy

Enjoy one complimentary bottle of wine; subsequent bottles may incur a fee, which is generous compared to others.

Don't Skip the Bread

The bread is a highly recommended item, often a perfect start or accompaniment to your meal.

Tips

from all over the internet

Pace Yourself

Consider pacing through courses to avoid feeling overly full early on, especially with family-style dining.

Outdoor Seating Options

Opt for outdoor seating with heaters or try yurt dining for a fixed menu experience in colder months.

Generous Corkage Policy

Enjoy one complimentary bottle of wine; subsequent bottles may incur a fee, which is generous compared to others.

Don't Skip the Bread

The bread is a highly recommended item, often a perfect start or accompaniment to your meal.

What Travellers Say

4.6
(491k reviews)

Reviews Summary

The Charter Oak offers a distinctive family-style Californian dining experience, with many praising its legendary cheeseburger and fresh, elemental cooking. While some diners rave about the atmosphere and specific dishes like the trout and bread, others have found issues with seasoning, overdressing, and inconsistent service. It's a place that garners strong opinions, with many finding it a worthwhile stop in Wine Country.

"Fantastic salad. We ordered the Swiss chard salad with anchovy sauce- the umami flavor was terrific. Also ordered steak tartare which was good, though not a spotlight, it came with bread which made the meal very filling even though only 2 items."

Rebecca W

"My fourth time in this MARVELOUS place!

The food, service and atmosphere are exceptional place. We started off with raw vegetables crudite that has Ice plants! It’s simple yet soo good. Then we had the potato salad and the steak for two. We ended dinner with soft serve and cheesecake. They gave us cookies to round off the meal."

Marshall Syahrial

"The steak was rare, I ordered medium rare
both the chicken and the fish were too salty
I loved the taste of the steak but not worth it
Wouldn’t come here again

The corn, the dessert and the grilled cabbage were amazing.

Note: this is coming from a guy that grills every other weekend. I don’t recommend this restaurant"

Mark Mohades

What People Like

Legendary cheeseburger and fries
Fresh, seasonal ingredients
Family-style dining experience

What People Dislike

Inconsistent seasoning (too salty)
Overdressed salads/bowls
Inattentive service

Frequently Asked Questions

The Charter Oak is renowned for its family-style Californian cuisine, open-fire cooking, and its legendary cheeseburger.

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Yes, the restaurant features a garden patio and yurt dining options, which are especially recommended during warmer months.

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You can bring one bottle of wine without a corkage fee. Subsequent bottles may incur a charge.

Yes, the menu includes options like seasonal raw vegetables from their farm and grilled koji eggplant.

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The dress code is casual yet polished. While it's a fine dining establishment, many enjoy the 'celebratory and casual dining experience'.

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Reservations are recommended, especially for popular dining times or specific seating areas like the patio.

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St. HelenaWhat if the acclaimed chef of a three-Michelin-starred restaurant opened a casual spot centered around open-fire cooking, with a similar focus on excellent ingredients, an indoor-outdoor space, and one of the better cheeseburgers and brunches in Napa County?. Not only does this place exist – run by chef Christopher Kostow of The Restaurant at Meadowood– but there’s all of that, plus cocktails and wine, and a weeknight happy hour where you could eat chef-blessed chicken wings with a margarita or a beer and a shot. There are plenty of enticing options for vegetarians too, including raw veggies from the restaurant's own farm served with fermented soy dip to grilled koji eggplant.Ready to go?

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Chef Christopher Kostow’s casual, family-style restaurant The Charter Oak in St. Helena has limited walk-in availability for lunch, brunch, or dinner in their courtyard, where you can enjoy a seasonal, California-style cuisine along with cocktails and a large wine list that highlights California wines. Nearby Press is an excellent steakhouse that features the largest collection of Napa Valley wines in the world as well as a brand new beer garden, where you can enjoy finger foods (think: wagyu hot dogs and oysters on the half shell) and craft brews on the weekends.

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Christopher Kostow's reputation rests on his swoonworthy haute cuisine for the Meadowood resort, but he and his Charter Oak team adopt a more straightforward approach—fewer ingredients chosen for maximum effect—at this high-ceilinged, brown-brick downtown restaurant. With exceedingly fresh produce from Meadowood's nearby farm, this strategy might translate into dishes like red kuri squash with pickled peppers, almonds, and goat cheese; or pork collar with fermented pepper jam (or just go for the cheeseburger and thick hand-cut fries).

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Illustrious and oft-awarded chef Christopher Kostow helmed the kitchen at three-Michelin-star restaurant Meadowood until it burned to the ground in 2020. The good news is you can still sample some of his fare at The Charter Oak in St. Helena. Jay Jeffers, longtime St. Helena resident and co-owner and designer of The Madrona in Healdsburg, recommends the “broccoli salad, the wings that change monthly, and the best burger ever.” Another option?.

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The Charter Oak is the more casual spot from the people behind The Restaurant at Meadowood, a legendary fine dining option that closed after the 2020 Glass Fire and is yet to reopen. Luckily, The Charter Oak lives up to that pedigree and has become one of our favorite places in the valley. There’s a wonderful garden patio that’s great for a meal or to lounge on bonfire seating while you wait.

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The Charter Oak Restaurant in Saint Helena to Move in to the Tra Vigne Location – The Restaurant at Meadowood team, led by their 3 Michelin-starred Chef Christopher Kostow and Director Daniel Dorn, plans to offer a “celebratory and casual dining experience.” Though the restaurants, The Charter Oak and The Restaurant and Meadowood, will be 2 separate entities they will be twined together by the team including Nathaniel – Meadowood’s front of the house director and Katianna Hong, Chef de cuisine along with a host of artisans. The Kitchen will ditch heavy sauces and techniques like sous vide and complicated garnishes in flavor of steam and fire. While dining, guests will also pour their own wine and choose bourbons and dessert from carts rolled through the dining room.

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Elemental is the word to describe the hearth-centered cooking of The Charter Oak, helmed by chef Christopher Kostow, who is a James Beard Award 2018 semi-finalist for his Michelin-starred The Restaurant at Meadowood. His newest venture, also nominated for Best New Restaurant, focuses on showcasing “food, surfaces, [and] materials, in such a way that their essence is revealed.” The dishes reflect products in an elegant and unforced manner, with an emphasis of produce from The Charter Oak’s 2.5 acre culinary garden. Aesthetically, their dishes offer up a modern take in a traditionally rustic-centered area, pleasing both to the eye as well as the palate.

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Casual and stylish, The Charter Oak is all about the fresh produce that comes from its farm, its massive hearth that plays a starring role in almost every family-style dish, and the legendary double cheeseburger, which is probably the best one you’ll find in all of Napa Valley. Begin or end your meal with a cocktail in the straight-out-of-a-fairytale courtyard, complete with towering oak trees and twinkling lights, but dine inside for the main affair so that you can enjoy the ambiance of the aforementioned open-flame hearth and the heavenly smells coming out of it. And whatever you do, order the bread.

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Casual yet polished (interiors display warm wood, exposed brick, and tan leather), Chef Christopher Kostow’s newish downtown restaurant focuses on “elemental” and “simplicity” when it comes to the menu. Much of the food, served family style, comes from a huge open-flame grill. Lunch and dinner aside, we like to sneak down to their chic but approachable bar to dig into their cocktail menu.The Charter Oak celebrates classically focused cocktails ranging from bottled cocktails and large format “for the table” drinks, to reserve cocktails crafted with rare spirits.

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Locals were devastated when St. Helena’s Tra Vigne closed in 2015, but news of its replacement from famed chef Christopher Kostow helped to soften the blow. Without skipping a beat, Charter Oak, which has a knack for making vegetables the main event, took over Tra Vigne’s legacy as a hot spot for wine industry folk to gather and dine. It won the community over with one of Napa Valley’s best burgers ($26) — featuring a double patty, cheddar cheese and jalapeño relish — and the creamy fermented soy dip that accompanies its crudités ($25).

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From Christopher Kostow and Nathaniel Dorn, who earned three Michelin stars for the Restaurant at Meadowood, The Charter Oak has a warm brick-and-wood interior, a substantial patio, and a casual family-style menu that elevates the simple American food: Most of the dishes feature a minimal number of ingredients, like hearth roasted figs with local honey for starters, coal roasted cabbage, and cauliflower with a mushroom au jus. It's hugely popular, so be sure to snag reservations ahead of time.

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You will work up an appetite… perfect to heard to brunch that locals and visitors don’t want to miss at The Charter Oak. The Charter Oak is centered on a celebratory, family-style dining experience, with simple, approachable, and seasonal food – beautiful vegetables from our farm, local wines and unparalleled cocktails. Our menu reflects the products of the Napa Valley through an elemental cooking style, with a hearth at its center, and by highlighting one or two ingredients at a time.

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When you want a unique dining experience in Napa Valley, there is no better choice than The Charter Oak in St. Helena. Voted the Most Intriguing Dining Venue by Napa Valley Life Magazine’s 2022 Best of Napa Valley Reader’s Choice Awards, The Charter Oak recently transformed its outdoor dining area into a yurt village. Boasting unique botanical themes from The Charter Oak’s nearby farm, the private yurts offer a cozy, heated dining experience.

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St. Helena’s newest restaurant, The Charter Oak, is a casual dining restaurant from Chef Christopher Kostow of The Restaurant at Meadowood. The warm and inviting restaurant focuses on locally inspired ingredients in a family-style menu. The food is straight-forward and full of flavor and it is no wonder why GQ Magazine named it one of America’s “Best New Restaurants” and Food & Wine named Chef Katianna Hong as one of the “Best New Chefs.

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Or head back to the inn first for some R & R before dinner, and then check out the downstairs bar in the Goose & Gander before heading over to The Charter Oak for dinner. The Charter Oak’s buzzy space gets the right balance of being a large space busy with people but remaining warm, welcoming, and personal. The family-style shared plates of locally sourced food is paired with an energetic wine list and fantastic service.

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