Cafe Villa — Restaurant in San Rafael

My boyfriend took me here, it is a little unsuspecting restaurant adjacent to the motel. However, the inside as well as the food do not give “motel vibes”. The inside is nice and bright, great for lunch. We were greeted by such a friendly waiter (unfortunately did not get his name) who sat us down immediately and introduced the menus. We ordered the little gem caesar salad and the truffle fries for our appetizers. It came out very quickly and it was all so fresh. Both dishes were absolutely delicious. Shortly after came our entrees. We got the tuscan chicken club and the pappardelle with brisket ragu. The first bite rendered us speechless! We were not excepting it to be as amazing as it was. Again, everything was so fresh and you could tell a lot of effort was put in. The brisket ragu was melting in your mouth, and the club was perfectly crispy with amazing flavors. We had such a pleasant experience and are hoping to...

My parents and I came here last week on a Wednesday night for the first time. I've driven by plenty of times, but after my mom found it online, we decided to go for a chill birthday dinner. The restaurant was pretty empty, so it had a nice and quiet ambiance. The server (brandon?) was really friendly and knowledgeable. We ended up getting the chicken Parmigiano, the pappardelle, and the local rock cod dishes as our mains, along with the truffle fries and crispy brussel sprouts. I highly recommend the brussel sprouts and chicken Parmigiano as the Alfredo was so good and light! The staff were also very kind and gave us a pot de creme dessert for my birthday and it was soooo tasty and light!

Apparently, the restaurant is much busier on other nights, so they do recommend setting up reservations. They have some good deals earlier in the evening at happy hour, so I will definitely be back...

The gf and I had gotten tired of our usual haunts and picked Cafe Villa almost at random, what a great find!!! We had amazing dishes, she had a cod sandwich and I had a squash soup followed by steak and potatoes. The squash soup is one of my favorite restaurant dishes in years, the steak was perfectly cooked and I'm told the sandwich was phenomenal as well. The staff performance beats some Michelin-star places I've been to, everyone seems to sincerely care that you are having a great experience. We never wanted for anything, and chatting with the manager and bartender when they came by our table was a pleasure. My only suggestion would be to install some noise-dampening material, the hard surfaces echo the noise so it gets a little loud. But this doesn't detract from the...