The serious coffee option in Healdsburg, and comfortably the best in town. Flying Goat roasts its own beans and has been supplying Sonoma County with well-sourced, carefully roasted coffee since the late 1990s — before third-wave coffee became a defined thing in California.
The espresso is reliably good; the pour-overs are worth the wait when the café is busy. Pastries rotate and lean toward simple — croissants, scones, morning buns — rather than elaborate. The space is compact but tables spill onto Center Street, which is the right place to be on a Saturday morning when the farmers market is setting up on the plaza a block away.
A second Flying Goat location operates in Santa Rosa for those passing through on the way to or from San Francisco.