I like to win. So does my husband. But it’s hard for us to feel like we’re winning when the kids leave it ‘til the weekend to get up before the sun. We love our kids, but the pitter-patter of little feet and all that garbage defiles the sanctity of a hard-earned Saturday morning. Fortunately, breakfasting up gives us back a little taste of victory.

Breakfasting up is like marrying up or moving up, but with less effort or commitment. It happens when you roll your family into a fancy breakfast place intended for the vacationing elite, and get your pick of tables. Even with ragged blankies in tow, first-class treatment is yours for the taking because the intended clientele is still blissfully tucked under layers of goose down. The sleepers are winning, but so are we. Seasoned waitstaff disappointedly size us up: coffee-not-bloody marys, kid’s orange juice-not-mimosas, extra napkins-not-added duck egg. And then, with dutiful resolve and perfect posture, they graciously ask us if we’ll be needing a high chair. It is a testament to any establishment’s fine service policy. When guilt creeps in, I tell myself that a kid table is better than no table when you work for tips at 7 a.m.

My husband and I try to make drowsy conversation over the rattle of our son’s Lighting McQueen vrooming around silverware, and my daughter’s constant requests for more crayon colors or new paper. Meanwhile, the more typical patrons tend to arrive around our second or third coffee refill. It’s worth raising baggy eyes over a coffee cup to watch all the pretty guests being elegantly guided to their farmhouse-chic breakfast tables.

The resort-types and wine connoisseurs who glide in around eight never look like anyone I know. But it’s a look I’ve grown familiar with: nice shoes only gently worn, svelt bodies in simple but expensive athleisure wear, perfectly highlighted hair. Not a crooked tooth in the bunch. Always with friends or a partner, never too interested in the people around them, because they’re not here for long. Beautiful people, inextricably fixed on living a moment of the good life. There’s a lot of that around here. Do they work Monday through Friday? Do they challenge the system? Have they ever had to budget in order to buy coffee? People on vacation always look like they’ve been dealt a different deck of cards than the rest of us.

One of my favorite things about the resort cafe in which we most recently “upped” is that it sprinkles haute cuisine with tractor decor. Its breakfast menu features fare such as poached farm fresh eggs wrapped in honey-cured ham, topped with lemon-leek cream. They also make their own tiny little sugar-coated donuts, which you can wash down with a bloody mary that’s been garnished with applewood smoked bacon. It is a gastronomic delight. And yet, the decor is boldly farm-themed. The whitewashed walls are sparsely adorned with old photographs of guys on horses and blurry images of people picking grapes. “You’re eating some fancy shit,” it seems to say, “but don’t worry, we’ll still tell people how down to earth you are.”

Whatever message they’re trying to convey, it works. There’s usually a line wrapping around the porch by the time we leave. Lovely people bunch together in adirondack circles, chuckling at each other’s jokes and taking selfies while they wait. They look like they do this all the time; it’s probably the least they’ll spend on a meal all day. My party of four saves these special breakfasts for mornings when early to rise seems exceptionally awful; it’s the most we’ll spend on a meal all week. They are the haute cuisine, we are the tractor. Fortunately for us, this town needs both.

In a place like Napa, you’d be hard-pressed to find a bad meal. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner are all fair game for stemware and linens. Our restaurants rightly attract those for whom a big price tag seems no big deal. It’s easy to see those guests to our valley and think they must be winning at a game we weren’t invited to play. However, when my kids are searching for their hot chocolate under whip cream that towers as high as their forehead, and driving their toy cars over tables that people fly from across the country to sit at, I feel like maybe I’m on to some secret password for the game. After all, we get to breakfast like this without reserving a hotel or securing a driver. And when you’re starting the day before civilized humans should be up on a Saturday morning, guess what? You don’t have to wait in line! On the mornings where we breakfast up, my family takes our poached eggs with a side of triumph.