Mother's Day is Sunday, May 10, and Chester County does this particular Sunday well. The serious restaurants are mostly small, and sometimes the kind of place you have to know about, which means where to take your mother in Chester County is less about "what's open" and more about the kind of Sunday you want her to have.

The Whip Tavern, West Marlborough. The Whip is a small English pub at a country crossroads in the middle of horse country, surrounded by working farms and the Cheshire Foxhounds’ territory. Sunday is their fullest day. The food is straightforward English-pub cooking, fish and chips, shepherd's pie, a roast done well. The crowd is a mix of horse people and locals who have been Sunday regulars for years. There is no Mother's Day menu. There is just a Sunday at the Whip, which for the right kind of mother is exactly the point. The drive there from anywhere is part of the experience: narrow roads, stone walls, pastures opening up suddenly between hedgerows. The place is small, so if you want a seat. Go early.

Birchrunville Store Cafe, Birchrunville. A BYOB prix fixe in a converted general store at a four-corners hamlet so small it fails to register on most maps. The food is French country cooking by chef Francis Trzeciak, who has been running the place for over twenty years. The dining room seats around forty. People drive from Philadelphia for this. The Sunday brunch tradition is more reliable than any holiday menu, and the room itself, a 19th-century country store with the original shelving still in place, makes a meal feel like an event without trying to be one. Reservations are essential and probably already gone for Sunday. Worth keeping on the list for the next visit.

Kimberton Inn, Kimberton. The historic option, operating out of a stone tavern building from the 1700s. Brunch is a traditional full menu, quiet rooms with fireplaces, gardens behind the building, and the kitchen has been serving Mother's Day for more decades than most of the regional alternatives have existed. If your mother is the kind who has been to Chester County before, the Kimberton Inn is the version of brunch she probably remembers. If she has not, it is the version she will remember.

The Inn at Grace Winery, Glen Mills. Just over the Chester-Delaware line, technically in Delaware County but close enough to count. A working winery with a restaurant, set on grounds that feel substantially larger than they are, with outdoor seating that, on a clear May Sunday, is the most pleasant version of brunch within an hour of West Chester. The wine is theirs. The view is the property. Mother's Day fills early.

The Restaurant at Drumore Estate, Pequea. This one requires a longer drive west into Lancaster County, but it is worth naming because the Sunday tradition there has become a regional event. A historic estate, formal grounds, a chef-driven kitchen, and a setting that’s more like an English country house weekend than a restaurant brunch. If your mother is the kind for whom the drive is part of the experience, Drumore is the answer.

Two Birds Cafe, West Chester. A small scratch-kitchen breakfast-and-lunch place on the Downingtown Pike, run by a husband-and-wife team, Jess and Justin, who both grew up in the area. Seasonal menu, local mushrooms from Kennett Square, open 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day except Tuesday. No weekend reservations. Two Birds is not the destination brunch; it is the low-key one, a small room, regulars who know each other, a cinnamon bun the right size to split. For a mother who would rather have a real neighborhood meal than a Sunday production, this is the answer. Arrive at 7:30 when they open if you want a table without waiting.

Sunday at any of these places will be busier than usual, and the smaller the dining room, the more important the reservation. The Whip and Birchrunville are not built for walk-ins on Mother's Day. Kimberton, Grace, and Drumore are. The weather on Sunday is forecast to be a clear, mild May morning, which makes the outdoor options at Grace and Drumore the better choices if you can get them. The Whip's patio is pleasant as well.