Mesmerized in Mendocino

SO PERFECT, IT SHOULD BE OUTLAWED!

Imagine the perfect afternoon. Resting in a comfy chair on top of a verdant cliff overlooking the grand Pacific Ocean. A gentle breeze caresses your forehead as you clutch a glass of fine twelve-year-old Balvenie, wondering what it is you’ve done to deserve all of this. Below, an unspoiled stretch of Northern Californian coast frames a series of sharp rocks, so flawlessly aligned as if created by an AI generator. In front, just above the coastline, the view ahead is cut short by a curtain of rolling fog. Just above it, the soft afternoon sun provides precisely the right amount of warmth, making you cuddle like a cold lizard on a hot rock. Behind your back, surrounded by a grove of Californian old growth, a small and exclusive wooden inn, eight rooms in total, overlooks the estate, like a relaxed, time-worn shepherd overseeing his flock.

The setting was so perfect, in fact, I nearly forgot to mention it came complete with a two-star Michelin restaurant – vying for a third.

A small stop on a long road trip

That day began some 250km back south in San Francisco. My wife,  two out of our three kids, and I were in the middle of our San Diego to Vancouver road trip. A 4,000km drive, whose full story I’ll tell one day in a separate post (bottom line: you should!).

It was a grey and foggy “June Gloom” morning. This, I learned from the locals, is an annual West Coast rite. During late May and June, the cold California Pacific current meets the hot interior to create a blanket of dense fog that hugs the coast but lingers no more than 1-2km inland. It sometimes fades after 12pm. Sometimes, it doesn’t fade at all. And in our case, it was mid July, it hangs on way past the calendar. I protested to the gods of the weather, but they declined to hear me. We plodded on.

The Pacific Coastal Highway, also known as “Route 1,” is renowned worldwide for its rugged terrain, diverse marine life, and breathtaking beauty. The southern stretch between Santa Barbara and San Francisco is well trodden. I wrote about it a few years ago in this post. Not many continue north beyond San Francisco to the Oregon border. Too bad. Unlike the densely populated south, the northern half of the state is not only stunning, but it is also almost entirely empty. Save for a few small fishing communities, well-spaced from one another, the upper coast is full of wildlife, 100m-tall Redwoods, and picturesque coastlines.

Doing San Francisco to Oregon in a single day is almost impossible, given the sheer distance, and plainly wrong, given the many attractions en route. Planning the road trip, we marked the small town of Mendocino, about halfway to Oregon, for our nightly stop, and picked up the small Harbor House Inn. The rooms were not cheap, nothing in California is, but the view, size, and decor won our hearts. We pressed the “BOOK” button. The following day, we received, together with the confirmation email, an invitation to book a dinner table at their on-premise restaurant. We did.

June Gloom

Back to our foggy day in San Francisco. We drive under the partly fogged-up Golden Gate Bridge to take some “must-have” photos, and then continue to cross it into Marine County. The fog continues to escort us as we plod our way northwards. Two hours later, feeling a bit hungry (or was it frustration?), we stopped next to a tiny port where a small, nice restaurant served fresh crab rolls. We relish the taste and the warm rays of sunshine that began to break through the fog.

Encouraged, we continue our slow drive through the endless twists and turns of the Pacific Coast Highway. Speaking of highway, with only two narrow lanes serving both directions, it can hardly count as a “highway” at all. Alas, our luck runs out about 10 miles north of our rest stop. Dense fog smashes against the rugged coast, obstructing everything with a thick cover of mist. We tread slowly up the coast, not seeing much in the way of sun or scenery. Gone, too, is our cell reception. The northern coast is so remote we would not see much of it until we reach our final destination.

With no internet connection for the kids at the back and no real way of navigating our way (thank god there aren’t many alternative routes to get lost in), frustration levels grow in the vehicle. This continues for most of our drive, with one notable exception, about half an hour before reaching Mendocino. The fog rolls back a bit to reveal a magnificent coastline, one of the most beautiful I’ve seen (or was it the aggravation of seeing nothing until that point?). My wife, sick – literally and figuratively – and tired of the kids friving her crazy snaps at me. “Don’t you dare stop!”, she hisses, “I’ve had enough of this road! Just get us to our inn and out of this $%#& car!”. So, we continued.

Reaching a dead-end

We reach Medocina at 4pm. The place is as dark as an Inuit’s igloo during polar winter. The fog has condensed into soup. The light of our Ford Expedition – a 6m long SUV monstrosity, can hardly clear more than 20m ahead. What a bummer! At least mobile reception is back. Time to check the exact location of our Inn. I click the address in. The result tells me I’m dead. I tell you DEAD!!!

Apparently Mendocino is not just a name of a small coastal hamlet. It’s also the name of the county where Mendocino is based. And, unlike the town, the county ain’t that small. Not by a long shot. With 10,000km², Mendocino County is half the size of my entire home country, Israel. Our hotel, as you must have understood by now, is in Mendocino County, not Mendocino City. More precisely, it is in Elk, about half an hour back from where we came. I tell my wife. The look on her face spells M.U.R.D.E.R.

As I’m the only one authorized by the rental agency to drive the car, I get a commute sentence, and drive the vehicle quietly, like a family dog caught red-handed scavaging from the kitchen table, back down south.

I focus my eyes, as we pass that beautiful, unobstructed stretch of pristine northern California coast we saw on the way up, not daring to ask to stop. I try to put it all into my memory before it is gone forever, consumed in that wretched murk of fog. Then, something unexpected happened. Google Maps tells me to pull over. I don’t believe my f***ing fortune. We have arrived!

Welcome to the Harbor House Inn

I park in front of a dark wooden fence and turn off the ignition. A small inn sits on the other side of the small, well-kept parking. Coming from the main road, the lodge doesn’t look like much. The view behind it, however. Damn, the view! It’s of the kind words will fail to describe. As if on cue, Wife’s and kids’ attitude flips. They rush to the lawn on the side of the inn, leaving me to handle the luggage. I think of scolding them for not staying and helping me out. However, having spent the past few hours in a car with them, I’m okay with being stuck with the luggage, rather than with the loved ones.

Crossing the doorstep is an exercise in teleportation. Perfectly-polished wooden floor provides a base on which a luxurious setting of wood, glass, and buques of locally sourced flora greets me as I step inside. “Welcome,” says one of the immaculately attired front desk attendants. Jeez! This place has a front desk?! Another attendant rushes outside to help me with the rest of the luggage, most of which still waits on the front path. There’s also a large filming crew buzzing around, complete with a full set of lighting fixtures, cameras, and stands. We’ll get back to them later on.

A room with (one hell of a) view

My wife joins me as we are escorted to our rooms. The first lies just next to the front desk on the first floor, and overlooks a coastal pine grove to the north. It gives an overall vibe of a log cabin, albeit a very comfortable, well-made one. We drop off the kids’ suitcases there and move on to the second room, located in the southwestern corner of the lodge. This room resembles an English cottage, featuring white-painted walls, a fireplace, and leather-clad furniture. The real highlight, though, is the direct view over that gorgeous, rugged beach. I can’t help noticing its door is less than five meters away from the dining hall. You could literally schlepp your way there in your pajamas and bunny slippers for a nightly cup of tea. That is, of course, if a restaurant of this caliber would accommodate nightly cups of tea.

The Harbor House Inn was built in 1916 by the Goodyear Lumber Company (there is some remote and convoluted relationship to the more famous tire company, whose nature is really unimportant right now), to entertain its key customers and upper management, and to showcase its redwood property. Quite an empire, indeed. The house changed hands multiple times during the 20th century until it was acquired by the current owners in 2005. The last renovation was in 2018. A year later, it got its first Michelin star and received its second in 2021.

Back at point perfect

So, here I am. Relaxing on a wooden comfy chair, with the magnificence of the Pacific Ocean below me. One of my kids points to the little wooden gate at the edge of the cliff. I put the scotch aside, after all, there’s no one around to embezzle it while I’m gone, and head to the edge of the cliff. A narrow and steep wooden staircase leads to the shore thirty-something meters below. While descending the aquivilant of a 10-story house is not on the top of my to-do list right now, the beach does look inviting, and the whiskey can wait. Reaching the bottom, a small waterfall greets us on the left, and a wide, empty beach welcomes us on the right.

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The pebbles, deadwood, and rock formations are all for us to discover. We walk the beach, gaze into some of the more accessible caverns, listen to the surf hitting the rocks, and watch the few crustations running around. Words will betray the beauty of this rough piece of real estate. Luckily, I brought my camera. No wrestling with complex wordsmithing required. Kids and I spent some time together before lumbering up those ten floors back to the cliff edge, the manicured garden, the comfy chair, and the half-finished glass still there waiting for me.

There’s a restaurant, too

With its commanding location and graceful rooms, Harbor House Inn would have done just fine. But then, there’s Chef Matt Kammerer and his small two-star restaurant. The chef focuses on “hyper-local” cuisine as defined by the “bounty harvested from its own farm, along with seafood and vegetables sourced from the coastline and inland forests, animals raised by Mendocino County farmers”. The menu changes daily, depending on the availability of locally procured ingredients. “Nature is in Charge. Nature decides what we cook, and how,” says Matt, “It forces us to test our creative limits every single day.”

Our evening was July 8th. The winds, climate, availability, and Matt’s creativity had brought us the following (be warned: Oxford dictionary and Botanist’s reference guide recommended):

Savory infusion of sea vegetables

Chilled vegies, cow parsnip seed (this, apparently, is a local flower, not a euphemism for cattle dung)

Mount Lassen trout, cherry leaf, umeboshi

Black cod smoked over bay laurel, turnip

Maitake mushroom fried and infused, lace lichen

Abalone poached in sake, calhikari rice, offal

Confit potato, coastal star romaine, squash blossom

Seaweed sourdough, cultured butter (butter made from fermented cream, not butter that went to Harvard)

Lamb, swiss chard, jus

 Strawberries, wild ginger, amazake

Stone fruits, oolong, baba cake

Infusion of Douglas fir

Grilled honey, sweet herbs

Choux, grilled miso, and apple cider

Walnut lace cookie, makrut lime

Toasted kombu, jasmine, and lemon

Amazake, passionfruit

Umeboshi caramel

Candy cap macaron

Mugwort candy.

No choices. No kids’ menu.

Stepping in

The small dining room is already full as we step inside around 8pm. A large curtain window catches the last rays of sun as it sets behind the layer of coastal fog. Slightly peaved, we get the central table away from the scenery. All the view tables are taken by couples. Our’s is set for three – my eldest son opting to skip dinner altogether. His loss, my bank account gain. Now seated, we are first presented not with a menu, but with a waiver form. The polite maitre d’ explains that our signature is necessary to be included in the footage. “It’s for a show by a leading streaming service whose name I cannot disclose”. Not wanting to play the role of the annoying, stuck-up guests, we sign without making any fuss about it. That out of the way, let dinner commence!

I haven’t written a restaurant critique in my life, and I’m not going to start here. Words will fail to deliver the true magnitude of the experience, anyway. Dinner at the Harbor House Inn was an experience like no other. Each and every one of the numerous courses, whose number I couldn’t care counting, defied whatever little I knew about cooking. Let it never end. Three hours of constant innovation in every bit of the sense – from the sheer presentation, to materials, textures, and, of course, taste! Half of the courses were made of ingredients I had never had before. The other half just took everything I knew about the ingredients and served them in a completely different way. Damn! Even the plates themselves were works of art.

Not a word about the bill

I could have said this was the best restaurant I’ve ever had. Instead, my hopelessly impatient wife described it as the best restaurant she had ever had. Given the obvious collision between the length of the experience and her built-in attention disorder impatience, it is indeed the stronger testament of the two.

Just before clearing the table (what?! The twelve-course menu has ended already?!), my wife inquired again about the filming crew. She has her way of getting information from strangers who prefer to keep it to themselves. The show will be aired on Apple TV in late 2025. We go back to our beautiful room, still discussing the various courses. I don’t remember what happened next, honestly…

I never really forgot about Harbor House Inn. Still, some internal clock went off a few weeks ago. With a hand on the remote, I navigated my smart TV set to Apple TV. There it was, “Knife Edge: Chasing the Michelin Star”, an eight-chapter series about the world’s best chefs and their endless chase after the elusive and all-important recognition from Michelin. The last Chapter focuses on California and describes the tensions, frustrations, and pressures West Coast chefs endure to win the prized stars they so coveted. There, at 12 and a half minutes into the chapter, is Harbor Inn, and its struggle to win the best prize of all – a third Michelin star. Go see it. You could see us too.

The 14th restaurant

To this day, there are only 13 restaurants in the entire US that have achieved a perfect three-star ranking. Think about that for a moment. Of the millions of eateries across the continent, only thirteen establishments have what it takes. Well, as far as I am concerned, there should be 14!