Dream Destination: The Harbor House Inn, Mendocino, California

Nothing about the drive to The Harbor House Inn suggests there is a luxurious property with a two-Michelin-star restaurant at the end of it.

Located in Elk, optimistically about three hours from San Francisco, it sits along a rugged Northern California coastline, in what feels like the middle of nowhere. The little town of Elk has only 600 inhabitants, a general store, a couple of other small businesses, and miles of native vegetation and empty beach.

How to get to Harbor House

From San Francisco, there are two efficient ways in.

Highway 101 to Cloverdale, then Highway 128 west through Anderson Valley – a great pit stop, and home to some of California's best cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, sparkling wine from producers like Roederer Estate (a Louis Roederer property), and the Alsatian varieties that made the valley's name.

Or Highway 1 the whole way, through Bodega Bay and Jenner: an hour longer, with breathtaking views of the Pacific as the trade-off.

A place to slow down

From the road, in the distance, the house stands out. It rests on a bluff above a cove, as if levitating over the ocean. A lumber company built it in 1916 as a showpiece for the local redwood it shipped to different markets, and many decades and owners later, it reopened as The Harbor House Inn in 2018.

The inn has 10 rooms between the main building and five cottages. Some, with clawfoot tubs and gas fireplaces, overlook the ocean; others have a more modest view of the gardens.

Either way, the whole property delivers a sense of disconnection and its own version of luxury, one that a busy life in a big city doesn’t give much opportunity for.

The point of a stay in a place like this is to slow down. A walk down to the cove and private beach time, watching the waves run through the rocks; a drink on the deck; a midday nap with the sound of the ocean; or, half a mile down the road, an easy hike at Greenwood State Beach are your best options.

The property is child-free, and management says many guests are parents taking their first nights away.

Harbor House Inn's two-Michelin-starred restaurant

As comfortable and amenity-rich as the rooms are, the main attraction is, undoubtedly, the restaurant, run by chef Matthew Kammerer, who spent most of his career cooking in major cities around the world.

He came to Harbor House looking for the exact opposite, in his own words, a ‘kind of wild side and rawness’. Under his direction, the restaurant earned its first Michelin star in 2019, a Green Star for sustainability in 2020, and a second star in 2021.

His model is the Japanese ryokan: intimate, subtle, intuitive, and mindful.

Intentionally or not, he also kept the ode to local products the place started with in its lumber days: from what nature offers – abalone shells as decor and used as serving pieces, freshly harvested seasonal ingredients – to dishware made by Mendocino County ceramicists.

'It's a journey to get here,' he says. 'Why would I serve you a menu that you could just eat in the city with the same products from the city purveyors?'

The menu changes daily because it has to. 'I'm not a chef who comes up with a dish idea and then goes and finds the food,' Kammerer says. 'Let the food come to us, and then we decide how to cook it.'

As he notes, spring usually brings coastal herbs; winter, wild-foraged mushrooms; summer, the seaweed from the cove below. Most produce comes from the inn's farm, started in 2020, and the fish is landed down the road.

During my visit at the end of July, dinner was nine courses, plus an amuse-bouche in the foyer, inspired by what the kitchen called the 'daily changing environment of the North Coast'. It ran mostly to vegetables and seafood, except for a Sonoma-raised wagyu as the last savoury dish.

The wine pairing, which changes daily too, was excellent but almost entirely European that night, with one sake. I kept wishing it made the same case for local producers that the food does.

Games, books and an after-dinner fire pit

The coastal weather can be unpredictable, but my days there were sunny with fog rolling in gently around sunset to cool the nights – a perfect invitation to the fire pit after dinner.

Games and books are available, including an interesting selection of culinary, foraging, and farming titles, and novels set in California.

In the morning, guests staying in the main house have breakfast served in the dining room, bathed in morning light. Guests at the cottages enjoy room service with a lot more privacy.

Two nights is the minimum, and perhaps the right number. Grab a sandwich at the Elk Store on your way out, and go home the other way.

Rooms start at $850 per night plus taxes, with a two-night minimum. The restaurant is open Thursday to Monday; dinner tasting menu: $350, lunch tasting menu: $150 per person. Reservations required. See The Harbor House Inn website for details.

Related articles