3 Best Restaurants in Mendocino, The North Coast

A garden of heirloom and exotic plantings surrounds this popular restaurant inside a yellow Victorian cottage. Local ingredients find their way into dishes that might include Oaxacan-style ceviche, smash burgers, pizzas from a wood-fired brick oven, fish and prawn tacos, beef bourguignon, and oven-roasted cauliflower with house-made mole verde.

The culinary influences are Deep South and Californian at this vegetarian (mostly vegan) restaurant with salmon-color walls, teal tables, and white trim. The chefs' flair for the dramatic might exhibit itself in carrot-cake waffles at Sunday brunch, hush puppies and beet-dyed deviled eggs as happy-hour nibbles, and dinnertime fried-green-tomato biscuit sliders and Mississippi Delta–style hot tamales.

The term "light rustic" applies equally well to this comely café's decor—plank flooring, wood-top tables, gas fireplace with a brick hearth—and its cuisine, which emphasizes local produce and seafood. The menu changes seasonally, with the grilled flatbread, albacore appetizer, Point Reyes blue cheese salad, and grilled organic pork chop among the year-round crowd-pleasers.