Rustic Chic

Several years ago three friends and I spent a splendid afternoon eating oysters at the edge of Tomales Bay, north of San Francisco. Sitting at a picnic table beside the water, bundled up against the cold, we sipped Chablis and shucked crenelated Pacific sweetwaters until we were sated, about four dozen oysters (each!) later. Ever since, I’ve wanted to repeat the experience.

I moved to L.A. soon after, and hadn’t been back to Tomales Bay and the wild and beautiful Point Reyes Peninsula until a recent weekend. This time, as a tourist, I had the chance to stay for more than an afternoon. And it was a revelation. I wanted to kick myself for not realizing what was here while I was living in the Bay Area.

Friday afternoon, my beau and I flew into Oakland airport. Smaller and more convenient than SFO, Oakland has car rental agencies right out front, and, except for the stretch of Interstate 80 south of Berkeley, you can avoid the snarl of traffic in the city and on the Golden Gate Bridge by crossing to U.S. 101 over the San Rafael Bridge from Richmond. From there, I took the scenic route west across the dusty gold hills to Stinson Beach, then north to Inverness, a forested enclave on Tomales Bay, at the eastern edge of the vast Point Reyes National Seashore.

We stayed at Manka’s Inverness Lodge, a former hunting and fishing lodge built in 1917 and now an upscale inn and restaurant owned by Margaret Grade, a neuro-psychologist. In the cozy Arts and Crafts-style living room, I found a big old Labrador retriever snoring on a bearskin rug. Yellowed parchment lamps, rustic twig furniture and a collection of old fishing rods, worn leather backpacks, vintage photos of fishermen and sepia portraits of Native Americans completed the lodge’s mise en scene.

When I’d called to reserve, I was given a choice of one of the few rooms upstairs in the main lodge, or one in the quieter annex with forest view--and a fireplace. As we walked toward the back of the property, a truck was delivering oysters from Tomales Bay.

Our room was No. 8 in the annex, one of four cabins that share a common wall with neighbors. People who come to Manka’s come for the quiet, so don’t expect TV, telephone (only the most remote rooms have phones) or minibar in the rooms, though all have radios. The low-ceilinged room seemed smaller than it really was because a huge bed of rough-hewn timbers heaped with oversized pillows covered in red-and-black wool check took up much of the space. Lying on the high bed, I felt a little like Alice after she swallowed the pill that made her smaller.

Our room was furnished with an twig armchair (and ottoman) and a couple of kitschy Indian paintings and other tchotchkes. There was a glass-doored fireplace (which was one of the reasons I’d picked that room, but it was actually too warm that weekend to even think about building a fire). I loved the bathroom with its old-fashioned nickel-plated fixtures and view of towering trees outside the small-paned windows. The shower head was so large it felt like you were standing under a waterfall (some rooms have bathtubs, but not this one). And the air coming in those windows was scented with eucalyptus and pine mixed with the salt of the sea.

I wanted to see the sunset from somewhere on the peninsula, so I asked the man behind the desk where we could go to watch the light fade over the sea. He suggested Pierce Point, about a 10-minute drive away through rolling hills and vast dairy farms with their herds of black-and-white Guernseys. At the old Pierce Ranch, the road abruptly ends. We parked and set off down the path (Tomales Point Trailhead) toward Tomales Point, about 3 1/2 miles farther and on the northern tip of the Point Reyes Peninsula. Out here it looked like a scene from “Wuthering Heights” as the fog blew in, masking hulking trees, scrubby brush and the folds of the hills. Mid-April to mid-May, this is the site of a spectacular wildflower display.

Intent on pointing out McClure’s Beach down below, we were startled when not 50 feet away we suddenly saw three tall female elk standing alert to our every move, and behind them, the massive silhouetted antlers of the patriarch of the family. On the hillsides all around us, I could pick out more groupings of Tule elk. We walked on quietly and cautiously (the time to be extra cautious is during rutting season), on a trail that overlooks the sea and the setting sun. But it was getting too dark, and we had to turn back before we reached the point.

In the inn’s serenely lovely restaurant, the candles already were lighted and a young chef grilled plump sausages and game birds in the fireplace, which only made me more hungry. The one-page menu was clearly Chez Panisse-inspired, strictly seasonal, very appealing. I could have ordered almost everything on the page. The wine list was a surprise, too, a savvy collection of some of California’s most interesting--and hard-to-find--wines.

*

To start, we chose the wild boar sausage served with a savory bean ragout with local sheep’s milk pecorino cheese shaved over, and grilled quail stuffed with wild rice and pine nuts in a silky foie gras sauce. For our main courses, we had pheasant paired with a delicious cumin and caraway-laced gratin of Yukon gold potatoes and celery root, and a thick brine-cured pork chop grilled in the fireplace and served with good mashed potatoes and an emerald plum chutney. Dessert was a violet blackberry ice cream with “shooting star” butter cookies. It was a wonderful meal, not just for Inverness but for just about anywhere.

The next morning, we ambled (well, drove) over to Point Reyes Station, the nearest real town, for breakfast and to lay in some supplies for the late lunch I’d planned at Hog Island Oyster Co. in the tiny village of Marshall (population 30) on the east shore of Tomales Bay.

I wanted to check out Tomales Bay Foods, too, a new food emporium owned by Peggy Smith, who was a fixture at Chez Panisse for 17 years, and Sue Conley, a founding partner of Bette’s Oceanview Diner, both in Berkeley. It’s a take-out, organic market, cheese factory and deli all rolled into one that features the best food products of West Marin County. The coffee--what I was most interested in that hour--was good and strong (they’re also up on decaf, low-fat and low-foam too).

Lemony cheesecake (available weekends only), made by Ellen Straus of Straus Family Creamery in Marshall (a dairy that also happens to sell their rich cream and milk at the Santa Monica farmers market on Wednesdays), was fabulous--too good to last till lunch. I also bought a ball of mozzarella made the day before at Cowgirl Creamery right there in the barn-like store--the best batch the fledging cheese producer had made yet, I thought--and a chewy loaf of handcrafted bread from the new Bay Village Bakery in town. The store also has free maps of the best picnic areas around.

And if you feel like just hunkering down in your room for the night, Wednesday through Sunday, they offer take-out dinners. The menu is posted on the front door (e.g. pan-fried sand dabs with aioli, roasted potatoes and summer squash: $7.75). And at the tiny farmers market set up in front of Toby’s Feed Barn on the main street (open end of May to mid-October), I bought heirloom tomatoes and fragrant basil, plus a bouquet for my room.

My plan was to go kayaking in Tomales Bay for a couple of hours before lunch, so I stopped by Tamal Saka kayaking company in Marshall, just yards from the oyster company. But the water was choppy that day and contraindicated for a relative novice (i.e., someone with a total of one hour’s previous experience).

Disappointed, I took the company’s brochure anyway for another time. (You can sign up for full-moon paddles or a guided trip through Drakes Estero and its marsh wildlife, for example. You also can rent a kayak equipped for camping overnight on one of the otherwise inaccessible beaches.).

By 1:30 I had a picnic table staked out at Hog Island when my friends showed up, laden with chilled wines, cloth napkins, oyster knives--and bags of ice to chill down the mollusks. However, because it had rained a few days before, the firm didn’t have as many oysters as usual on hand, and the small kumamotos and Atlantics (blue points) I like so much were in shorter supply than we would have liked. Good thing I’d brought the picnic fixings: We ended up with only a dozen oysters each. Which gives me a good excuse to come back and live out this fantasy another time.

Oh, I had plans to visit an antique rose nursery near Petaluma, maybe stop by another that specializes in native plants, or go antiquing in Petaluma. But I quickly realized I really didn’t want to go anywhere. I hung around Manka’s, reading, napping, taking a walk around the neighborhood. Then, because Manka’s is really the only serious restaurant in these parts, I did something I doubt anyone else would be lunatic enough to attempt: I drove to Sonoma for dinner to try Daniel Patterson’s graceful French cooking at Babette’s. True, I had been told it was a 45-minute drive, which didn’t seem that out of the question, but it was actually an hour and 15 minutes. (If you leave before dusk, it is a beautiful drive out Lucas Valley Road to U.S. 101, then east on California 37 to the Sonoma town square.)

The formal restaurant serves only a five-course prix fixe menu ($49, service included). I very much enjoyed an eggshell filled with chives flan and beluga caviar, delicate ricotta quenelles with musky morels and thyme, and local lamb served with a Provencal ratatouille. The wine list was excellent too. But I found the room claustrophobic and the service fussy. And with such a long menu, by the time we hit that long road back, it was after 11.

*

We slept, awakened by birds’ chirping. Breakfast at Manka’s was perfect: good coffee, fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, eggs scrambled with cracked pepper, served with fruit and butter-freckled cream biscuits; or duck eggs over easy with a tender buttermilk pancake, superb apple smoked bacon and real maple syrup.

Thus fortified, we headed for Limantour Beach. After driving through forest to this beautiful place on the ocean side of the peninsula, we trudged along a short path, over a sand dune, to find a spectacular unspoiled beach, a long swath of fine sand with reddish cliffs at one end. The other end, if you walk far enough, narrows into a spit, where you can swim with the seals, and observe some of Point Reyes’ astonishingly varied wildlife: rays basking in the shallows, red tail hawks, blue herons.

Even on this late summer weekend, hardly anybody was here. (Though more people did arrive just as we were leaving at 1.) We waded, we lounged in the sand. We walked and walked and still didn’t reach the cliffs.

I think it was the single most relaxing morning I have spent in years. (Other beaches such as Drakes or Point Reyes are subject to hammering surf, riptides and undertow. Few have lifeguards on duty, so be cautious and pay attention to signs. The Tomales Bay side of the peninsula offers a few gentler, warmer beaches.)

Back at Tomales Bay Foods, we picked up a picnic from the takeout counter (duck rillettes, chicken salad sandwiches with pickled onions--and, I confess, another piece of that lemony cheesecake).

Feeling lazy now, we ate our lunch at nearby Hearts Desire Beach at a table beneath the trees. Then, sigh, it was time to drive back. Across the San Rafael Bridge again, neatly avoiding the traffic that backs up on Sunday afternoon on U.S. 101 south going into San Francisco.

In Berkeley, I stopped in at the wonderfully stocked Sur La Table cookware store on 4th Street and at the rare book room of famous Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue before heading to the airport and home. Where I promptly signed up for a kayak class. One way or another, I’m going back.

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Budget for Two

LAX-Oakland air fares: $202.00

Rental car, Hertz, 2 days: 69.96

Bridge toll: 1.00

Gas: 21.66

Manka’s Lodge, 2 nights: 319.00

Dinner, Manka’s: 126.17

Breakfast and picnic supplies, Tomales Bay Foods: 32.73

Hog Island Oysters, Marshall: 28.00

Dinner, Babette’s, Sonoma: 145.59

Breakfast, Manka’s: 25.70

Airport parking: 16.00

FINAL TAB: $987.81

Manka’s Inverness Lodge, 30 Callendar Way, P.O. Box 1110, Inverness 94937; telephone (415) 669-1034. Tomales Bay Foods, 80 4th St., Point Reyes Station; tel. (415) 663-9335. Hog Island Oysters, 20215 Hwy 1, Marshall; tel. (415) 663-9218.