To capitalize upon the forthcoming Pacific Coast Railway station in Los Olivos, California, enterprising Swiss immigrant Felix Mattei opened a convivial hotel and restaurant in this stretch of the Santa Ynez Valley in 1886. Today, it’s evolved into the luxe 67-room Inn at Mattei’s Tavern, part of the Auberge Resorts Collection.

“Mattei’s was a stagecoach stopover in the middle of the Central Coast that charmed everyone along the way,” says Nicole Campion, director of design at Auberge. “Given its history and the way people are attached to it, we wanted to honor that—the building, the family, and the tight-knit community. Everyone there owns a little piece of Mattei’s.”

The revamp, courtesy of Santa Barbara-based DMHA Architecture and the San Francisco office of AvroKO (the firm recently designed the restaurant Bear at fellow Auberge Resorts destination Stanly Ranch in Napa Valley) melds carefully preserved original structures with artful layers of storytelling, beginning with the Tavern, the heart of the inn.

“It’s remembered fondly over generations. Bringing it back to life was paramount,” says AvroKO cofounder and principal Greg Bradshaw, whose team uncovered the old backbar from storage, used distressed plaster on the walls, and restored the wood finish on the wainscoting.

Guests get an artful glimpse into the site’s ranching history behind the reception desk in the rehabbed farmhouse

In the former ticket office, now the Tavern’s receiving area, a dressing room screen upholstered with found rugs nods to the “carpetbagger” luggage of yore. Modern portraits of Felix and his wife Lucy—who deliberately faces away from the bar to capture her zeal for the temperance movement—are also on display at the restaurant, rounded out by works from their artist son Clarence in Felix Feed & Coffee, a transformation of the one-time Red Room embellished with a chandelier of the same hue and period wallpaper. Gin’s Tap Bar, meanwhile, is fittingly located in what served as the sleeping quarters for Gin Lung Gin, a chef at Mattei’s first incarnation.

Strolling between buildings is part of the Los Olivos allure, and AvroKO wanted to extend that small-town vibe to the inn, with the site’s own petite volumes creating opportunities for “outside seating areas, firepits, herb gardens, and lawns. The historic water tower in the middle of the property is a great center point,” says Bradshaw.

Distressed plaster and restored wood give the Tavern, the heart of the inn, a new life

Humble materials—white clapboard, oak, and painted brick among them—are also in keeping with the simplicity of the past. “Even the plumbing fixtures are an all-natural brass meant to tarnish over time so that nothing feels too modern,” he adds.

Many details like waxed canvas, burlap, and iron recall the area’s entrenched ranching culture, including Los Rancheros Visitadores, the social club that boasted the likes of Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan within its ranks. At the bar, for example, there is an installation of vintage horseshoes pinned up by horse nails and bolstered with plaques bearing the names of members’ horses. Behind the reception desk are vitrines showcasing a sculptural collection of stirrups and spurs, while handpainted tiles in the Tavern restroom depict bygone rancheros from a stumbled-upon book of Western-themed illustrations.

All the fresh, homey guestrooms, complete with alfresco retreats, also pay homage to the inn’s homesteading roots by pairing “a white, crisp farmhouse shell,” as Campion puts it, with a “beautiful, sun-drenched palette of goldenrod, sage green, and silver lavender that connects to the land.”

This article originally appeared in HD’s October 2023 issue.

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In late August of last year, a ruptured water valve flooded San Francisco’s Sigmund Stern Recreation Grove with 700,000 gallons of water, destroying its meadows. The deluge spared the Trocadero Inn, but the park is still closed, leaving the storied roadhouse standing empty once more.

The Trocadero Inn – once San Francisco’s most notorious Wild West hideout – looks much the same today as it did 130 years ago, but its surroundings couldn’t have changed more.

Back then, the city’s seven by seven miles were not lined with streets and houses; in fact, until the 20th century, the entire Sunset District was mostly sand dunes and coastal scrub, sparsely populated with squatters and homesteads. West of Twin Peaks, the pavement ended, and save for some bridle paths heading to Ocean Beach, the land – known as the Outside Lands – was largely untouched.

This 1887 map of San Francisco shows the young city’s limits.

Historical city map of San Francisco and surroundings, California, USA. 1897.

ZU_09/Getty Images

In 1847 — a year before the discovery of gold in the Sierra was announced on the streets of San Francisco — a pioneer named George Greene and his five brothers made it to San Francisco, from Maine, to claim a swath of farmland north of Lake Merced . The brothers shipped their house from Maine, all the way around Chile’s Cape Horn, to their 400 acres.

The family lived quietly off the land as San Francisco, built on the abandoned ships and wild streets of the Barbary Coast, grew over the hills in the northwestern corner of the peninsula. In the 1870s, two miles north of their land, Scottish horticulturalist John McLaren was starting to realize his dream of a giant park to rival Central Park, planting over 150,000 trees and seeding lush meadows from Stanyan Street to the ocean. The land south of Golden Gate Park started to look attractive to developers, and an attempted grab of the Greenes’ homestead led to an epic, brutal battle straight out of a western.

The story goes that David Mahoney, owner of the vast Rancho Laguna de La Merced around what is now Daly City, attempted to expand his property north of Lake Merced into the canyon that now houses the Stern Grove amphitheater. The Greenes were squatters, and Mahoney won the land in court. But when the family refused to relinquish the property, Mahoney led a group of hired men to grab Greene’s home.

Greene gathered together a posse as Mahoney’s men made their way up the canyon. The family built a metal-lined fort surrounded by eucalyptus trees and held it for a long, violent three months.

(An interesting aside, Greene is credited/blamed for being the first to plant Australian eucalyptus in San Francisco. He reportedly also planted the invasive species in what is now Sutro Forest and much of the Presidio.)

“We built a fort, just east of where the Trocadero Inn is now, and we lined it with metal. We stood watch day and night, and Dad hired the best Indian fighter in the West,” Greene’s son, George Greene Jr. later remembered of the siege.”Then we planted the fence around the land with sticks of dynamite — and let ’em come, we said.”

The Stern Grove Concert Meadow was the site of a bloody three-month siege in the 1880s.

Fiona Lee/SFGATE

Greene Jr. said that his small army’s victory came from “shooting low, in the stomach, for it would take two men to carry them away.” Greene Jr.’s wife Susanna shot at Mahoney’s men as her children clung to her skirts, and dynamite was lit in the canyon. Mahoney was defeated.

The victory was made official in 1887 by the Supreme Court, when the family was granted the land they had farmed and defended for 40 years. It was then Greene decided to build a roadhouse.

The inn, built in 1892, is thought to be the oldest structure still standing west of Twin Peaks. The gabled building with its Hansel and Gretel eaves and yellow walls has been described as “an exuberant example of Stick-Eastlake architecture,” topped with fish-scale tiles, a square cupola and flagpole.

Greene’s vision was to provide a classy family destination for weekenders heading to Lake Merced from the city, or a pit stop for moneyed families traveling from the ritzy neighborhoods of Belmont and Atherton on the peninsula to San Francisco.

Tenants included millionaire lumberman CA Hooper and sugar magnate Adolph Spreckels. But it was when a man named Hiram Cook, described as a “prize fight referee and man-about-town,” took over the joint around the turn of the century that the Trocadero became an adult playground.

Outside of the resort’s celebrated trout fishing and deer hunting, dancing, drinking and high-stakes poker became the order of the day, and night, at the Trocadero.

The Trocadero Inn, San Francisco. 1920

OpenSFHistory

In the 1960s, an old timer told the San Francisco Examiner that they remembered nights visiting “The Troc” at the turn of the century via a heavily curtained charter trolley that ran down the Market Street Railway.

Lovers would row Pine Lake in the afternoons, as sportsmen caught trout and shot deer, before descending on the roadhouse and nearby pavilion to drink, dance and fight the night away.

Isolated in the distant dunes — far from downtown’s police officers, who had their hands full ridding (or partaking in) the vice of Pacific Avenue — brawls, fires and gunfights became regular spectacles at the roadhouse as the elite rendezvous became a house of ill- repute

Stories from the era speak to the notoriety of the area.

One troubling tale came in 1897, when innkeeper Earnest Dolter brought a bear to the inn to amuse guests with its “antics.” While Dolter and his friends “tied it to a tree and went into the saloon to have a drink” to prepare for the fun, the animal escaped and “trotted away to have fun all by itself.” Residents were warned in the morning paper that the bear had not been found, and though friendly, “if a nervous person should come face to face with it, the consequences may be serious.”

The night of April 8, 1902, a woman named Mrs. Eva Miller and her daughter vanished after leaving the Trocadero to make their way back to the city. “It is a lonely place out there near Ingleside,” a distressed sister told the Examiner. “And there are a lot of rough men in that neighborhood.” After a two-day search, the mother and daughter were happily later found in a Tenderloin boarding house, but refused to speak of the details of the night.

In 1907, when the city was still reeling from the earthquake and fire the year prior, one of the most infamous politicians in San Francisco history hid out at the Trocadero as cops scoured the city for him.

Abe Ruef was a political boss who, for years, puppeteered power in City Hall through bribing supervisors while shamelessly campaigning on ridding the city of corruption. After the earthquake, while Ruef was directing his power brokers to stop Chinese residents from returning to “the desirable area that Chinatown occupied,” he was indicted on municipal graft. But he didn’t go down easy, and went on the lam.

On March 8, 1907, Ruef was found and arrested at the Trocadero, where he hid with a “henchman” named Cerf. The SFPD sting was described in the Examiner the following day.

“Early last evening three automobiles carrying eight men went chug chug chugging out the muddy Ingleside road toward Trocadero … the house was surrounded and every avenue of escape guarded,” the account read.

Over the years, stories of gunfights and Ruef’s arrest have merged into one. The truth is that while Ruef’s right-hand man was reportedly wrestled to the ground after a detective got his foot in the door, Ruef himself was much more cordial. “As soon as the door was opened we pushed our way in. We greeted Ruef and he asked us to have a drink. There was no fuss as far as he was concerned,” the Examiner wrote.

(Other historical accounts state that the bullet holes were still visible today in the front door and hall stairs, in fact, the result of a drunken duel over “a beautiful senorita.”)

After a long drive back to the city in a police wagon, Ruef spent the following night in the St. Francis Hotel under guard. He was later sentenced to 14 years in San Quentin, after a grand jury returned 65 indictments against him for bribing city supervisors.

After a lifetime of bloody victories, celebrity tenants, shootouts, wayward bears and political outlaws-in-hiding, Greene grew tired of the Trocadero’s life on the edge of San Francisco. When Prohibition became law in 1920, he shuttered the roadhouse. “I didn’t want a bootlegger situation there,” he said.

In 1931, Greene Jr. sold the property to a philanthropist named Rosalie Mayer Stern, who generously turned the unique corner of San Francisco and surrounding land over the city. The park was named in honor of her husband, Sigmund Stern. In 1938, she launched the park’s free summer music festival as Stern Grove truly became part of the city.

In the 1980s, the Trocadero was restored to match its first iteration. Architect Tom Hardy found “evidence of numerous fires caused by the brawls and shenanigans of the hard-drinking crowd” from nearly a century prior. The restorer chose to leave the bullet holes he discovered in the walls.

Last year, a group called Parkside Heritage initiated a campaign to designate the Trocadero a historic landmark.

In his 80s, after selling his roadhouse to the Sterns, Greene Jr. walked into the San Francisco Chronicle newsroom and told stories of the inn’s glory days: The time a federal marshal brought a posse of 22 men to take his land when his father was away, but they were deterred when his “mother barricaded the house and threatened to spill a vat of scalding water on the men if they ventured near.”

“But now the place is in good hands,” Greene Jr. said. “I guess that all the shooting and the fighting was worthwhile.”

The post This infamous bullet-pierced roadhouse is a San Francisco icon. This is the wild historical past of the Trocadero Inn. appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Any Englishman who visits San Francisco will soon hear their name mumble in conversation.

“Have you heard of that pub over the Golden Gate Bridge? They have real pints and shepherd cakes. “

But the mention of Americans trying to build something “authentically British” is usually greeted with eye rolls by us snooty Brits. I’ve been to the Dickens Fair at Cow Palace, where kids run around and stare at old Victorian sex workers while bearded guys slap their thighs and sing shanties – it doesn’t bring back memories of home. I also went to You Say Tomato, the UK grocery store on California Street that is now closed and where you could pay $ 20 for a sad Lincolnshire sausage.

But The Pelican Inn was supposedly different, a real taste from Blighty; There were even rumors that the place was being moved brick by brick across the oceans from the old country. The first time I got wind of this, I made plans to visit, but those plans were a little unusual.

Every full moon, an informal moon walk is organized along the Marin Headlands, which ends in the legendary pub. We drove over the bridge one night, parked in the Tennessee Valley, and headed out when the moon rose over the high tide.

The walk is magical, from the cliffs down to the beach at Pirate’s Cove and back up again, bathed in the moonlight shining from the water under the Golden Gate Bridge. And while it’s foggy and muddy, it’s well worth the reward – a pint of Old Speckled Hen and a Guinness beef stew at the Pelican. (Though the way back, three leaves against the wind with a belly full of stew, isn’t fun.)

When I arrived at the end of this hike at the Pelican (named after Sir Francis Drake’s galleon Marin visited in the 1570s, later renamed The Golden Hind), I was glad the rumors were circulating about a real British pub just 10 miles north from San Francisco were true, and a few more, and I’ve returned countless times since then.

Although the Tudor-style white picture-book building was built in 1979, surrounded by a lush green lawn, it looks like it could have been in Shakespeare’s time. And the inside is even more magical – horse brass lines the walls around a roaring fireplace. Guests eat hearty stuffed quail by the fire while flutes and lutes fill the air.

But is it really more serious than Harry Potter World?

“All wood, all tables, all pillows, all curtains – everything in here was shipped from England, Scotland or Ireland,” hotel manager Amaya Cotton tells me over a pint of Pelican Inn Pale Ale (the Old Speckled Hen Barrel) was tapped.

I inspect the stately 12-foot dark wood banquet table next to us. Is the table english?

“Scottish!” she corrects me. “We may not be in the UK, but everything in here is from there.”

The Pelican Inn, Muir Beach, California.

Andrew Chamings

So how did this Old World treasure come about in the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, just steps from Muir Beach and the sequoia trees of Muir Woods?

It is all thanks to a very ambitious man named Charles Felix, who in 1978 worked with a friend on the construction of the place for over a year.

“He came from a long line of Vikings. He traced his ancestry and found that most of his ancestors were tavern owners in Britain.

I was a little relieved to find that the architect of this place was from the UK and not the idea of ​​a New World Anglophile. “Oh, he was very, very English,” says Cotton. “He moved here with his wife and four children and got to work. This country was really in the middle of nowhere back then, but he knew exactly what it should look like. ”

The Pelican Inn, Muir Beach, California.

Andrew Chamings

It turns out that the Pelican Inn seems so British because it is. The old beams that held the steep roof and even the floors were shipped across the Atlantic. “The floors are from a centuries-old barn, so we ask cyclists to remove the studs when they come in,” says Cotton. “The bar comes from a pirate ship that was salvaged from an English port.” (I wanted to know which ship, but unfortunately, many of the secrets of the origins of the artifacts died with Felix dying in 2016.)

One of the strangest things in the tavern is the fireplace, on which the Christian motto “Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. Nobody was there, ”mysteriously adorns the coat. “I don’t think Charles Felix knew where it came from, he just liked it,” laughs Cotton.

If you climb into the huge fireplace, you can see a dark, somewhat eerie hole in the roof next to the chimney.

“Oh, that’s the priest’s hole,” says Cotton. “Take care of your head.”

A priest’s hole was a head-high column built into the walls or ceilings of Catholic houses in England in the 16th century when priests were hunted and persecuted by Queen Elizabeth I. A place to hide your priest when the protestant queen’s guards came knocking on the door.

While this probably wasn’t a problem in 1980s California, the attention to detail is pretty impressive.

The Pelican Inn, Muir Beach, California.

Andrew Chamings

Felix lived at the Pelican with his family and ran the pub and hotel for 12 years before selling it to Edward and Susan Cunningham, who still own it to this day. The new owners didn’t change anything – “It was perfect the way it was,” says Cotton.

(The couple also own other famous sites around the world, including the Culloden House in Scotland, which Bonnie Prince Charlie called home during the unsuccessful Highlander Revolt against the British in 1746.)

During last year’s pandemic, the pelican was closed from March to June but never closed permanently. “It was just waiting for it,” says Cotton.

When al fresco dining was allowed again, the pub became one of the few places on the bay where people outside of parklets could feel a semblance of normalcy.

This writer’s family spent many afternoons at Muir Beach during the darkest days of the pandemic, wandering back to catch fish and chips on the lawn. This dish is the inn’s favorite dish, according to Cotton, but she prefers the mussels. Liver and onions are surprisingly popular too, and as any Briton will tell you, the real national dish is curry, and the pelican offers a flavorful madras among the more traditional English dishes.

If the myth that English cuisine is subpar can be debunked anywhere, it is here. And critics agree: “My favorite place in the world is the Pelican Inn,” wrote former SF Chronicle food editor Paolo Lucchesi in 2018.

Aside from food and history, the inn is also known as a cozy romantic getaway.

“We’re a huge wedding venue. The ceremony sometimes takes place on the lawn or on the patio, ”says Cotton. “And then they celebrate inside and rent out all the rooms.”

The Pelican Inn, Muir Beach, California.

Andrew Chamings

The romantic allure of the Pelican leads to the cozy bedrooms above the pub. As you climb the narrow staircase, it feels like stepping into another time – brass lion knockers, four-poster beds, low ceilings, ornate curtains, and portraits of monarchs adorn the walls.

Cotton showed me the carved bedposts with the initials of lovebirds and honeymooners crammed into the hotel. “I encourage it, it adds character to the room,” says Cotton. “My guests love it.”

I would recommend a visit to the Pelican to everyone, not just expats in San Francisco who miss their home. And while you can park next to the pub, the Beef Wellington is well worth the 2-mile moonlit hike through the sand, although I would recommend taking an Uber back.

The Pelican Inn hotel is now open for bookings and the restaurant is open daily from 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

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MILLBRAE (KPIX) – Millbrae, a peninsula town that failed to meet its residential goals in the past, is now being sued for it.

“Bringing a housing project together has become incredibly difficult in the last 10-15 years. And I don’t expect it to be any easier, ”says Andy Davidson, Managing Partner of Anton Development.

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Davidson and Anton’s team are trying to redesign the historic El Rancho Inn near the San Francisco Airport.

The bureaucratic back and forth between Anton and the city lasted four years and neither side has anything to show. Now Anton is suing the city of Millbrae.

“We’re really looking for a referee; Someone to call the piece what it is and we’ll be on our way, ”Davidson said.

It all started in 2017. Anton intended to build 220 units at market prices and 50 units of affordable living space as well as a hotel on site. But then the hotel partnership failed.

Anton says that is because the city has progressed too slowly with the approval process.

“So if it takes too long to apply, you will lose all engagement with the hotel brand you are working with,” explains Davidson.

In the midst of it all, the state passed SB 330, also known as the Housing Accountability Act. The law was designed to streamline the trend in which cities are stepping back against affordable housing.

Since the project includes an affordable housing component, Anton invoked the new law and said it would allow them to bypass the rezoning process and save a lot of money.

“The developer wants to try to pull a quick one,” said Sam Singer, a spokesman for the city of Millbrae.

Singer means that the developer is using the new law as a loophole to avoid paying the $ 18 million development fee.

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The presence of the singer is intended to signal how serious the argument has become. He is nicknamed “Master of Disaster”; a public relations professional who says this case doesn’t stand up in court.

“You can’t expect taxpayers to subsidize a very wealthy and successful developer,” Singer said.

Singer says when the hotel contract failed and Anton came up with new plans, it became a different project with higher fees.

“I hate it when tax dollars are wasted on such a lawsuit,” said Davidson.

“It pisses me off,” said Jodie, a woman who lives in Millbrae.

She stopped by the hotel while KPIX was interviewing Davidson to complain about developments.

“Rich people argue about[expletive[thatwewishwecouldgettheirhandsonthem”saidJodie[expletive[thatwecouldgetaholdof”Jodiesaid[Kraftausdruck[vondemwirunswünschenwirkönntenihnindieHändebekommen“sagteJodie[expletive[thatwewishwecouldgetaholdof”Jodiesaid

Jodie has been on an affordable housing waiting list for several years, she came over to yell at the developer because only 5% of the project is affordable, she says it doesn’t make a dent.

In their words? These “rich people need to stop fighting and build a place for them to live”.

“They say they have programs, but there are thousands on the waiting list. Home is hard to get when you are not on a wealthy site. Poverty is real, ”said Jodie.

The state weighed in and threw its support behind Anton. Singer says Millbrae supports the project, but Anton has to stick to the rules.

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Both parties say they want to see this apartment built but right now they are going to court instead of breaking the ground.

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