In 1974, Pat Healy made one pot of soup for the entire town of Point Reyes Station. The tiny community that consisted of ranchers and a few merchants (and whose population today only numbers 350) was warmly accepting of the restaurateur who says she "flew by the seat of her pants." "Things were very different back then," said Healy, the Station House Cafe's original owner. "I thought, Oh, I'll just make a big pot of soup every day!" she laughs. "In the wintertime, it would rain and nobody would come in for hours. When I would leave the restaurant at night, I'd take home a 5-gallon laundry bucket, and work on the schedule and the produce orders," she says. "The produce man would call at 3 or 4am and I'd read him my little list."
Things have changed in Point Reyes Station over the last three decades, but not much. Today it's cold and foggy, and bright flowers bloom along the sidewalks. Bundled-up artists chat over tea and treats on the benches in front of the Bovine Bakery as cyclists pedal by. The Point Reyes peninsula is a place that manages to celebrate diversity--both natural and personal--and practice political and environmental consciousness without being self-satisfied or pretentious in the least. And doing this exceptionally well for the last 31 years has been the Station House Cafe.
The cafe, long a cornerstone of the Point Reyes Station community, changed its ownership last June but not its credo.
"We're very into promoting sustainable agricultural practices and taking care of the environment," says new owner Sheryl Cahill, a longtime employee of the restaurant. "We recycle everything, be it leftover vegetables for local animals or our old cooking oil for customers' biodiesel fuel." Cahill, who worked at the Station House Cafe from 1990 to 1998 as a server, then as assistant manager, then as a manager, recently graduated from UC Berkeley summa cum laude with a degree in cultural anthropology.
"After finishing at Cal, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go on to graduate school," Cahill says. "After all, I'm 43 years old. Why would I want to be a 50-year-old in grad school?" she laughs.
So Cahill decided to get a full-time job, returning to the Station House Cafe last year as a temporary manager.
"When I came back to the cafe, I realized how much I love this work. One thing led to another, and when Pat was ready to sell, I was ready to buy," she says.
On a Monday afternoon at 2:30, the dining room is nearly half-full. Cyclists on tour, a few friendly single diners reading novels, and an older couple who greet the server warmly by her first name and exchange kisses sit across the way from four generations of a blond family dressed in collegiate sweatshirts and a group of naturalists in hiking boots who tuck into platefuls of local wild salmon, organic cheeseburgers and fresh shellfish.
I started lunch with a half-pound of Hog Island clams steamed with wine, butter and garlic ($8.95). The musky mollusks were so fresh it was apparent they come from just a few miles up the coast, and I wanted to curl up inside the crusty, warm farmers' loaf (La Brea organic bread is baked daily at the cafe) and go to bed. Instead, I dipped it in melted butter and went to town on the garlicky, lemony, zesty clam broth with my spoon.
Next was the Reuben sandwich ($8.95) on light rye, which was hands-down the best Reuben I've ever had. Who knew a Reuben sandwich could be fluffy and light? The lean cuts of organic corned beef from Niman Ranch, sliced paper-thin, and the crispy grilled bread may have been the deciding factor in its deliciousness. Sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Russian dressing (mayonnaise mixed with spicy cocktail sauce) finished out the sandwich. The dish was accompanied by a mound of thinly sliced, marinated carrot rounds soaked in plenty of olive oil, dill, red wine vinegar and chopped fresh garlic.
Dessert, a butterscotch pudding ($5.25) with organic Straus Family whipped cream and homemade pecan streusel, was a bit bland. A better choice would have been the bread pudding, agreed upon as "legendary" by staff and locals alike. A perfectly brewed cuppa from Thanksgiving Coffee Company made up for the lack of flavor in the butterscotch dessert.
The Station House Cafe has a small and carefully chosen wine list, consisting mainly of Californian offerings, and two beers on tap: Lagunitas Czech-style pilsner and Anderson Valley Boont Amber Ale.
The service is friendly, honest and direct; the staff obviously cares about how you enjoy your meal (even if the busers are semi-surly), and excellently chosen bluegrass pipes through the sound system.
The restaurant's concept won't change with the change in ownership, Cahill says; the emphasis will always be on local, high-quality ingredients. "We have a half-planted garden out back that will expand next year," she says. "We pick vegetables and serve them that night--it really doesn't get much more local than that!"
Shellfish are brought from within a 15-mile radius; meats are from California's acclaimed Niman Ranch; dairy from the Straus Family Creamery; chicken, free-range Rocky chicken from Petaluma; and fair-trade coffee comes from the Thanksgiving Roastery.
"We attract amazing people, people who appreciate the bounty and the beauty of West Marin," says Cahill of her patrons. "We really try to appreciate that beauty and bounty here, and reflect it in our menu. We have daily regulars, and groups of people who come in every week."
Cahill, who was remembered and welcomed fondly back by the Point Reyes community when she returned to work at the Station House Cafe in 2004, plans to move here with her husband Greg (editor of San Rafael-based Strings Magazine) in five years when both sons are grown.
"I received such a warm welcome from the community here upon my return," Cahill says, "and I guess that's why it's so important to me that the service at the restaurant be just that warm and welcoming."
Having a new restaurant compares exactly to having a new baby, Cahill laughs. "The servers started teasing me a couple of months ago, with cracks like, 'Oh, does worrying about the new baby keep you up at night?' "
Friday and Saturday nights the cafe hosts a wide variety of local musicians, livening up the otherwise quiet garden (which seats up to 100 for special events). Nightly (except for Wednesday, when the restaurant is closed) "happy hour-and-a-half" offers h'ors d'oeuvres and discounted cocktails from 5-6:30pm during the week; the restaurant serves three meals a day, beginning at 8am. Breakfast is comfort food with a twist: fresh corn, Jack cheese and red bell peppers perk up the scrambled eggs ($7.75), and buttermilk pancakes ($3.25 each) can be eaten plain or with blueberries and chocolate chips ($1.75 per extra ingredient).
Former owner Healy, who was a jazz singer before opening the Station House Caf , has no plans to return to cabaret life. "I'm cleaning out my closets," she says. "I do community work and I'm pretty athletic, even in my advanced years."
She can't think of anyone else she'd rather have run the restaurant than Cahill. "You invest your life into a business, and you want someone to take over who will put their heart and soul into the place," she says. "It has its own life, that restaurant."
