Nepenthe

The Monterey Herald put it this way in 1953. Wherever you go, New York, Mexico City or Tokyo, you meet people who know the Peninsula, and there is a good chance they will ask you about Nepenthe. It stands on a ledge eight hundred feet above the sea, built onto the old Log House that Sam Trotter raised in 1925.

Orson Welles bought the cabin for Rita Hayworth in 1944 and they never spent a night in it. Lolly and Bill Fassett bought it from them and opened Nepenthe in 1949, and it is still in the family, run by the grandchildren. The name is Greek.

The drug that takes away sorrow. The terrace at sunset makes the case for the name. It is where the Ambrosia burger came from, and where you sit at long tables with strangers and the whole coast below.

There is often a wait, and a fire pit for cold evenings. Below the restaurant is Café Kevah, for brunch and coffee on its own deck with the same view, and under that the Phoenix Shop: books of this coast, and pottery, glass and cloth made by the people who live here. The Fassetts' son Kaffe became one of the great textile artists of the world, so the colors in that shop are not an accident.