Kammerer takes delicacies like Dungeness crab or sea urchin, and elevates more humble, lesser-known ingredients—including seaweed harvested from the Inn’s private cove and lace lichen gathered in the forest—to create an exquisite cuisine. He even makes his own salt, a painstaking process that involves carrying buckets of seawater up from the cove below and boiling them slowly for three days to evaporate, leaving behind impressive crystals of 100% local salt. The aim of this detail, as with every aspect of the experience here, is to provide guests with a memorable dining experience that would be almost impossible to find anywhere else.
Originally a logger’s retreat, the historic building that is now the Harbor House Inn was closed for refurbishment in 2013 and re-opened in 2018 after a period spent landscaping the garden, refining the interior, and preparing the building to become an exclusive fine-dining destination. In addition to incredible meals, it also offers guests elegance, comfort, and superb panoramic views of the ocean.
The beautiful, remote surroundings of Mendocino have always attracted artists and craftspeople, and the design of the Harbor House Inn reflects the inspiring quality of the location as well as the desire to involve local materials and makers. For example, many of the ceramics are produced by local artists, while tabletop settings are made from local raw materials like discarded abalone shells.
Kammerer grew up on the coast of New Jersey, where he spent many hours on the beach and learned at an early age to appreciate wild seafood, an experience that undoubtedly fed into his dream of opening a restaurant in a remote coastal location serving a menu of local produce. Before opening the Harbor House Inn, Kammerer was Executive Sous Chef at Saison in San Francisco, where he successfully retained the restaurant the three Michelin stars it held at the time. His previous experience, after graduating from the Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, included stints at restaurants in Boston and in Australia, followed by a period in the now closed In de Wulf in Belgium, his first experience of a Michelin-starred restaurant, and some time at Tokyo’s three-Michelin-starred RyuGin.
The Harbor House Inn earned its first Michelin star in 2019, the year after it opened, with Kammerer picking up a Food & Wine Best New Chef Award the same year. Then in 2020, in recognition of its commitment to sustainable practices, the Harbor House Inn was awarded a Michelin green star, making it one of the first restaurants in California to receive the honor. The following year, the restaurant was awarded its second Michelin star.
