St. Orres

EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION

St. Orres serves dinner in a three-story Russian-inspired dining room whose copper onion domes are visible from Highway 1, a building unlike anything else on the California coast. The menu is a three-course prix fixe built around what is growing, swimming, or emerging from the forest outside: wild foraged mushrooms, fresh local seafood, venison and wild game, and organic produce from the surrounding land. The room is candlelit, the service unhurried, and the experience is one that belongs entirely to this particular stretch of the Sonoma Coast. Open Thursday through Monday; reservations by phone only.

OPERATOR STORY

The founders purchased a derelict 1929 coastal hotel in 1971 and spent five years rebuilding it by hand, hauling century-old mill timbers by logging truck and recruiting local artists for the leaded glass and carved details. The restaurant opened in 1977. One of the founding partners has been executive chef for over four decades, building a menu on wild foraged ingredients, fresh seafood, wild game, and organic produce from the land and sea outside the windows.