Memories of Manka’s

Posted on December 30, 2006

In November I surprised my wife on her birthday. We got in the car and started driving, not to dinner in San Francisco but toward the Northern California coast, and not to our usual haunts in Muir or Stinson beaches. Not to Bolinas, the little town that counterculture built, now inhabited by a melange of millionaires with ponytails and organic bikers, known for tearing down a sign that points its way every time “the authorities” tack one up. Not to Dogtown, population about 12, and its man who makes pots.

But Inverness. Not Scotland Inverness, but a town perched on a lagoon that looks like a loch, and a place where we were greeted by a stuffed squirrel, where deer heads and trophy fish adorn the walls, a place that would bring glee to Elmer Fudd, Dick Cheney…and, oh, Prince Charles and Camilla hyphen hyphen, who stayed there and dined recently, not to mention, just a few days ago, actress Frances McDormand and hubby Joel Cohen. (This is the kind of place, in the redwoods, where one might find a woodchipper in back).

But alas Manka’s Inverness Lodge and Restaurant is gone, destroyed by a fire after one of nature’s trees crashed down on one of man’s waterheaters. Gone are menus like this:

Another sole saved from surrounding seas and roasted in the word fired oven with asparagus from alongside local grape vines.

A flannel hash of coastal crimson beets crowned with an Inverness duck egg draped with warm fronds of local frisee.

Manka's Get the drift? I almost expected a huntsman to come crashing through the dining room door with a fistful of ducks and a bugle.

Somehow the snarly-looking bear head that stared at us from beyond our bed wasn’t very scary after dining on a meal like the above. Duck eggs for breakfast were a rare treat.

owner says she will rebuild, and I am sure the food will continue to be stellar, but duplicating the oddball charm of the old 1910 lodge might be a challenge.