This is the first entry in Where We Eat — the places Chantelle and I actually go on the Mendocino coast when someone else is doing the cooking. No comps, no arrangements, just where we end up on a night off.
We are starting with Patterson’s Pub, because Patterson’s is where we end up most.
Read this part first: it is 21 and over
Patterson’s is a 21-and-over pub. No kids, at any hour, including weekend brunch. That is the single thing to know before you walk up Lansing Street with a family in tow, and it is the reason I lead with it — nothing sours an evening faster than turning a group around at the door. If you have children with you, Mendocino has plenty of patios that will happily seat all of you. This is not one of them.
Dogs, on the other hand, are a different story entirely.
Why we go: Willow gets a seat too
Dogs are welcome outside, on the garden patio — picnic tables, umbrellas, and a rack of dog bowls by the door so you are not pouring water into your cupped hand. My Great Pyrenees, Willow, has decided this is his pub — and a hundred-odd pounds of white dog asleep on the stage is not a thing anyone in there seems to mind. Chantelle’s dog Disco, who is a fraction of his size, is a regular here too. The two of them travel together, and this is one of their spots. Willow is known at Patterson’s, and honestly he is known at most fur-friendly spots around Mendo. I have photographs of him holding court on the stage like he pays rent.
Willow’s order is the Pub Pattie. There is a small dog menu — you will not find it on the website, which is exactly the kind of thing this series exists to tell you — and the Pub Pattie is the one he votes for every time. Ask your server; they know.
This is the part visitors underestimate about this coast. Mendocino is dog-friendly heaven. You can build an entire weekend here around a dog and never once leave one in a car or a room, and Patterson’s garden is one of the anchors of that.
My actual advice: order off the Specials Board
The printed menu is good pub food and it will not let you down — the Mile High Reuben is built on house-made corned beef, there is a proper New England clam chowder, and there are something like ten entree-sized salads if you want to pretend you are being sensible.
But I order off the Specials Board nearly every time, and I tell everyone else to as well. It changes regularly, it leans on whatever seafood is actually good that week, and in a town on this coast that is the honest signal. As a cook, a board that keeps moving tells me someone in that kitchen is paying attention to what came in rather than reprinting the same sheet all year. I have never once been disappointed by what they were running.
My go-to when it appears: the mussels and clams in a pesto cream sauce, with garlic bread to get through the sauce. It is a specials-board dish, so it comes and goes — if you see it, order it and do not overthink it. Worth noting, and I have written about this elsewhere: recreationally harvested mussels are under a statewide quarantine every year from May 1 through October 31, so shellfish on a menu in those months is commercially harvested and tested. Which is what you want. Just do not go pulling your own off the rocks.
No dog with you? Sit at the bar
If Willow has stayed home, we sit at the bar. It is the best mix of locals and visitors in the village — the kind of bar where the conversation on either side of you goes somewhere. The bartenders are friendly and genuinely good to talk to when the place is not jammed, and the waitstaff is, without exaggeration, one of the best crews on the coast. That consistency is not luck; it is a well-run room.
To share: the Killer Nachos. They are as good as advertised and they are big — a plate for the table, not for one person with ambitions.
For sports, the garden is the secret
Patterson’s runs seven HD TVs, and here is the detail nobody tells you: two of them are out in the garden. That means you can watch the game with your dog next to you, which is a combination that essentially does not exist elsewhere in the village.
It was a great room for the World Cup, and it is the place we will be for the rest of the sports calendar — NFL season is right around the corner and I am already looking forward to Sundays out there.
The practical details
| Where | 10485 Lansing Street, Mendocino, CA 95460 |
| Phone | (707) 937-4782 |
| Bar | 11am–11pm daily |
| Kitchen | Closes before the bar does, and the posted time varies by night — call if you are arriving late |
| Brunch | Weekends, 10am–2pm |
| On tap | Twenty-six beers, plus Mendocino County wines and a full bar |
| Dogs | Yes — outside, on the garden patio |
| Kids | No. 21 and over, always |
It bills itself as a little bit of Ireland on the Mendocino coast, and the story goes that the idea was hatched over a Guinness in a pub on the Dingle Peninsula. You can feel that in the room without it tipping into theme-park territory.
Why we write these
We cook for people for a living, which means we eat out on other people’s schedules and we notice things — how a kitchen handles a rush, whether the specials are real, whether the staff actually likes working there. Where We Eat is where we write that down. Everywhere in this series is somewhere we go on our own time and pay for like anyone else.
More in the series: Where We Eat. And if you would rather someone else cooked at your place instead, that is the day job — see the menus, rates, or what to expect.
Mendocino Chef
We cook this food for a living — in your home, your vacation rental, or wherever you are staying on the coast.
Private dinners, small weddings, rehearsal dinners and retreat catering from Point Arena to Ten Mile and inland through Anderson Valley.