Stanford Inn by the Sea

Boutique eco-resort ranks among the best Mendocino hotels. 

A 2025 stop at the Stanford Inn by the Sea was part of a weeklong journey up the Mendocino Coast for Fodor’s Travel. The inn, just south of Mendocino village at the mouth of Big River, sits on a magical parcel facing west to the Pacific. When I first visited the inn on a press trip in 1998, the gardens weren’t as expansive, the buildings weren’t as rustically weathered, and the trees weren’t as tall, but one thing has remained the same: the earnest hospitality of longtime owners Jeff and Joan Stanford and their zeal to provide guests a transformative experience.

Inducing Relaxation

The inn is a place of simple pleasures that induce relaxation. Watching the sunset from my room’s deck, sitting in the garden as the gardener picked edible flowers, and strolling down to the beach where the inn’s Catch A Canoe & Bicycles, Too concession rents canoes for paddling up the easy-flowing Big River ranked high among the recent stay’s highlights. I still remember a mid-2000s sunny-day canoe excursion fondly.

Dinner at The Ravens

Jeff’s roles at the inn include overseeing the cuisine at The Ravens vegan restaurant with director/nutritionist Sid Garza-Hillman. Dinner on the second night started with a golden-beet amuse-bouche, followed by mushroom chowder; tofu glazed with maple and tamari; pad Thai with rice and seapalm noodles, tofu, broccoli, cauliflower, and mung bean sprouts; and ravioli stuffed with hemp and sunflower ricotta and house-made marinara. 

Filling and Then Some

I appreciated the varied spicing, and how sated my travel partner and I were – so completely that we begged off dessert. We were convinced to take two treats back to our room: a mint-chocolate ganache tart and carrot cake. No longer photogenic by the time we enjoyed them, they were nevertheless delicious. A week later, we had to chuckle when a laudatory SFGate feature about the inn quoted Garza-Hillman as saying that carnivores dining at The Ravens often fear the food won’t be filling, but that vegans call them out for serving too much.

Take-Home Assignment

At dinner, Jeff and I rekindled a conversation we’d started two years earlier about the environment. He encouraged me to read Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s 2024 book Our Green Heart: The Soul and Science of Forests. In it, the “botanist, biochemist, biologist, and poet of the global forest” describes trees as Earth’s “green heart,” but actually more: “our lungs, our medicine, our oxygen, and the renewal of our soil.” 

Beresford-Kroeger’s tome is bittersweet in that she illustrates what remarkable living and giving (of themselves) systems trees are, all the while detailing the many ways humankind is destroying this gift. It heartened me that near the book’s end, she describes concrete ways individuals can participate in repairing climate damage.

Mendocino County Gem

My 1998 stop at the Stanford Inn was for Fodor’s California’s Best Bed & Breakfasts. These days, I cover this Mendocino County gem for the Fodor’s California and Fodor’s Northern California guides. 

Info

44850 Comptche Rd., Mendocino 95460

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