Seaweed Cafe in Bodega Bay

This review is from November, 2007 - I'm finally getting around to putting the text together with the photos.

Seaweed Cafe in Bodega Bay
1580 Eastshore Road, Bodega Bay, CA
http://www.seaweedcafe.com/

We ended up at this restaurant purely by chance. We
had driven around Bodega Bay looking for somewhere to
have a late breakfast. I was craving breakfast food
but it seemed like every restaurant was a seafood
place. We saw the Seaweed Cafe but the name didn't
really appeal to me, and I thought it might just be a
coffee shop. But after driving around some more, we
ended up passing it from another direction and saw the
words "Slow Food" painted on the side of the building.
That caught my attention and we stopped to go check
out the menu. It looked promising so we went in and
were greeted and handed a menu. While waiting for the
hostess to seat us our friends unexpectedly walked in
so it ended up being four of us for brunch.

My husband and I shared duck leg confit, which came
with some lovely fresh and very lightly dressed baby
greens and white lentils. The duck was delicious and
somehow not greasy, even though it had been stored in
fat.

We also shared the hay ham sandwich with cheese
and egg. The bread of the sandwich was fresh and
hearty, I'm guessing it was homemade.

We were told the hay ham special type of ham that is somehow marinated
with hay(?) Unfortunately this sandwich was ruined for
me completely by the very overpowering and unexpected
inclusion of horseradish, which completely permeated
the bread and cheese. I ended up just removing the ham
and eating it with the bread they'd brought for the
table. For people who enjoy horseradish I'm sure this
would have been great though.

Our friends had the sheep's milk yogurt with granola,
the queso fresco dish, which was baked with vegetables
in an earthenware dish,


and oysters on the half shell, which were served with two types of roe - one red, one
green. The green I think were marinated in wasabi.



Dessert was a fig gallette.


Service was slow but not painfully so. Our friends,
who had had dinner there, said that dinner was even
slower.

The kitchen is open and is beautiful - it reminded me
of the kitchen of an apartment we'd rented in Cassis
(France.) Beautiful copper pots hanging.

In the main dining room, worn brown tiles cover the
floor, flowers are on each table, and the walls are
covered with colorful watercolor art. The overall
feeling is very warm and cozy.

Besides the unexpected horseradish my only complaint
would be that they seemed understaffed - our waitress
was also the bartender and the hostess.