The Log Zone

Family style eating appears to be on the way in again. Several restaurants, such as Boulette's Larder in the Ferry Building and Della Fattoria in Petaluma have started setting communal tables as a way of encouraging client interaction. It never went out of fashion at the Samoa Cookhouse 'way up north near Eureka in Samoa, California - they've been serving family style since God was a child.

My Beloved and I stopped there for breakfast on a recent business/pleasure trip to Eureka/Arcata/Ferndale/Scotia and enjoyed a whopping great breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages, huge planks of toast sliced from housemade loaves, home fries, juice and coffee. The juice and coffee came in pitchers - you pour as much as you want and refresh them as often as you like. The waitress stopped by a time or two to ask if we wanted more of anything - apparently, you can just sit there and eat until you're full, as did the lumberjacks of old.

Despite the friendly seating, our nearest neighbors were uncommunicative that morning, staring sleepily into their coffee cups and speaking to each other only in monosyllabic bursts. The genial host made up for their taciturnity with a bubbly invitation to explore each of the rooms in the restaurant where vintage photographs showed scenes from early settlers' lives.

The Samoa Cookhouse has been serving breakfast, lunch and dinner since 1890 and shows no signs of slowing down. The mismatched chairs and plastic-coated red checked table cloths provide a cheery note and the antique photographs of fishing and logging can teach quite a bit about how life was lived in the late Victorian era in far northern California, when men took great pride in felling giant trees and posing for the camera five or six abreast across the stumps.

I have heard that California is divided into three zones, south to north: The Smog Zone, The Fog Zone and the Log Zone. We enjoyed our trip to the Log Zone and we can attest to the fact that they eat heartily up there.