88 MAY 2019
california
SLENDER AND AGILE in knee-high boots, Matthew
Kammerer scrambled over slippery green mounds,
sloshing his way toward surf line pools. It was July—peak
seaweed season in Mendocino, California—and this beach
in the tiny town of Elk was full of the stuff: ribbons of nori,
mop-head sea palms, fanned fucus branches, pom-poms
of purple dulse. Feather boa kelp lay as if dropped from
mermaids’ shoulders. Kombu stalks waved with the tide.
Kammerer, 30, is the chef at Elk’s Harbor House Inn.
With his harvesting license, he can take 10 pounds of sea-
weed a day, pruning above the plants’ rootlike holdfasts
so that they can regenerate. He steeps kombu in purified
water for his universal kelp stock, used in everything from
grilled abalone to garden vegetables—“it makes everything
taste more like what it is,” he says. He sun-dries sea lettuce
and grinds it with salt. He bakes seaweed-and-seed bars
for a sweet, crunchy welcome for overnight guests (recipe
p. 102). And he oftentimes braises this morning’s quarry,
wakame, to make a leafy green staple with a noodle-like
bite that bolsters stews and salads.
The ocean’s “weeds” are the most elemental of the
elemental ingredients in the kaiseki-influenced cook-
ing that Kammerer, former executive sous chef of San
Francisco’s Saison, executes at the destination inn.
Summertime yields the cove’s vermilion rockfish, kelp-
cured and tucked amid a kelp-vinegar gelée with wild
radish flowers; grilled Swiss chard stems in bonito, local
olive oil, and chard leaf broth; Muscovy duck and wild rice,
both raised nearby. All of it is presented on neighboring
potters’ ceramics and with knives forged down the street.
Autumn will bring beef from the cattle grazing across the
street and mushrooms Kammerer forages from forests that
meet the sea. His is a hyper-local endeavor, an exquisitely
wrought, edible paean to a coastline that has seen its share
of man-made disasters—wildfires, invasive species, rising
seas—but whose natural beauty is so keen that you hunger
for it long after your visit. —BETSY ANDREWS
In The
WEEDS
IN MENDOCINO
At Harbor House Inn in Elk, California, chef
Matthew Kammerer forages for many
varieties of seaweed, key ingredients in his
hyper-local pantry.
Seaweed
Salt
P. 1 0 6
