MacCallum House Restaurant & Grey Whale Bar-Cafe

Whenever we visit Mendocino we always dine at the MacCallum House Grey Whale Restaurant. We love the ambiance, consistently great service and wonderful food.
It is also one of the few restaurants that carries nearly all of the great Germain-​Robin brandies including grappa.
This weekend (Whale Festival Weekend) the weather produced three days of torrential rain which made sitting in the bar by the fire and drinking brandy exactly the right thing to do.
I know that folks say the pricing is high but we have to disagree. Coming from the Bay Area we find the prices at MacCallum to be quite reasonable and the same as several other good spots in the Mendocino vicinity. In our opinion it is the best place in town for dinner.
Try the restaurant for breakfast as well as for dinner. Their breakfasts are special and actually on the moderate side.

On vacation and so busy all day we decided to eat out instead of cooking at our rental. The food here was fabulous!!! I had the scallops for an appetizer and venison for the main course. The meats were perfectly cooked. So tender they melted in your mouth. Kids got the burgers which were devoured and they did an excellent job of accommodating my sons food allergies. Hubby had filet mignonette and oysters. Again perfectly prepared.

Wonderful winter ambiance, good
Green salad and fabulous pork chop.
Walnut waffle dessert not so hot.

Best food. Best customer service around. Sarah was the best you could have for her customer service skills. Tell one tell all. Go there you will not be disappointed.

I had a pleasant experience here on Thanksgiving weekend (Saturday). Showed up with no reservations around 7PM and had to wait about 20 minutes to get a table as they were pretty busy. Our waitress was very friendly and on point. Pretty warm and welcoming atmosphere (Victorian style set up). The food was great and so was the service. I’d definitely come back to try out some of their other dishes. I had a Prailine Cookie Taco desert that was awesome! lol

I am on a mission to speak up when places (esp. Restaurants) are understaffed. Sunday brunch there was only 1 waiter for the entire place. Took half an hour to get drinks, an hour to get our food. When a place doesn’t have enough staff, customers have a bad experience and the staff has an even worse time. Long waits also mean lower tips, so everybody loses. Oh except the proprietor, who saves some money. Long run, though, this tactic will backfire on them as well.
If the food was spectacular, maybe I could put up with it, but in fact the food was as bad as the service. Was excited about house made sausage but it was dry as cardboard and under spiced. The breakfast potatoes were among the worst I’ve ever had.

Food was delicious! The duck and stuffed bell pepper was what we ordered. Everything was tasty, but what is up with the some of the staff?! After dinner we wanted to check out the bar. However, the bartender lady was rude, and seemed annoyed we ordered our drink with her at the bar and not with the waitress at the bar (which we didn’t know we had a waitress at the couch area). The bartender made sure to make it a point and let us know she would «kindly» make our drink. It felt like we were in her way, and there was only one other customer sitting at the bar. So we were clearly not asking for much.
Our waiter wasn’t very helpful either, he was short with his answers, not welcoming at all.
Grr, this made me upset because we were on a trip to Mendocino to celebrate my birthday and to receive poor service just sucked. It’s always disappointing when the staff is rude, it ruins your meal and time there. If we ever go again (because of the yummy food), I will have to make sure the bartender is a different person (not the lady who made our drink) and we get seated with another waiter/​waitress.
Please keep the food delicious! And please work on the staff! I just noticed other people who also posted on the poor service. Its too bad because it’s a very nice place to have a wonderful time.

Food was good, but the drinks and service are not up to par. The Dark and stormy tasted like rum and citric acid, I think the bartender needs a refresher course.
Amazing old house and awesome views, but for 10 $ drinks they should be correct. I saw a couple that had reservations have a problem getting a table, but maybe that is Mendocino, does not seem that the town embraces customer service. We are spoiled with the great restaurants in the Bay Area.

My girl friend and I had an outstanding dinner and desert. She had a Pork Chop and I had the Wild King Salmon. Our shared desert was a Black Berry Soufflé. Their meals apparently are prepared from scratch. We were advised to order our desert along with the meal so the wait time would not be a problem. The main course also took a while, which I attribute to it being freshly made. The wait was well worth it!
The entire meal was very tasty, enjoyable and absolutely worth the wait for delicious and freshly prepared food.
The cost was modestly pricey, but appropriate for great quality food.

Excellent food, ambiance, and service — highly recommend.

I recommend against the MacCallum House. There are lots of better alternatives in town.
My husband and I were celebrating our wedding anniversary, and we wanted to have some special nights out. So, months in advance, we made a reservation at the MacCallum House.
We arrived early for our reservation, in line behind a young couple, without a reservation, who requested a window table they could see. The hostess quickly sat them. Then, the hostess asked us if we had a reservation. We said yes, and she said she didn’t have table available and asked us to wait in the bar.
We should have read more of the reviews, because when we did, we discovered that the MacCallum house regularly treats those with reservations just like anyone else. Rather than asking those without reservations to wait until they can process the people in line with reservations, they just take everyone on a first-​come-​first-​seated basis.
When the hostess finally seated us, 25 minutes later, it was at a table in the back, near the server station.
We proceeded to order dinner, and also ordered the special desert of the night, a soufflé. Our waiter came back 10 minutes later to tell us we were out of luck, someone else had claimed the last soufflé At 7:15 at night their special was already sold out. Our wait for the table had cost us again.
After the wonderful food reviews, we were willing to start fresh, and enjoy our meal. The soup and salad were good. For our dinner entrees, the vegetarian dish was decent but unremarkable. The pork chop was blood rare near the bone. We asked the waiter to deal with that, and 15 minutes later a very well-​done remainder of the pork chop arrived back. It resembled a hockey puck and was uneatable.
By then, very frustrated with our location, aloof waiter, and food; we flagged the hostess over and asked to talk to the manager. She refused, she said we had to deal with her. And, she basically took the position that we should have complained earlier, and waited longer for a table. She would not address the food.
You would think when you are dropping over $ 100 per person for dinner, you would at least get a friendly staff and well-​prepared food. But, you’d be wrong at the MacCallum House.

Food was good but it all seemed pretty dated. I had the salmon and my husband had the burger.

We returned here after all the crowds for 4^th of July had dissipated. The village is much quieter then and you can easily dine here without the noise and commotion. The dinner was really good and service was very good, especially the busgirl and person who sat us at our table. The waiter was a bit aloof.
We started with duck fried rice, $ 12. It came with brown rice and bits of duck. Hubby liked it but I thought it was bland. He had the pork chop, $ 32 which came with bok choy and gnocchi. The pork chop was moist and surprisingly, I liked the tiny pieces of gnocchi, which I usually do not. My serving of duck breast, $ 37 was huge and very good. I couldn’t finish it all and Hubby took it back and ate it for breakfast the next day. The portion was much more generous than a fancier restaurant in SF, Perbacco which only gave you 2 slices of the breast.
We shared a ½ bottle of Navarro 2012 Chardonnay, $ 23,which was good too.
1 cup of organic coffee, $ 2.50 with our blackberry soufflé, $ 10 rounded out the meal total of $ 130 with tax.

Pros:
–It’s a cute place to have a meal or even a casual drink
–The place is clean but pricey
–the view and scenery from all angles in the restaurant is pretty
–the day crew were tentative
–breakfast food was awesome!
Cons:
–dinner crew forgot orders
–after being asked 3 times by 3 different people to light a fire because it was freezing, they never did it.
–dinner food was alright

Hubby and I stayed for Valentine’s Day weekend and had the Chef’s Tasting Menu (with wines) as our Valentine’s Day treat – simply sublime. Each course paired perfectly with the wine served. The scallops were incredible; the duck – perfection; the steak… mmmm!
I’m not a big fan of bitter/​dark chocolate, so I would have preferred something else for dessert (it’s a trio split by two). But I could tell it was still high quality – and ate my half nonetheless (sheepish grin…). Overall, an exceptional meal.
Now, if you stay at the MacCallum House, breakfast is included. First morning I had Lupe’s Breakfast Burrito. That Lupe knows her stuff: It’s tasty, fresh, and perfectly seasoned. Yummy house potatoes, too! Second morning I had the Eggs Benedict on house-​made sourdough bread. Scrumptious! And get this: They poach your eggs to order (so if you’re like me, and start spitting pea soup like Linda Blair at the idea of runny eggs… they will poach them hard).
I highly recommend eating here if you’re visiting! Truly the best restaurant in Mendocino town.

This review is for the restaurant. What a cute romantic spot! The bar is tiny, but lucky we were there on an off night, so we had no problem snagging two superb cocktails and grabbing a seat on the couch in front of the fire. Couldn’t beat it! You know a drink is going to be good when there’s a long line of fresh herbs and other ingredients lining the bar.
Dinner was just as fantastic. We were seated in the back area near another fireplace. No view per se, but a wonderfully cozy atmosphere. We both agree that our dinner here was even better than the highly regarded Beaujolais Café. Would come back in a heartbeat. Walked through the complex a bit, and the rooms look cute too! Beautiful gardens…

What a charming little spot to sit by the fire, sip a cocktail and start the evening. I was totally swept away in the cuteness of this little place, and wish we’d stayed for dinner!
Their cocktail list is great, and even features a few mocktails for those tea-​totalers among us. The staff is friendly and casual while remaining very professional and knowledgeable about the menu and drinks.
The place is really gorgeous, too — beautiful Gothic architecture that has been maintained meticulously among sumptuous gardens and breathtaking views. There are 19 rooms to rent for a little getaway, and seeing as it’s in the center of town the location doesn’t get any better.
I love that you can breeze in for a drink, stay for a meal or book a room for a stay. Such a great place!

This time around it was all about the complimentary breakfasts. The menu hasn’t changed from two years ago but no matter, I enjoyed every morsel the two mornings I was allowed.
Both times the wait and ancillary staff were 100% on top of their game making sure the drinks remained filled and even cheerfully handled our unique requests.
The gripes I had in my previous review were all a distant memory.

The service was great, the setting is a lovely old Victorian house with beautiful gardens. We sat in the enclosed porch area at a fantastic candlelit table, and everyone who waited on us was great. But the food was overpriced for the quality… really overpriced.
I ordered the fried chicken which looked outstanding when it arrived, but the chicken itself was a really weird texture and had just a ton of cartilage/​bone and very little actual meat. The cornbread it came with was great, as was the slaw. The mashed potatoes and gravy were just so-​so and were cold when they arrived.
My boyfriend got the duck tacos and while they were «good» they weren’t great and were a pretty small portion of meat and taco for the price.
All and all it was $ 80 for two entrees and one salad (no drinks, just water) and that made it not worth it for us. We’d go back if we could get out for $ 50, but $ 80 was just too much for the quality of food served.

I made a reservation the night before on Open Table. I didn’t feel that we received any special table for our efforts, but it’s a small place so I’m glad we didn’t have to worry. We were seated in the sun room, which was exactly what I wanted, next to a window.
The service was promt and personable. I was very satisfied by the wait staff and their timing. Our drinks stayed full throughout the meal.
The food was wonderful and flavorful. Decent portions for the price you pay. Local and sustainable food options.
Come for the service, stay for the ambience.