Dining at the Ravens ─ Over 150 Nourishing Vegan Recipes from the Stanford Inn by the Sea

At The Ravens, dinner is more than just a meal. It’s a feast for your spirit.

Located on the Mendocino coast at the only vegan resort in the United States, The Ravens Restaurant at the Stafford Inn by the Sea embodies a mindful, compassionate, and sustainable dining experience in an enchanting and unforgettable setting. The restaurant sources much of its produce from the Inn’s on-site USDA Certified Organic garden, and delivers it to its guests in primarily whole foods, plant-based dishes that have set the standard for vegan fine dining for more than 15 years.

Now in Dining at The Ravens, Jeff and Joan Stanford, the Inn and restaurant founders, bring the Ravens culinary experience into your home. Along with featuring over 150 recipes,Dining at The Ravens also shares the charming history of the Inn and restaurant, cooking tips for on-point recipe execution, inspiration for creating your very own garden, and beautiful photography of the food and the Inn.

Inside, discover one of the restaurant’s most popular breakfast dishes, Citrus Polenta with Braised Garden Greens and a Creamy Toasted Cashew Sauce, and many others, such as:
Recipes inside:

The Ravens Sea Palm Strudel
Savory Medicinal Mushroom Breakfast Crepe with Maitake Hash
Grilled Barbecue Portabella
Grilled Cauliflower Napoleon
Mushroom Pesto Burger
Spicy Peanut Curry Sea Palm
Eggplant Cannelloni

So pull up a seat, and take flight with Ravens for an extraordinary dining experience.

Jeff and Joan Stanford came west to Carmel California to find careers in education, agreeing to help manage a small inn while looking for work. Jobs were scarce, the United States was in recession, and they found themselves enjoying their guests and rehabilitating the property they managed. Looking to the future, they chose to continue inn-keeping, and by 1980 they were in Mendocino starting a family. Joan ran the front, while Jeff remodeled the inn and created their certified organic farm on the site of what had been known as the China Gardens during Mendocino's logging era.

The Inn allowed both of them to return to their former interests. Passionate about early education, Joan trained as a Montessori teacher which led her to discover the power of art to transform human experience. She enrolled in psychology at Sonoma State University and received an MA, specializing in Art Therapy. Today she is a registered art therapist, collagist, and educator.

Jeff recognized that the "state of realization" that so many sought in the movement of the 1970s and 80s must come from a new relationship with life, beginning in the kitchen, where decisions affect the practitioner and the planet. He became vegetarian as a first step to honor all life, not only the lives of his family, friends, and pets. He and Joan sought to create an inn that sat softly upon the earth. They created one of the first green” bed and breakfast inns without realizing they were doing so.

Understanding that their Inn was a destination, Jeff and Joan wanted to provide the highest quality food to their guests, which Jeff began cooking in the early 1990s. The restaurant followed their philosophy serving a whole food, plant based dishes designed to rival the cuisine found at the highest rated restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. They discovered that many cooks can create great food, and they created a co-creative kitchen where all are invited to comment and tweak dishes. The final arbiter is Jeff, but the process is dynamic and assures that each person in the kitchen can express their creativity.