Patterson's Pub

About Patterson's Pub

Patterson's Pub occupies a building that dates to 1866 — originally the rectory for St Anthony's Catholic Church — and has been operating as Mendocino's quintessential Irish pub since 1993. The most well-stocked bar north of the Golden Gate, as the establishment modestly describes itself, offers 28 crafted beers on tap alongside a full pub menu served from 11am through to late evening. The 21-and-over policy keeps the character of the room adult in the specific sense that matters: a place where drinking is the primary activity and dining accompanies it rather than the other way around.

The pub menu covers the territory a good pub menu should: solid cooking prepared with fresh ingredients in portions calibrated to people who have been drinking. The kitchen is open Sunday through Thursday until 9pm and Friday through Saturday until 10pm, with weekend brunch from 10am. The bar itself runs until 11pm daily. Twenty-eight draft beers is a serious selection by any standard, and the rotation reflects genuine interest in the craft beer landscape of Northern California and beyond.

The building's history is visible in the structure: low ceilings, thick walls, a fireplace that earns its place on fog evenings. There is also a garden tent where dogs are welcome, which on warmer Mendocino evenings creates a different and equally appropriate atmosphere. The pub functions as a genuine local gathering place rather than a tourist facility, and the regulars — Mendocino's year-round population, who have chosen to live in a village of approximately 900 people — are not particularly oriented toward explaining that choice to visitors.

For a solo traveler on the Mendocino Coast, Patterson's Pub resolves the fundamental problem of eating and drinking alone in an unfamiliar place: it provides a room with a bar, which is to say a room with a natural social structure that accommodates a single person without requiring explanation or arrangement.