Mendocino restaurants are finding new options for outdoor dining

MENDOCINO CO., 5/15/25 — Locals in Mendocino may be scratching their heads about the restaurant tent situation these days. With little fanfare, two of the town’s most popular eateries, Patterson’s Pub and Good Life Café, have taken down their outdoor dining tents in the last few weeks. Meanwhile the tents at two other favorite spots, Mendocino Café and Trillium, remain up, at least for now, and continue to offer covered seating outdoors. 

What’s going on?

The restaurant tents grew out of the pandemic, when implementing an outdoor dining option was the only way for restaurants to re-open after the shutdown. Hoping to keep the town’s economy alive, special limited permits were issued to allow outdoor tent seating. 

As the pandemic began to subside, restaurants owners were notified that the permits would be expiring. A public outcry ensued. The upshot was that the County Board of Supervisors issued a one-year reprieve in September of 2023, allowing the tents to stay and giving restaurant owners time to work out alternative solutions.

Now, though, the time for tents has run out. 

Sticking with tents indefinitely was not an option, according to Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams, citing fire and safety issues as one key reason why not. After the county’s reprieve, “it was up to local businesses to come up with proposals that comply with existing regulations,” Williams said. 

Based on what he’s hearing from constituents, “people like outdoor dining and are hoping there will be solutions,” Williams said. 

Those solutions are taking different forms, however, for each of the four restaurants. 

Patterson’s Pub owner Tony Graham came up with a plan even before the September 2023 reprieve. After going through a lengthy permitting process, Graham finally received approval on March 17 of this year to install a pergola in lieu of a tent.

Patterson’s removed the tent and is now in the process of installing the pergola. Graham hopes to complete the installation by the end of May. Because he was doing his “due diligence,” Graham said, he didn’t hear anything from the County when the one-year moratorium on code enforcement expired in September 2024. 

For those who are wondering, the dictionary definition of pergola is “a structure usually consisting of parallel colonnades supporting an open roof of girders and cross rafters.” Think of the arbors that shelter outdoor plants at a local nursery.

Although a pergola is a fairly basic structure, Graham described the permitting process as painful – his exact words were “I’m not building a nuclear power plant here” – but the pergola is the “perfect solution.” The Patterson’s pergola will have approximately the same footprint as the former tent but will be only ten feet tall and comply with the “myriad governmental regulations” that govern its construction and use, Graham said.

Finding a tent alternative requires permitting from the County Planning & Building Services Department, the Mendocino Historical Review Board, and potentially even the Mendocino City Community Services District (MCCSD) if an outdoor dining option means a change or expansion of water or sewer system use. Coastal Commission regulations can also come into play. 

Trillium owner Sandra Speck-McElroy has also taken a proactive approach. Trillium has received historical review board approval for both a pergola and an additional enclosure of part of its outdoor space and is in the process of applying for a building permit. The historical review board’s blessing means that Trillium has two years, until March 3, 2027, before the tent must come down.

The Patterson’s and Trillium pergolas will not result in any additional water allotment, said MCCSD Supervisor Ryan Rhoades.

Both pergolas will have cloth coverings to provide weather protection. If that sounds like a tent, it’s not. 

Mendocino Café owner Meredith Smith is still working with the planning department on options. She hopes to replace the Café’s large outdoor tent with a “more acceptable covering that will ameliorate the situation.” One route may be to enclose the outdoor deck, possibly with louvered windows. Presumably a pergola is also on the table. 

Teddy Winslow, owner of the Good Life Café and a vocal advocate for outdoor tent seating, nonetheless removed Good Life’s tent after it became clear that the planning department would not issue a permit without substantial changes. Unlike the other three restauranters dealing with the tent issue, Winslow does not own the Good Life property and concluded that the amount required to put in a more permanent, engineer-approved structure was “way more than what I can afford to spend.” 

Although Winslow found the bureaucratic layers daunting – in her experience the various regulatory agencies “scapegoated” each other when it came to getting a straight answer – she mains hopeful that an alternative will come along in the future.

For now, as Good Life posted on its Facebook and Instagram pages, the cafe is “working on making the deck a comfortable and covered space over the next few weeks. We’ll add shade cloths and freshen up the walls. But in the meantime, bear with us and enjoy the extra sunshine.”