We're driving from Mendocino to Bandon today. The map told us it's 330 miles so we figured if we leave Mendocino around 9ish, we should be able to get there by 2ish.
Overall I was pretty happy with our stay at MacCallum house. It cost us total $580 which includes one night of hotel, 2 chef tasting menus (4 courses dinner including wine pairing), and breakfast the next day. Breakfast was yummy, you ordered off from their menu. I got breakfast burrito and fiancee got the pancake. Just the right balance of savory and sweet.
We walked around town after breakfast. It was pretty chilly and foggy in the morning, most of the stores weren't opened yet but there are couple of interesting local stores we walked pass. We checked out and left the hotel around 9:30 in the morning on our way to Bandon. I have done research for Bandon and there's this place called "Port O'Call" on the boardwalk that you can rent gears to go catch crabs and clams by the ocean. So I was very very excited!!
The drive to Bandon took a lot longer than we had originally expected. The 1st 40 miles of highway 1 is mostly windy mountain roads. The drive sure was pretty, we passed by probably 3-4 bigger towns, but most of the drive was woods, trees, and ocean. The view was just breathtaking!
We got to Bandon around 4pm, checked in to the hotel. We're staying at Windermere by the Ocean, it was a great motel if you have kids. There's a small kitchen in the room, ocean's just 1-2 minutes walk away. We dropped of our luggage, and head out to the boardwalk, I'm sooooo ready to catch some clams.
After we got there, the store told us they sell gears for all type of fishing activities, but you can only catch crab right now at Bandon. I was a bit disappointed, but we walked around and had some snacks at Tony's crab shack. We ordered oysters, fish tacos, and a glass of wine. The food is good, very fresh, but the wine came in a plastic cup.
After we got back from the boardwalk, we took a walk by the beach, sat on the sand dunes, it was so relaxing and calm. All we heard was the ocean (ok, I have to admit we can hear kids screaming as well...:), then we got ready for dinner.
My fiancee went to Bandon Bill's 6 years ago and he said he doesn't remember what he had but he thinks the food was food. I was a bit skeptical but since the restaurant is right across the street from our motel so we decided to give it a try.
We ordered steamed clams, clam chowder, and cioppino. They are all so delicious! The clam chowder was so flavorful, there's creme in there but it's not the typically clam chowder you get with heavy roux and not a lot of real clam flavor.
The cioppino, oh the cioppino!! I wasn't sure we should order cioppino since we're from California and supposedly have the best cioppino in the world. But we ended up getting a second order. It was out of this world! The broth is so tasty with just the right amount of spice to kick it up a notch. The fish (I think it's rock fish and salmon) was so tender, steam was cooked perfectly, not rubbery at all, and the shrimp is also perfectly cook, there's also shredded crab meat in there. Wed dip the bread (there's roasted garlic cloves in the bread, yummy) in the cioppino and it was heaven!
Steamed clams were also very good, with tons of garlic, and the right amount of richness from the butter but not overly heavy.
Service was great and we were lucky there's free live music playing that night!
The second day of our roadtrip was a lot of driving, but also great ocean view and very satisfying food!! Bandon is a great town, if we take another roadtrip in the future, we'll definitely stop by and revisit Bandon Bill's! :)
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