Swiss émigré and former dairy farmer Felix Mattei was a betting man, and his biggest bet was to construct a tavern with lodging across from the end of the Los Olivos train terminal. There, he reasoned, passengers would only have to walk a short distance to find good food and shelter before their morning stagecoach ride to Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. With his wife, Lucy, daughter of a San Luis Obispo gunsmith, in the kitchen, followed by Gin Lung Gin, born in China in 1871, the tavern would draw travelers from far and wide. Crowds were especially heavy during hunting season, when guests would come in with their fresh bounty—band-tailed pigeons, quail, duck, deer and geese—which Gin would transform into delicious feasts, raucously enjoyed. The Tavern would stand the test of time even after the last narrow-gauge train pulled from the station. It became the place to get a “drink” (from bottles squirreled away in various hiding spots) during Prohibition, play pinochle and poker late into the night, and savor the simple life, where good, honest Central Coast ingredients came with a dose of rugged West Coast adventure. It was where President Herbert Hoover dined and stayed as he fished for steelhead trout with his fishing buddy, the youngest Mattei son, Bert, and where Silver Screen legend Clark Gable escaped on hunting trips away from Hollywood. Beloved for more than a century, The Inn at Mattei’s Tavern welcomes a new generation of diners and revelers when it opens November 2022.