Dad's Luncheonette
American restaurant · Half Moon Bay
225 Cabrillo Highway South at, Kelly Ave, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
Highlights
Cal-American classics served from a historic train caboose
Cal-American classics served from a historic train caboose
"A compact, popular diner run by a former Michelin-starred chef, serving farm-to-table comfort dishes like maitake mushroom sandwiches and house-made potato chips from a vintage train caboose setting." - Leilani Marie Labong Leilani Marie Labong Leilani Marie Labong is a San Francisco-based journalist who focuses on food, design, and travel. Her work has been featured in Elle Decor, Travel + Leisure, House Beautiful, Sunset, Food52, Food & Wine, The Kitchn, and Architectural Digest. Travel + Leisure Editorial Guidelines
"It may not look like much more than a bygone roadside train caboose, but Dad’s Luncheonette makes simple, well-executed comfort food. The chef and owner ditched fine dining life to open Dad’s, and even though the menu is far from fancy, it thoughtfully highlights local ingredients. Think seasonal herb salads, soups and sweets of the week, and two delightfully messy sandwiches (a grass-fed beef burger and grilled maitake mushrooms). Get a sandwich, and the creamy mac-and-cheese with crispy puffed wild rice and chives. Then take your food—and plenty of napkins—to the beach." - gabi moskowitz
"Situated on a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway in Half Moon Bay, the chef describes his setup bluntly: "I cook in a rented caboose on the side of the highway," Scott Clark writes. Clark—a former chef de cuisine at San Francisco’s Michelin-starred Saison—turns modest surroundings into exuberant, carefully executed food: Dungeness crab rice, chicken-fried morels with red-eye gravy, kale salad with candied kumquats and toasted buckwheat groats, and a standout hen-of-the-woods sandwich (mushrooms pan-fried with a slice of cheddar and an egg, then plopped on toasted bread with a slathering of the chef’s signature mayonnaise riff called Dad Sauce). The book of recipes framed as a road trip down the PCH conveys the restaurant’s hearty, gorgeous, slightly wild California sensibility; not every experiment lands (a white-chocolate melting method yielded pebbly white chocolate in one snack), but the recipes frequently deliver the kind of simple, rewarding results the reviewer associates with a “damned fine meal I made myself.”" - Rebecca Flint Marx
"The Day Trip: Half Moon Bay Travel down Highway 1 far enough and you’ll encounter a funny site: an old train caboose on the side of the road, repurposed as a restaurant. Dad’s Luncheonette is serving burgers, potato chips, crispy mac and cheese with puffed rice and scallions, and more spins on roadside classics. The burger, one of the Bay Area's best, is more of a patty melt hybrid served on grilled white bread with Dad’s sauce, pickled red onions, and a runny egg—and it will transport you to a higher plane of existence. For vegetarians, the mushroom sandwich is an equally revelatory experience." - lani conway, julia chen 1, ricky rodriguez
"Diners who usually drove straight through Half Moon Bay hit the brakes in 2017, when a former fine dining chef from Saison started serving burgers out of an old caboose that’s parked on Highway 1. The burgers come sandwiched on white sliced bread and cost all of $14.50, and rosé comes by the can." - Dianne de Guzman
