Juan Carlos Cancino still remembers playing by Los Trancos Creek behind Alpine Inn as a kid. In the three decades he's been coming to the roadside restaurant, he's shared drinks with Stanford classmates, etched girlfriends' names into benches and felt like he's stepped back in time seeing people hitch their horses to the posts out front.
Nostalgia, company and good food are among the draws for Cancino and the close to 470 others who came out to celebrate the Alpine Inn's 170th anniversary on Monday night, Feb. 28. Cars lined Arastradero Road as far as the eye could see.
"I've been coming here since I could barely walk," said Cancino. He made the drive down from San Francisco earlier this week for the occasion. "You feel like you step out of time (when you come here). They didn't mess anything up."
Usually closed Mondays, the 250-seat beer garden opened up for the special occasion from 4 to 8 p.m. Another draw was the highly sought Pliny the Younger beer. Eric Nelson III and Brian Wachhorst of The Fake Shamen, a Portola Valley-based band, performed.
Portola Valley resident Dene Orwell has also been coming to the Alpine Inn, known to locals as Rossotti's or Zott's, for decades. Her family eats there about once a week and said they'd get its takeout about twice a week during the COVID-19 lockdown. She said her aunt and uncle, students at the rival University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University, met at the Alpine Inn during Big Game festivities.
Her husband, Christopher Badger, said he's pleased with the food, which improved after three Portola Valley families Deke and Lori Hunter, Fred and Stephanie Harman, and Jim Kohlberg bought Zott's in 2018 to update and restore it after its owner died. Updates were complete in 2019. Badger called the alcohol selection "off the charts."
Felix Buelna, a former San Jose mayor, opened what was then known as Casa de Tableta in 1852, according to the Alpine Inn's website.
After a number of owners, around 1904, Charles Schenkel became the primary owner and renamed the roadhouse to The Wunder.
The Wunder sign was painted over during Prohibition. Non-alcoholic beverages were sold, but more potent beverages were reputedly available to those in the know.
When Prohibition ended in 1933, Stanford students — especially during football season — returned and the lease was passed on to Enrico Rossotti. Rossotti eventually purchased the property and ran it until 1956.
In 1969, the Alpine Inn location was registered as a historical landmark.
After an extensive and expensive remodel in 2019, management came up with a solution for keeping the indoor-outdoor tavern in operation year-round: a tent over the outdoor seating area.
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Fans of the Alpine Inn, Portola Valley's oldest roadside attraction, gather to celebrate its 170th anniversary - The Almanac Online
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