Nepenthe Restaurant

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth bought the cabin on a whim in 1944, measured the windows for curtains, and never came back. The Fassetts bought it from them in 1947 for $22,000, hired an architect trained under Frank Lloyd Wright, and opened a restaurant on April 24, 1949. It sits 800 feet above the Pacific, 29 miles south of Carmel. Henry Miller became a regular. The place is still family-owned, still open, still perched on the same cliff.