Between 1833, when Stokes Adobe was built as a one room home, and 1996, when Kirk and Dorothea Probasco, along with Chef Brandon Miller, opened Stokes Adobe Restaurant, the now two-story (since about 1848) adobe house has seen its share of Monterey history. Among other things, it was—and still is—home to the ghost of Martha Harriet Gragg, better known as Hattie.
Until her death in 1948, Hattie and her husband Mortimer made Stokes the center of the Monterey social scene. For 30 years after that, Gallitan's restaurant held court as one of the top spots on the West Coast. There was a stretch of vacancy and a few different couldn't-quite-make-it joints until '96, when Stokes Adobe Restaurant was born.