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This is the most polarizing restaurant in the Bay Area

An exterior view of Cameron’s Pub & Restaurant, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

ameron’s Pub is the most polarizing restaurant in the Bay Area. Not anecdotally. Not politically. It quite literally has almost the same number of 5-star and 1-star reviews on Yelp. For every, “Holy crap this place was amazing,” there’s also a, “One word: Terrible.”

“I don’t even like to look at them anymore,” admits owner Cameron Palmer, who looks genuinely sad when I bring them up. He’s sitting at a table in his now about-35-year-old restaurant and inn (there are a few rooms for rent upstairs), giving a year-by-year accounting of a life well lived.

Palmer owned three businesses when he was just 19 years old (a Half Moon Bay tanning salon, candy store and ice cream shop), which led to the headline “Whiz Kid Entrepreneur” in a profile of Palmer in the Half Moon Bay Wave newspaper in 1985.

Now 62, his face is worn from years of entrepreneuring whiz. He moved on from his original trio of businesses and now, in addition to Cameron’s Pub, he also owns Aristocrat Hotel (which he built from the ground up in between his restaurant and his house) and a 10-acre RV campground (which he built on the other side of his house). He owns every major business — and the only home — on Wavecrest Road, which leads you off Highway 1 directly to a dead end with a dog park, a sprawling setup of horseshoe pits and Smith Field Baseball Park: five ball fields that host adult baseball, softball and the local Little League. In three and a half decades, he has never had an issue with foot traffic while watching over a veritable business empire along one of the most scenic and iconic coastal drives in the world.

And yet, I can tell he obsesses over those 1-star reviews.

“I can get 100 compliments and then if I actually talk to someone that says ‘Oh, that was the worst s—t you just served me,’ that’s all you think about,” he continues. “It sucks and it does hurt, because it’s my life passion. But I think you could interview any restaurant person and they’d tell you almost the same thing I’m telling you. I mean, you try hard and you just can’t keep them all happy.”

Cameron Palmer is pictured inside of his restaurant, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

almer was born in San Francisco in 1964. But he didn’t stay for long. His dad, a British ex-pat named Alan Palmer, joined the United States Public Health Service, which meant Cameron’s family moved from state to state growing up as his dad was deployed to various posts and public health emergencies.

“Finally when me and my brother and sister came here to Half Moon Bay, we said, ‘Mom, Dad, please don’t move. We’re sick of new schools every year, it’s a pain in the ass,’” Cameron Palmer says.

His parents agreed, Alan took a job as a senior scientist at Stanford Research Institute and the Palmer family officially became coastsiders.

Cameron didn’t waste any time trying to be part of the community. At 18, he pitched his parents on the idea of buying his first business.

“I was still in high school and I said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ They said, ‘No, you need to go to college,’” he says. “So I signed up for community college — College of San Mateo — but I took all business courses. Accounting, advertising, marketing, all business courses.”

A year later he bought Big I’s Cream Parlor, a quaint shop where his sister was already scooping ice cream right across the street from Half Moon Bay High, and hired his brother and high school friends to help run the place.

“They all needed summer jobs, I had a lot of buddies and it’s not that hard to scoop ice cream,” he says with a smile. He ran the ice cream parlor for 10 years and grew quite the local following before deciding to part with his trio of businesses and buy an old American Legion Hall two miles down the road.

An interior view of Cameron’s Pub & Restaurant, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

“Everyone kept saying, ‘I’m going to go down to Cameron’s new place.’ I didn’t want to name it ‘Cameron’s,’ it’s, like, egotistical,” he says. “But everyone just kept saying, ‘You better call it ‘Cameron’s’ because at least the locals know you moved down here.’”

So he did, turning a 100-year-old building that once served as a mess hall for the Army during WWII into a bona fide British pub. He put up his collection of beer cans from around the world, now grown to 4,000, added some vintage British memorabilia from his dad’s house, hung a Union Jack out front and opened his doors to a steady stream of patrons.

The menu started with mostly classic American tavern offerings (he tried to cater to local families at the ball fields first), but then little by little he added more British food and more British memorabilia. And then added even more British memorabilia. And even more British memorabilia, to the point that it’s hard to see where the memorabilia ends and the pub begins. Eventually he also installed a British imports shop that his dad helped stock (the cans of mushy peas were a real hit), an iconic red telephone box and finally, a showstopper: a vintage red double-decker bus they parked on the back patio.

A pint of Guinness is served inside Cameron’s Pub & Restaurant, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

The British dry goods section of Cameron’s Pub & Restaurant in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026.

The Beatles classic “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is playing in the background as Palmer shares one of the more unexpected outcomes of opening an over-the-top British pub right next to two premiere oceanfront golf courses and one of the bougiest Ritz-Carltons in America: Lots of actually famous folks from the UK have stopped in.

“The last thing they want is to hang out at the Ritz,” Palmer says. “Don’t get me wrong, I mean they’re going to get a meal there, but it’s, like, over the years we’ve just had so many of them, they want to get to real people.”

Irish actor Pierce Brosnan (four James Bond films, “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Mamma Mia!”) randomly visited with his wife, and Palmer points to the table where he sat with them and they had three or four rounds of Guinness together. English actor Daniel Radcliffe (“Harry Potter”) showed up on karaoke night and performed “The Real Slim Shady” — a grainy video of the performance amassed 2.4 million views on YouTube 11 years ago. And Scottish actor Gerard Butler (“300,” “Den of Thieves,” “Law Abiding Citizen”) was a near-regular while shooting “Chasing Mavericks” up and down the Northern California coast in 2011.

Two photos of Cameron Palmer with Willie Mays, left, and Gerard Butler, right, inside of his restaurant, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

“They were shooting here for 30 days, he came in probably 25 times,” Palmer says of Butler.

If you played for the 49ers or Giants, you’ve also likely been to Cameron’s, and may have even played a round of golf with Palmer, whose best friend, Clyde “Moon” Mullins, was a local golf pro in the area for decades and invited Palmer to golf with the likes of Willie Mays, Barry Bonds and Joe DiMaggio.

“They’d come by after,” Palmer says. “They loved my food. So there you go.”

An interior view of Cameron’s Pub & Restaurant in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026.

One of the many decorations inside Cameron’s Pub & Restaurant, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Customers have lunch inside Cameron’s Pub & Restaurant in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026.

pore over hundreds of Yelp reviews trying to find some sort of explanation for the restaurant’s polarizing effect — how did nearly just as many people end up at a single star? Are they all expecting an exact replica of a British pub? Or a 3-star Michelin meal this close to the Ritz? After talking to Palmer for an hour, I think it might come down to the restaurant’s unique split reality.

Monday through Friday, it’s almost entirely locals who’ve grown to love the restaurant’s kitsch, the kids’ arcade, the open mic night, the karaoke and the bar’s alphabet beer card — drink a beer that starts with every letter of the alphabet and you get a free T-shirt. Fill 10 cards and you get a free night at the Inn upstairs. Fill 20 and Palmer will fly you to Disneyland. “We’ve probably flown 10 people,” he says, all of which he said were locals. “You don’t drink 26 beers 20 times without getting to know them. It takes years.”

But on Saturday and Sunday, the same endearing local restaurant is slammed with tourists. The restaurant doubles its staff on weekends and sometimes there’s a line out the door, despite the nearly 200 seats. And those weekend-only visitors don’t know who Cameron Palmer is — and that might be where some of the polarization stems from. They don’t know that he’s been part of the Half Moon Bay’s world-famous Pumpkin Festival for the last 40 years, or that he currently serves as its president. They don’t know that he announces the old-fashioned Fourth of July parade, or that many of the pictures on the walls are of his friends and family around town. They don’t know that when the Ritz-Carlton first opened, they asked Palmer — of all people — to give the grand opening address: “I don’t know why they asked me, I’m not even the mayor of the town,” he says. They don’t know about the ice cream shop, or how they towed the double-decker bus here from Lake Tahoe, or that Cameron’s mother, Adora Palmer, is likely sitting at the table right next to them.

Locals do, though, which is part of the charm. Just ask Andrew J. from Half Moon Bay. He left a review that’s buried deep on Cameron’s Yelp page, but sums things up pretty well:

“Disappointed to see so many negative reviews from people who seem to misunderstand the type of establishment they chose to visit. Cameron's is a local watering hole. You go there to drink and meet with other locals; you go there for greasy Brit-themed bar fare (some of which is actually quite good); you go there with your team after your Little League game down the road at Smith Field; you go there for karaoke night with Jeff. You do not go there (or *should not* go there, anyway) if you are expecting haute cuisine, or Ritz-level interior design, or spotless cleanliness. If that is what you're looking for, there are other great establishments in HMB where you can find it. Cameron's is a great and unique local institution. They have a good beer selection, fantastic pizzas, history covering the walls, and the only Double-Decker Smoking Bus in the United States. Friendly visitors are always welcome and it isn't some exclusionary place, but please leave your entitled, demanding attitude at the door. This is not the place where it will be indulged or appreciated.”

And for the record, I tried the fish and chips, and they were delightful.

Cameron’s Pub, Restaurant & Inn, 1410 S. Cabrillo Highway, Half Moon Bay. Open Monday, 3 p.m.-9 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

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