Margaret Grade, a pioneer of farm-to-table cuisine who brought magic to Manka’s Inverness Lodge and put her artist’s stamp on everything she touched, died on Feb. 28, seven weeks after she was injured in a car crash. She was 72 years old.

With backing from her family, Ms. Grade purchased the old hunting lodge in 1989 and quickly put it on the culinary map, drawing a who’s who of chefs, winemakers and Hollywood stars. Sean Penn once baked chocolate chip cookies in her kitchen. When the lodge was destroyed by fire in 2006, Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who had come to celebrate Christmas, were staying upstairs.

Before restaurants across the country began widely embracing locally sourced food, Ms. Grade was scouring West Marin for the freshest ingredients she could find and tailoring her handcrafted, multi-course menus to whatever was in season. She was a donor to local nonprofits, including Marin Organic, and was generous to just about anyone who had fallen upon hard times.

Ms. Grade—pronounced “Gra-day”—was an introvert whose remarkable ability to create beauty thrust her into the spotlight. Manka’s won coverage in the New York Times and Gourmet magazine and was named one of the 50 best hotel restaurants in America by Food and Wine.

She was as focused on the inn’s arts-and-crafts design as she was on artistically plated food. She searched the country looking for rustic, Mission-style antiques and decorated with idiosyncratic touches, including a stuffed squirrel at the check-in counter. In keeping with its history as a hunting lodge, the inn’s walls were adorned with seven buck heads. 

Guests might enter the lobby to find the chef roasting a pig in the fireplace or preparing hors d’oeuvres above the embers. The air was thick with delicious scents.

“It was like entering a movie set,” said one of Ms. Grade’s sisters, Johanna Grade Perkins. “Not only were you entering this beautiful place that she had very meticulously designed, but there would be actual movie stars in there eating dinner.” 

Ms. Grade’s culinary hero—and one of her biggest fans—was Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, the Berkeley chef who pioneered organic California cuisine. Ms. Waters dined at Manka’s with King Charles, then a mere prince, when he visited the Bay Area to promote organic agriculture in 2005.

“I don’t remember what we ate, but I know we ate all of it, and I know that King Charles was mightily impressed,” Ms. Waters told the Light. “I considered Margaret an artist. She always surprised me on the plate and in the room. She really had her own way of expressing beauty. She was incredibly creative.”

For all the celebrities who passed through, Ms. Grade considered West Marin’s ranchers, fisherman and farmers to be the true superstars of Manka’s. 

“If a duck farmer showed up and sold us sausage, that was akin to having King Charles in our establishment,” said Luc Chamberland, owner of Saltwater, who worked at Manka’s for seven years. “If they sat down in the dining room for dinner, she would make sure they got a standing
 ovation.”

One of her suppliers was Peter Martinelli, who brought organic greens and produce from his Bolinas farm. “She was a huge champion of the local farms around here, a huge champion,” he said. “She was willing to buy just about anything I had to offer to get my little business off the ground.”

Her painstakingly crafted menus included shout-outs to producers. For example:

Mr. Wolfe’s Pigeon Grilled in the Fireplace

Nested in Warm Leaves of Annabelle’s
Escarole

Served with Liver and Charred Onions Atop Focaccia Toasts

Ms. Grade treated all her guests like royalty. “She wanted to create a unique and special experience,” Mr. Chamberland said. “She instilled in those of us who worked for her an understanding that all details matter. Don’t overlook anything.”

If there was ever an empty seat at the chef’s table, she would pick up the phone and invite someone to dinner. On weeknights, she offered moderately priced meals that local diners could afford. And she never missed an opportunity to celebrate. 

At Easter, she put on an elaborate, larger-than-life egg hunt to the delight of neighborhood children. The staff would don costumes she had rented from the San Francisco Opera and hide hundreds of hand-painted eggs around the garden. They would blow soap bubbles from the upstairs windows and there were prizes and delectable chocolate rabbits.

“The entire village was invited,” said Evan Shively, who worked as a waiter and chef at Manka’s. “It was outrageous, Alice-in-Wonderland stuff, just completely over the top.”

So much of what she did brought joy to the community, Mr. Shively said. 

“People found the place completely magical, outside the parameters of normal existence,” he said. “That’s the spell she cast, and I loved being a part of it.”

Her friend Inez Storer, an Inverness painter, thought of Ms. Grade as a performance artist.

“She created events,” Ms. Storer said. “She could have gone to art school, and she would have been very good. She would have broken boundaries.”

Though her work generated noise and attention, Ms. Grade, who had a pale visage with striking, angular features, was private and quiet. “It was hard to hear her even talk,” Ms. Storer said. “She spoke in a really low voice.”

Her zeal for perfection could make her a challenging and sometimes exasperating boss. Ms. Grade loved gathering flowers and would always prepare an enormous flower arrangement at the center of the dining room. 

“It was constantly changing and wildly extravagant, a perfect distillation of her passion for what she was doing,” Mr. Shively said. “Even after we would have the dining room all set up—five minutes before the first diner was arriving—a maelstrom would blow through and there would be flowers, twigs and moss everywhere.”

Before Ms. Grade took over management of the lodge, her brother Ben was the chef and managed the inn with his wife, Sandy. After they returned to Milwaukee, the family’s hometown, Ms. Grade brought in a series of up-and-coming chefs from San Francisco. One of them was Daniel DeLong, who became her romantic partner and father to her two children, Coco and Django. 

Ms. Grade oversaw menus and made desserts. After a long night in the kitchen, she would be back early to prepare breakfast—fresh buttermilk biscuits, a poached duck egg or rabbit sausage on a bed of polenta, depending on the day.

She made sure everything was just right, said Mark Pasternak, who owns Devil’s Gulch Ranch and supplied Manka’s with rabbit, chicken, squab, quail, pork and lamb. “She was an absolute freak for perfection. Every little thing had to be perfect, and she was very adamant about that with her staff,” he said.

If Ms. Grade was a demanding boss, she was also a generous one. A procession of Levinger family members worked at Manka’s, including Maggie Beth Levinger, her mother and three of her brothers. The inn was just a few winding blocks from their home.

After Ms. Levinger’s brother Virgil passed away several years ago, Ms. Grade stepped in to support the family. “She and Daniel just walked through our front door the next evening with this huge restaurant pan full of roasted meat and vegetables,” Ms. Levinger recalled. “They kept going out to their car and coming back in with more food. They didn’t even say anything. They just breezed in with a feast and breezed out.”

Margaret Major Grade was born in Milwaukee on Dec.  9, 1951, the fourth child in a close-knit family of 11 children. Her father, John Oscar Grade, was a family physician who made house calls, and her mother, Shirley Agnes Grade, was an avid knitter who owned a yarn store. He loved gardening, and she loved cooking big family dinners. When Ms. Grade discovered Manka’s, she imagined her family gathering there. 

She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a doctorate in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Before taking charge of Manka’s, she worked for several years as a neuropsychologist at U.C.S.F. She frequently visited West Marin before falling in love with Manka’s.

The inn took its name from the late Manka Prokupek, who operated a Czechoslovakian restaurant in the lodge for 33 years. Ms. Grade kept the name after purchasing it in 1989 and set about transforming it in her own image while maintaining its arts-and-crafts feel. 

Fire struck the inn during a violent windstorm at around 3 a.m. on Dec. 27, 2006. An oak tree toppled over, severing a propane line to a gas water heater. When the flames finally diminished, all that remained was part of the charred front wall.

Ms. Grade and Mr. DeLong were keen to rebuild but ran into conflicts with the insurance company, county code inspectors and disgruntled neighbors who thought the inn didn’t belong in their quiet neighborhood.

They continued operating the cabins for several years, even without the kitchen. At one point, Ms. Grade decided to rebrand with a giant yellow M placed down the hill on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. In a tongue-in-cheek way, the sign called to mind McDonald’s golden arches. An uproar ensued among neighbors who thought it was crass. The county deemed it an illegal billboard.

“She took some very big risks with the community and pushed some buttons,” Ms. Storer said. “She loved ruffling feathers.”

Jim Emmott, who implemented many of Ms. Grade’s grand architectural flourishes, recalls her frustrated interactions with the county zoning administrator, who insisted on 8-foot ceilings.

“I don’t know if you realize it, but I’m in the fantasy business,” Mr. Emmott recalls her replying. “I wonder how you would intend for me to fit fantasy under an 8-foot ceiling. Does Disney World have an 8-foot ceiling?”

Manifesting her creative inspirations required patience, but that patience was rewarded, Mr. Emmott said. And whenever her zanier ideas didn’t work, she took the blame rather than chastising whomever executed them. 

“Whatever’s normal, she rejected, whether it was taller or smaller, chunkier or thinner, white where it should have been black,” Mr. Emmott said. “She was a contrarian that way.”

She sometimes did things she knew wouldn’t pass muster with the county. Her motto, according to Mr. Emmott: “I’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission.”

Eventually, Ms. Grade gave up on restoring Manka’s and turned her attention to another project: transforming the Olema Inn into yet another otherworldly dining destination, Sir and Star. Her first move was defiantly painting the white building a dark shade of gray. The establishment was just starting to soar when Covid struck, forcing it to close. It remains shuttered at the village’s crossroads.

Over the years, Mr. Emmott became close friends with Ms. Grade, who seemingly emerged unscathed from the Jan. 11 car crash, when she collided with a utility truck. She climbed out of the car and went home for several days before developing symptoms that sent her to the hospital.

Mr. Emmott visited with her during her six-week stay, and on the day she died, he raced down to U.C.S.F. to bid her farewell. He arrived 10 minutes too late.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye to her eyes, but I did get to say goodbye to her,” he said. “She was a beautiful person.”