country store

Founder Dan Evins, a Tennessee oil jobber, envisioned a restaurant and retail operation themed around old-time country stores, where people gathered to play checkers on barrels once used to deliver crackers.

The road is lined with stone walls and cottages adorned with flags, painted rocks, wind chimes and gnomes — a mini Topanga Canyon anchored by Mary’s Market, a 103-year-old eclectic diner and country store.

Dona Elliott, 59, owns this combination country store and saloon, built in 1929 of clapboard and shingles, uphill from the river and hard by a narrow woodland road.

“We don’t eat in an old country store for woke burgers,” one commenter wrote.

The Malibu Feed Bin — the country store where our family sold wildflower honey made from the dozens of beehives we tended in our backyard.