But no Minnesota ice fisherman ever saw anything like the Warming Hut Cafe & Bookstore, which opened last month in the new national park. Chilled crab fishermen coming in off Torpedo Wharf can be warmed by Golden Gate Coffee, and grilled Havarti cheese sandwiches.

A converted Army warehouse with a picture window framing Alcatraz, this hut certainly has the fanciest name in food -- Alice Waters, who inspired the menu and occasionally drops in carrying fresh organic strawberries.

Located on the West Bluff, you can drive to it, but that's cheating. Park at East Beach with the windsurfers and take the Promenade into the teeth of the wind. This will make a walker appreciate the skill of the airmen who used to take off and land here. One of them was Dana Crissy, who landed here just once in 1919, at the start of a cross-country race. His plane went down and the landing strip, now a grassy field atop a berm, was named for him.

The Warming Hut Cafe is just past some picnic tables and an amphitheater. It is a white two-story barnlike structure and everything behind the big glass doors is made of recycled materials. The wooden furniture is built of wood salvaged from the warehouse itself. The walls are insulated with crushed blue jeans. The menu board is a chalkboard salvaged from a school in Oakland.

For sipping, there are a half-dozen tables along a bench that offers a view past the joggers and through Raccoon Straits.

Across from the cafe is the store with Alice Waters' books, local jams, dog soap, aviation memorabilia and the full array of garb carrying the GGNRA logo.

Proceeds benefit park educational programs, but the great thing about walking to the Warming Hut is one doesn't have to feel guilty for not buying anything heavier than a Crissy Field Hat, $15, worth it on a cold day.

The last leg of the journey takes you to a Cyclone fence under the Golden Gate Bridge a half-mile away. Anyone who touches the handprints painted on the fence earns a handful of Beth's Babies quarter-sized cookies for $1 at the Warming Hut on the return walk. .

The Warming Hut Cafe & Bookstore is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Monday. Call (415) 561-3040, or visit www.crissyfield.org.

This article appeared on page CM - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle