“There are so many facets to the Fassetts,” Romney “Nani” Steele says, and she should know. After growing up as one of the four grandchildren raised at Nepenthe – she was very close with her grandmother and remembers the people Lolly pulled in clearly (like the hulking ex-Hollywood stuntman called Robot who would play with the grandkids, balance tables on his chin, then crash on Lolly’s kitchen floor) – she grew up cooking, then organized weddings and events, and served as chef for a nascent Cafe Kevah named after her great grandma.

She knows it even better after aggregating anecdotes along with 60-plus recipes for South Coast delicacies like the ambrosia burger, Nepenthe’s cheese pie and the California crab Louis (which will be served Friday) for My Nepenthe: Bohemian Tales of Food, Family and Big Sur. Her book will emerge this fall; she’ll read from the manuscript Friday, and her textured blog already ticks through a trove of revelations, to which she’s inviting Nepenthe visitors to add theirs.

Here’s three morsels culled from her blog and book, which she admits ultimately is more about people than a place, and as much a memoir as a cookbook:

• Longtime jack-of-all-trades and master storyteller Bill Fassett, after abandoning ship as a merchant marine to track down his wife-to-be, dreamed of a hot dog-coffee stand called Bill’s Place rather than the sweeping vision that embraced the “aesthetics and poetry of place” in his wife’s mind, where sanctuary-seeking pilgrims could forget their worldly cares.

• Henry Miller would come in with his entourage, take over, and stay all night long. On past midnight Lolly would send a signal from her log cabin that it was time to go: a staffer asking Miller, “How would you like your eggs?”

• During the filming of The Sandpiper, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (Taylor drank tea; Burton had a couple drinks) ate there every day. Burton requested Helen Weston (of Carmel Westons) as his waitress. She’d temptingly make him “passion cookies.” (The recipe is in the book; the other names for the treats, Steele says, are too naughty to publish.)

Learn more at www.mynepenthebook.com.