This year, my family decided to go on a relaxing, food and drink-filled vacation at The Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, CA (Northern California, near Monterey) – so I’m here to fill you in on the best bites and sips that this beautiful NoCal destination has to offer!
Pebble Beach is about a 15 minute drive from the Monterey, CA airport, and just under 30-minutes away from the adorable coastal town of Carmel. Since these beautiful places hug the ocean and wine country is just a short cry away, the seafood and wine selection offered at a multitude of the restaurants here is nothing short of divine.
Day One at Spanish Bay Inn in Pebble Beach: Endless Buffets and Open Bars (My Personal Heaven)
Our home base for this trip was The Inn at Spanish Bay, which is well known for great golf and beautiful views. Pebble Beach is relatively close to San Francisco, CA, so there is an abundance of talent in the area, especially in the culinary industry. We started our trip with dinner, which was a series of buffets prepared by the Spanish Bay culinary team.
The buffets featured Mexican cuisine, a full raw bar as well as a vat a fresh clam chowder, homemade bread for dipping, and endless towers of sushi rolls, too. If you made it through the first two buffet tables, you’d eventually reach a table full of fresh Chinese food, and then you’d finally get to a meat station where you’d be offered fresh, premium cuts of anything you wanted. Safe to say the hotel spares no expense when it comes to keeping its guests well fed!
I loved everything that I tasted – the fresh clam chowder had to be the winner of the night for me, it was so creamy and the clams were so fresh – I couldn’t stop eating it!
Another highlight of the night was the custom martini bar that the hotel had set up right in front of the beach. My sister and I couldn’t get enough of the signature Lychee martinis that they were shaking up for us (which we paid for the next morning, but it’s vacation, right?). We finished our night with a martini in one hand and chocolate cake from the dessert bar in another. Our first night of eating at was a complete success.
Day 2 in Pebble Beach: Amazing Food by Chef Tyler Florence, and Peppoli at Spanish Bay
On our first full day at Pebble Beach, we woke up with slight martini headaches but were determined to make the most of the day. We got ready and headed over to the main Pebble Beach golf course where there was a cooking demonstration hosted by Chef Tyler Florence from the Great Food Truck Race on Food Network. We were greeted with Bloody Mary’s and found our seats to watch Chef Florence prepare BBQ Chicken, coleslaw, and potato salad – all recipes from his new Barbecue Cookbook (which we took copies of home later, of course!). Chef Florence’s demonstration was a highlight of the trip – he was so well spoken and entertaining, it was an absolute pleasure to watch him and meet him afterwards!
After the cooking demo we were ushered out to a patio overlooking the golf course and ocean, where we were served appetizers and then got to enjoy Chef Florence’s BBQ chicken, coleslaw, potato salad, and even his signature upside down strawberry cake. We really couldn’t have asked for a better lunch!
After our post-lunch nap, we made our way to Peppoli, and Italian restaurant located right inside The Inn at Spanish Bay. After traveling through Italy and taking an intro to Italian cooking course at the Culinary Institute of Italy, I can be a pretty harsh critic of Italian food (can you blame me?). I wasn’t expecting to love Peppoli as much as I did – but I really did love this food.
When we arrived to the restaurant they had a full wood burning pizza oven set up on the lawn overlooking the bay where they were serving mini pizza appetizers. I had a delicious slice (or three…) of an Italian-style pizza with mushrooms, truffle, and goat cheese – this was one of the best pizzas I’ve had in North America, hands down.
Day Three: A Surf & Turf Dinner by Chef Tyler Florence
By day three of this trip my expectations for food and drinks were through the roof, because up to this point everything had been exceptional so why would I assume any less moving forward?
Spoiler alert, my thought process was correct. For breakfast we had an amazing buffet spread of fruit, pastries, eggs, avocado toast, coffee, fresh squeeze orange juice, etc. – all set up in the Peppoli Italian restaurant that we had dined at the night before. Lunch this day was a blur, I was so full from the breakfast buffet that I sort of skimmed over a midday meal so that I’d be hungry for dinner. Thank goodness I was because that night’s dinner was outstanding.
We boarded the resort shuttle from Spanish Bay to the Pebble Beach golf course, where we were greeted by a putting competition and wall of culinary syringes filled with tropical vodka shots (okay, cool). We sat at a fire pit overlooking the golf course and enjoyed bottomless cocktails – I was on a skinny margarita kick after having out-wine’d and out-martini’d myself the prior nights. And once again, there were buffets set up everywhere.
In one corner, Chef Tyler Florence and his team were serving up a surf & turf meal of perfectly cooked steak, fresh shellfish, and a make-your-own nachos bar (absolutely to die for). In another corner, a leg of his team was shucking oysters at a beautiful raw bar adorned with flowers. Next to the oysters, they were also grilling octopus – which was one of the highlight dishes of the trip for me. Octopus is one of those things that’s so difficult to cook right, but they had nailed it and served it slightly charred but somehow managed to keep it so succulent and tender.
There was also a fresh salad bar that I made my way to (mainly because I felt obligated after having eaten so many heavy food items) but I’m so glad I did because the salad and homemade vinaigrette bar that was set up was an absolute dream.
Pebble Beach Weekend Recap
All in all, Pebble Beach was an amazing place to visit and an even more amazing place to dine! I highly recommend visiting the Spanish Bay Inn and enjoying a night of delicious Italian food and wine at Peppoli’s, and a drink in the lobby overlooking the bay. If you ever have the chance to dine in San Francisco at one of Chef Tyler Florence’s restaurants, I also highly recommend that – his food was outstanding! My family and I can’t wait to go back to Pebble Beach!
