Merry Christmas From Monterey Bay Food Tours!
We here at Monterey Bay Food Tours hope your holiday season was just as awesome as ours!
This week, due to our staff traveling around and visiting their families, our blog will be taking a week off, as well.
We’ll be back next week — just in time to bring in the new year and showcase all the wonderful food and events we have in the area!
Happy holidays!
There is no getting around it: the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a masterpiece. You can easily spend four hours completely mesmerized by the giant kelp forest, the sea otters, and the hypnotic pulse of the deep-sea jellyfish. But all that awe-inspiring marine biology works up a very specific kind of hunger.
If you step out of the aquarium doors onto Cannery Row without a game plan, you are highly likely to fall victim to overpriced, neon-lit tourist traps serving frozen shrimp and uninspired burgers. You don't have to settle for that. Some of the best independent food spots on the peninsula are sitting just a few blocks away if you know which direction to walk.
If you’ve ever breathed in the misty air on a Big Sur cliffside, you’ve tasted the "zing" of the Pacific. Most people just call it the ocean breeze, but Carlo Overhulser and his team at Big Sur Salts figured out how to put that specific feeling into a jar.
Legend has it that in 2015, a rogue wave in Big Sur soaked Carlo and left a bit of the ocean behind in a beer bottle he was holding. Instead of just drying off, he took that water home, evaporated it, and realized he was onto something special. Today, the team at Big Sur Salts has figured out how to put that specific coastal feeling into a jar. I used to think salt was just salt, but after learning of Carlo's process, it’s clear they are harvesting the literal DNA of the Monterey coastline.
If you’re wandering through the Carmel or Del Monte Farmers Markets and see a crowd hovering over what looks like a jewelry display, you’ve probably found Qouign (pronounced “queen.”)
The force behind the brand is Santana Rodriguez, a Soledad native and resilient "pastry queen" who sharpened her skills in legendary kitchens like Bernardus Lodge and Thomas Keller’s Bouchon before striking out on her own.
I’ve often walked down Cannery Row and wondered if the tourists snapping photos of the bronze statues realize just how much the ground beneath their feet has shifted. Today, it’s all high-end hotels, breezy galleries, and the world-class Monterey Bay Aquarium. But if you could peel back the layers of paint and modern glass, you’d find a place that was, for a long time, defined by a smell so pungent it could apparently peel the paint off a house!
Monterey Bay Food Tours maintains an inside track to our amazing food partners, from the terrific stops on our food tour to the folks who hand make the goodies in our giftable totes.
For the most treasured digital souvenir around, read on to discover a treasured recipe straight from one of the best restaurants in Monterey.
Summer in Monterey is famously misunderstood. If you come here expecting tropical beach weather, the July fog will give you a swift reality check. We have a saying around here: the coldest winter you’ll ever spend is summer on the Central Coast.