Restaurants, hotels, bars and wineries in Monterey from the En Primeur Club guide.
Accolades in Monterey
These are the Monterey restaurants where wine is a defining part of the experience, with the clearest cellar depth in Cannery Row and Fisherman's Wharf.
The Sardine Factory is a Cannery Row seafood and steakhouse with an exceptional wine program and a wine list of 2,105 selections spanning California, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Italy, and Germany. The restaurant holds a Michelin Plate and a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence. Service is a la carte, and the awards also include a Star Wine List.
Coastal Kitchen in Cannery Row is tasting menu only, with modern coastal cooking, an exceptional wine program, and a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence. The list is sommelier-led, and the pairings highlight local coastal ingredients. The menu is five courses, and the restaurant holds a Michelin Plate and Forbes Four-Star recognition.
Domenico's on the Wharf sits on Fisherman's Wharf and serves fresh sustainable seafood with Italian cooking. The wine program is exceptional, and the list is extensive. The menu includes local catch and pasta made daily, in an a la carte format, with harbor views from the waterfront room.
Coastal Kitchen in Cannery Row is the only tasting-menu restaurant in this section, and it holds a Michelin Plate. Montrio Bistro in downtown Monterey and Stokes Adobe in Old Monterey also hold Michelin Plates, with a la carte and small plates at Montrio and a la carte service at Stokes Adobe.
Coastal Kitchen in Cannery Row is tasting menu only, with panoramic Monterey Bay views and wine pairings that highlight local coastal ingredients. The wine program is exceptional and sommelier-led. Awards include a Michelin Plate and a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence. The menu is five courses.
Montrio Bistro in downtown Monterey is a New American bistro with an extensive wine list, and a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. It holds Michelin Plate recognition for 2024, 2025, and 2026, and the menu is served a la carte and as small plates. The restaurant occupies a restored 1910 firehouse with an open kitchen.
Stokes Adobe in Old Monterey serves seasonal California cooking with Italian and French influences and a wine list. It holds a Michelin Plate for 2024, 2025, and 2026. The format is a la carte, and the menu is small and ingredient-driven, served in a historic 1833 adobe.
The strongest wine restaurants in our guide sit in Cannery Row, Fisherman's Wharf, and downtown Monterey. Cannery Row holds Coastal Kitchen, The Sardine Factory, and Whaling Station Steakhouse, each with an exceptional wine program. Montrio Bistro, in downtown Monterey, has a list and a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. Cella Restaurant & Bar, in Downtown Monterey, has a list and a World's Best Wine Lists award.
Monterey has no Michelin-starred restaurants in our guide. Coastal Kitchen, The Sardine Factory, Montrio Bistro, Paprika Café, and Stokes Adobe hold Michelin Plates. Coastal Kitchen in Cannery Row serves a five-course tasting menu with a sommelier-led wine program and wine pairings highlighting local coastal ingredients.
Coastal Kitchen in Cannery Row is the tasting-menu restaurant in our guide. It is tasting menu only, with a five-course menu, panoramic Monterey Bay views, and sommelier-led pairings that highlight local coastal ingredients. The wine program is exceptional, and the restaurant holds a Michelin Plate and a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence.
Our guide has two Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence awards and two Award of Excellence awards in Monterey. Coastal Kitchen and The Sardine Factory, both in Cannery Row, hold the Best of Award of Excellence. Montrio Bistro, in downtown Monterey, holds an Award of Excellence.
By Emmett Haley · Updated October 8, 2026 · Editorial standards
Best of Monterey
Monterey
Selected entries from the current guide for Monterey.
Monterey, United States
Coastal Kitchen at 400 Cannery Row holds a Michelin Plate and Forbes Travel Guide Four-Star recognition, placing it at the upper end of Monterey's dining tier. The window-lined room frames Pacific sunsets while a five-course menu sources 98 percent of its ingredients within a 100-mile radius. The chef's lineage runs through Charlie Trotter's, Restaurant Paul Bocuse, and a 2008 Bocuse d'Or Most Promising Chef award.
Monterey, United States
One of Monterey's most enduring seafood addresses, The Sardine Factory holds a Michelin Plate and a wine list of 2,105 selections spanning California, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Italy, and Germany. The kitchen works the regional catch through a dinner-only format at the $$$ cuisine price point, with wine director Dave Sidener and sommelier Natalie Enriquez overseeing one of the Central Coast's most serious cellar programs.
Monterey, United States
Montrio Bistro holds consecutive Michelin Plate recognition for 2024 and 2025, placing it among the more consistently acknowledged contemporary restaurants in Monterey. Housed in a converted historic firehouse on Calle Principal, the $$$-tier menu draws on California's central coast pantry through a contemporary lens.
Monterey, United States
Cella Restaurant & Bar occupies a corner of downtown Monterey where the Central Coast's ingredient culture, Salinas Valley produce, Pacific seafood, and regional wine, shapes a menu that reflects the area's agricultural and oceanic duality. Accredited by the World of Fine Wine & Lifestyle Awards, it holds a credible position in a city whose dining scene has grown considerably beyond its Cannery Row origins.
Monterey, United States
Paprika Café on Lighthouse Avenue brings consistent Mediterranean cooking to Monterey's mid-price tier, earning Michelin Plate recognition in both 2024 and 2025. It is a Mediterranean restaurant at a price point that sits well below most of its Michelin-acknowledged peers.
Monterey, United States
On Alvarado Street in the heart of downtown Monterey, Rosine's occupies a stretch of the city's main commercial corridor where casual American dining meets a loyal local following. The restaurant sits within walking distance of Fisherman's Wharf and the older neighborhood grid, making it a practical anchor for visitors moving between the waterfront and the historic downtown core. It represents the kind of neighborhood constant that any working city depends on.
Monterey, United States
A 2024 Michelin Plate recipient occupying one of Monterey's most storied historical addresses, Stokes Adobe pairs a warm, firepit-lit courtyard with a small, ingredient-driven menu that draws on French and Italian tradition. The cooking opts for substance over spectacle, with hearty pasta and confident braised dishes that make the $$$ price point feel earned. At 500 Hartnell St, it sits at the quieter, residential edge of downtown Monterey.
Monterey, United States
Ambrosia India Bistro serves authentic Indian in Monterey, with a courtyard, garden views, and a conversational, casual pace for lunch or dinner.
Monterey, United States
On Wave Street in Monterey's arts district, Bistro Moulin brings French bistro traditions to a California coastal setting that has long supported this kind of neighbourhood-scaled dining. The room trades spectacle for familiarity, positioning itself within a local scene that runs from casual harbour-side spots to more formal contemporary tables. Expect classic bistro format with a Monterey sensibility.
Monterey, United States
Café Fina sits on Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, California, where the working waterfront tradition of seafood dining has shaped the local table for generations. The restaurant occupies a position in the wharf's dining ecology that reflects the broader Central Coast pattern: proximity to the water as both context and credential. Visitors looking for Monterey's seafood character in a wharf setting will find it anchored here.
Monterey, United States
On Alvarado Street in downtown Monterey, Cibo occupies a position that reflects the city's broader dining character: neither the resort-facing seafood houses of Cannery Row nor the hushed tasting-menu rooms that have emerged elsewhere on the Central Coast. It sits in the middle register where Monterey's working dining scene operates, drawing locals and visitors alike to a recognizable address in the city's commercial and cultural centre.
Monterey, United States
Domenico's on the Wharf occupies one of Fisherman's Wharf's most direct waterfront positions in Monterey, where the Pacific sets the menu's terms. The kitchen follows the logic of the bay: seafood sourced close, prepared without ceremony, and served against a view that requires no improvement. For Monterey's coastal dining scene, it represents a direct proposition with deep local roots.
Monterey, United States
Esteban occupies a quiet stretch of Munras Avenue where Monterey's coastal character and Spanish-inflected culinary traditions meet in a relaxed but considered setting. The kitchen draws from the Central Coast's seafood abundance and California's produce calendar, placing it within the mid-to-upper tier of the city's dining scene. For visitors working through the peninsula's restaurant options, it represents one of the more regionally grounded choices available.
Monterey, United States
On Lighthouse Avenue in Monterey's New Monterey district, Hula's Island Grill brings a Hawaiian-inflected approach to a coastal California dining scene better known for clam chowder and Dungeness crab. The mood is relaxed and the format casual, placing it comfortably outside the fine-dining tier occupied by Fisherman's Wharf institutions, and all the more useful for that contrast.
Monterey, United States
Monterey Cookhouse occupies a North Fremont Street address that places it away from the tourist-heavy Cannery Row corridor, situating it instead within the working rhythms of residential Monterey. With limited publicly available data on pricing and format, it remains a venue best approached through direct contact or a visit. See our full Monterey dining guide for context on how it sits within the city's broader restaurant scene.
Monterey, United States
Schooners Monterey sits on Cannery Row at 400 Cannery Row, positioning it squarely within the Central Coast's most seafood-focused dining corridor. The restaurant operates in a city where ocean proximity shapes every credible menu, and where the gap between waterfront spectacle and serious cooking is a real and recurring distinction. What Schooners does with that address says more about the Monterey dining scene than any single dish on the menu.
Monterey, United States
On Monterey's Fisherman's Wharf, Shake's Old Fisherman's Grotto occupies a particular niche in the city's waterfront dining scene: an established seafood house where the setting does as much work as the kitchen. Monterey Bay frames the windows, the air carries salt and kelp, and the menu draws from waters the restaurant has faced for decades. It sits in a category apart from the wharf's more casual fish-and-chips counters without reaching for the formality of the city's higher-end tables.
Monterey, United States
Whaling Station Steakhouse on Wave Street sits at the point where Monterey's working waterfront history and Central Coast beef country converge. The kitchen draws on regional sourcing traditions that have defined this stretch of California coast for decades, placing it inside a dining category that takes provenance seriously rather than treating it as a selling point.
Monterey, United States
Yamasushi occupies a mall address in Monterey's Del Monte Center, which tells you something useful: the city's Japanese dining scene rewards those who look past waterfront positioning. In a coastal town where seafood-forward spots like The Sardine Factory command the prime real estate, Yamasushi operates on a different logic, one where the food does the persuading. Plan accordingly and book ahead.
Monterey
Selected entries from the current guide for Monterey.
Monterey, United States
One of three luxury lodging options within the gated Pebble Beach resort community, The Inn at Spanish Bay occupies the northwest edge of the property where the Pacific meets the fairways of The Links at Spanish Bay. With 269 rooms, a Star Wine List-recognised cellar, and access to the full Pebble Beach amenity network, it positions itself as the resort's most coast-exposed address.
Monterey, United States
The Lodge at Pebble Beach sits directly above Stillwater Cove on the California coast, within the gated Pebble Beach resort community and steps from a golf course that has hosted six U.S. Opens. With 161 rooms, a Star Wine List 2026 recognition, and pre-arrival personalization that begins two weeks before check-in, it occupies the upper tier of California coastal resort properties.
Monterey, United States
Casa Palmero at Pebble Beach operates at the quieter, more intimate end of the Pebble Beach Resorts trio, with just 24 rooms in a Spanish Colonial estate that opened in 1999 and earned Star Wine List recognition in 2026. The property sits directly beside the Forbes Five-Star Spa at Pebble Beach and overlooks the first and second fairways of Pebble Beach Golf Links. Its scale, complimentary evening hospitality, and recent 2024 renovations position it as the resort's most residential option.
Monterey, United States
Occupying a prime position on Cannery Row directly above Monterey Bay, this 290-room hotel pairs European-style architecture with front-row views of sea otters, dolphins, and the open Pacific. The dining programme runs across three distinct formats, from Executive Chef Michael Rotondo's Coastal Kitchen to the casual Tidal Coffee café, while the 11,000-square-foot Vista Blue Spa rounds out a property built around its coastal setting.
Monterey
Selected entries from the current guide for Monterey.
Monterey, United States
On Monterey's Municipal Wharf 2, Sapporo Sushi & Steakhouse occupies a position where Pacific seafood and steakhouse traditions converge against an active working waterfront. The dual format places it in a category that Monterey's dining scene has long supported: venues that bridge Japanese technique with American protein-forward expectations, drawing both locals and visitors navigating the bay's culinary offerings.
Monterey
Selected entries from the current guide for Monterey.
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