Big Sur Restaurants and Dining

(Big Sur, Monterey County, California - CA, USA)

The restaurants and eateries around Big Sur tend to offer reliably good meals with much attended to the actual presentation, although they are usually not what could ever be considered cheap. When dining out in Big Sur for lunch, visitors will generally find that lunchtime dishes are around half the price of evening dinners.

Californian cuisine is known for its use of only the freshest of ingredients, often available locally, and Big Sur is know exception to this, with restaurants often looking no further than the Monterey Peninsula for their inspiration. The most popular dining locations are just as much about the setting as the food, and those with coastal views are always the most popular.

Where to Eat

The dining options in the Big Sur area are very spread around, although quite easy to find. The Big Sur River Inn on Highway One at Pheneger Creek is especially popular and enjoys a riverfront setting, dating back as far as 1888.

At the River Inn Restaurant, diners often choose to dine outside, on the terraced deck, overlooking the garden and rivers, whilst dining on tasty specialities, such as grilled Angus New York steak, shrimp scampi, surf and turf, lemon and herb roasted chicken, roadhouse ribs and seafood ravioli, which is filled with a mixture of crab, lobster and also wild salmon.

Many further restaurants lie along Highway One, such as the Big Sur Bakery and Restaurant, which is perfect for a quick bite to eat and bakes fresh bread every morning, baked in a simple, wood-fired oven.

This is also a good place to find Italian-style wood-fired pizzas, which offer good value for money. Close to the Henry Miller Library, the Nepenthe is one of the most highly rated restaurants in the Big Sur area, offering fine dining accompanied with some extraordinary views of the Pacific Ocean, which stretch for miles. If Nepenthe's grilled steaks, fish and hamburgers are a little to expensive for you, then there is a cheap café very close by, which boasts similar coastal vistas.