Dinner was absolutely the highlight at the Alila Ventana Big Sur. It’s not just a free meal, it’s a multi-course experience that excited our taste buds and left us completely stuffed.

View other posts in this series:

• Simply Spectacular: The Immaculate Alila Ventana Big Sur
• Enjoying Breakfast at the Alila Ventana Big Sur
• Satisfying Lunch at the Alila Ventana Big Sur
• Delicious Dinner at the Alila Ventana Big Sur (this post)
• Alila Ventana’s NYE Dinner at The Sur House: Absolutely Delicious
• The Paid and Free Activities at Ventana Big Sur
• Comparing Miraval Berkshires With Alila Ventana: Which Is Better?

While we called out our dinner for New Year’s Eve in a separate post, each dinner we had here was absolutely impressive. More than any other meal, the dinners added the most value to the overall stay and experience we had here at the hotel.

Dinner at the Alila Ventana Big Sur

The Sur House serves dinner nightly, which is the same location for breakfast and one of the lunch options. Dinner here starts at 5PM and extends until 9PM. If you’d prefer, you could order room service in your room, but it quite simply wouldn’t be the same. You’re going to want to make the walk over here from the rest of the hotel or request a cart to come pick you up.

Unlike lunch service, The Sur House doesn’t allow children for dinner.

By the entrance, you’ll find the storeroom that houses all of the restaurant’s wines.

Dinner is popular here, especially later in the evening. If you’re here right at the start of dinner, there aren’t as many people and I would argue the experience is a bit more intimate.

Alila Ventana Big Sur Dinner #1

The menu changed daily, which was refreshing so that it wouldn’t get boring. We had the impression from our time here that many of the ingredients were sourced from the hotel’s gardens and animals. As you might expect, everything we ate was incredibly fresh.

The drink menu, however, didn’t change from night to night. Of course, I don’t think anyone would have expected it to change.

And at the end of the service, Juan presented the dessert menu to us.

Dinner #1, First Course

We were greeted by our waiter, Juan, on the first evening, who was simply delightful. The evening started with some bread for the table.

For the first course, I ordered The Hen Egg, which was simply a perfect mix of flavors. The creaminess of the dish makes for an excellent dip for the bread at the table. You might wonder if there is enough texture in the dish to make it work, but actually I didn’t have a problem with it. The dish is well-balanced on its own.

Jenn chose the Spanish Octopus, which was expertly prepared. I’ve always been a little bit leery of octopus–not because of what it is, but because of how I feel many chefs tend to butcher it. No such problem here as it was every bit as tender as you would want it to be. I’m tempted to say it was even the best octopus we’ve ever had. The dish came with a curry-like chickpea accoutrement that added some good flavor.

As the menu suggests, there is a wine pairing that could be added to the meal for $85. I decided to go with the wine pairing (Jenn just stuck with her drink from happy hour). The first wine was a Chablis Premier Cru, which brought out some of the flavors in The Hen Egg dish.

Dinner #1, Second Course

Our main courses followed. I ordered the Braised Short Rib, which was absolutely massive. This was one of the largest short ribs I’ve been served in a restaurant and it was as delicious as hoped. The crispy was needed for texture purposes and we thought the kale was the best pairing possible for the dish. It helps when the kale absorbs all those meat juices as it sits under the short rib. The mashed potatoes underneath gives the whole dish a bit of melt-in-your-mouth excitement.

Jenn’s main course was the Kvaroy Salmon, which also had a delicious flavor. The crispy salmon skin is really the difference-maker for us (I know because of all the salmon I cook at home). There were plenty of greens paired with this dish, adding a bit of freshness. And the puree underneath blended the flavors pretty well.

The wine pairing for this course was the Turley Old Vines Zinfandel, which brought out a little extra flavor in the short rib. But purely as a standalone wine, I much preferred the Chablis above.

Dinner #1, Third Course

For dessert, I ordered the Buche de Noel, which you can think of as a roll cake. The spongy dish was on the lighter side, which was a good change of pace from how filling the main course was. It also came with a ‘Happy Anniversary’ chocolate, which suggests a note must have been passed from the front desk of the hotel over to the kitchen.

Jenn chose the Citrys Panna Cotta, which was a bit underwhelming. I’m not sure if it was just this batch of panna cotta as we overheard another table talk about how lackluster it was. The grapefruit was sweet but the dish itself had a bit of a grainy consistency to it that threw it off. Not sure if it’s from the curdling of the citrus, but it needs a little work to perfect.

To accompany the dessert course, Jenn ordered a chai latte, which was good. (Much better than the prior week’s latte served at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta Buckhead where the barista didn’t know a latte had milk in it). Non-alcoholic drinks are complimentary, which was nice.

My dessert came with some 20 year Tawny port. As I’ve aged, I’ve become more of a fan of ports and this one was excellent. I actually preferred it by itself more than I cared for my dessert and debated ordering another glass on subsequent nights.

Alila Ventana Big Sur Dinner #2

For the second night, the menu changed slightly. The appetizers and about half of the main courses remained consistent from night to night, but almost all “Land and Sea” selections changed.

Dinner #2, First Course

To start our experience the second evening, I ordered the Hamachi Aguachile. You can just taste the raw flavors of the yellowtail (hamachi) in the citric acid. The chili oil adds just enough of a kick to make it interesting. It’s a light start to dinner, and frankly more of what we were hoping for after feeling overly stuffed yesterday.

Jenn went with the Celeriac Soup, which had a bit of depth of flavor to it that we weren’t expecting. You can taste the sweetness of the apples permeate the soup and makes it a bit more fulfilling. By pure chance, the dish actually pairs quite well with the spiciness of the Hamachi Aguachile, so if there are any couples out there looking to share their appetizers, this is a good pairing.

I decided to change things up this meal and chose some cocktails to accompany my meal rather than the wine pairing. For this evening, I chose the Cowboy in the Continental Suit. First of all, I couldn’t pass up on a name like that. Secondly, mezcal is slowly becoming a fan favorite of mine (I mean, just look at the mezcal drinks available at the Park Hyatt Aviara).

The drink has some sweetness to it to help balance it out. It didn’t exactly pair exceptionally well with the food, but I didn’t expect it to.

Dinner #2, Second Course

For the main course, I chose the 38 North Duck Breast, which was fantastic. The duck was cooked to perfection and came paired with lots of veggies. The roasted cauliflower underneath the giant slabs of duck was quite delicious as well (this coming from someone who normally doesn’t appreciate cauliflower). The sauce underneath does a good job binding all the flavors together.

Jenn chose the U10 Scallops, which were cooked just about as well as you could hope for. The porcini mushrooms added a bit of substance and earthiness to the dish and was a good contrast to the scallops. We agreed that it was perhaps our second-favorite scallops of all time, narrowly losing out to the scallops we had at the Ritz Carlton Maldives.

Dinner #2, Third Course

For dessert, I went with the Sticky Toffee Pudding, which could just be best described as warm, gooey deliciousness. If you like that pairing of a warm cake with a scoop of ice cream, this is what you’ll want to get. The cone fragment on top adds a bit of texture to the dish. I could eat this again every night if allowed.

Jenn went with the whimsical Tirami-shroom, which was an incredibly playful version of tiramisu. If you’re a fan of incredibly cute dishes that look like a work of art, this is absolutely the dessert for you. The dish isn’t overwhelmingly coffee-filled and is instead contained in a few areas of the dish. That allows even non-coffee lovers (like me) to enjoy parts of this dish and not be inundated with a blast of coffee as you eat it.

As you might expect from its size, this is a very filling dessert. Fair warning that you may not have room for it depending on what you ate earlier in the evening.

A side note

If you’re like us, you’ll schedule your dinners early in the evening. We made a reservation for 5PM each night, which coincided with the end of the complimentary happy hour from 4PM to 5PM. You absolutely can stop by the bar and ask for a drink right at the end of happy hour and let them know you also need to check in with the host stand. The bartender proactively offered to bring our drinks to our table. We actually didn’t know there was a complimentary happy hour here for hotel guests when we made the reservations, but it worked out perfectly!

Also, if you prefer sparkling water instead of still, simply ask your server and they will accommodate.

Stay tuned for the next installment where we will dive into the activities found at Alila Ventana Big Sur.