At midday the dining room at Pèppoli looks out over the dunes toward the water. Until this year, the restaurant served that view only at dinner. The plate that sets the tone at lunch is a sautéed cherry tomato with pesto on a wedge of grilled bread, a lighter version of the Tuscan kitchen known for braised veal shank and simmered cannellini beans. "It's different," Chef Angela Tamura told Monterey County Now. "We're doing things we wouldn't do on a dinner menu."
This is the first time Pèppoli has ever served lunch, and it isn't permanent. It exists because two other parts of Spanish Bay are offline at once, and both are scheduled to come back in the same few weeks next spring. That gives this winter at The Inn at Spanish Bay a fixed shape and a clear end date. Here is how it works and what to do with it.
Why the Italian room is open at noon
Sticks, the Inn's sports pub, closed for a year-long renovation. As Monterey County Now reported in its May 7, 2026 issue, that left Roy's as the only lunch option at the Inn and left the Sticks staff with nothing to do. Pebble Beach Company fixed both problems at once. The Sticks crew now runs lunch at Pèppoli every day from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. After the closure, that team had four days to train.
The kitchen had to be split to make it work. It isn't big enough for two full crews, so Tamura and Chef Anna Marie Bayonito gave lunch the front kitchen and its grill. The back kitchen, where the pastas and osso buco are made, stays with the dinner team. That split is why lunch is built around the grill. Tamura described a lunch steak frites made with flank steak, a cut she said Pèppoli "wouldn't do at night." It comes with a salsa verde of herbs, capers and pepperoncini.
The rest of the menu is short. It has starters, a chicken salad with a Mediterranean slant, a meatball sandwich, eggplant parmesan made with bufala mozzarella, a burger, a grinder, a few main plates and Roman-style pizzas. Some lunch dishes borrow from the dinner pantry. The broccoli rabe that goes with braised short ribs at night shows up on a sausage pizza at noon. Drinks are wines by the glass and five specialty cocktails.
Bryan Anthony, Pebble Beach's vice president of food and beverage, described the appeal to the same paper:
"Can you imagine going to Pèppoli for Saturday lunch and looking out over the ocean?"
He was thinking of the patio especially, with a meatball sandwich and a glass of wine. As of late October, the resort's Pèppoli page still lists daily lunch from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Roy's still serves lunch too, from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., with light fare from 3 to 4 p.m. If one patio is full, the other is close by.
What Sticks is turning into
The end date for Pèppoli's lunch depends on Sticks reopening, and the Sticks project is bigger than a menu change. The Carmel Pine Cone reported in February that the building holding Sticks, the pro shop and the Spanish Bay Club fitness center will be updated and expanded with a second floor for an indoor golf-simulator lounge. Monterey County Now adds that Sticks will come back as a gastropub with a new menu, under a 4,000-square-foot simulator lounge with at least four suites, and it expects the reopening in March 2027.
That March 2027 date is the paper's expectation. The resort's own Sticks page still just says "Temporarily Closed." Pèppoli's lunch service is also set to end in March 2027, so the two changes are tied together. When Sticks comes back, midday at Pèppoli goes away. The Pine Cone also reported that the Inn and its restaurants would stay open while course work went on, with limited impact on guests.
The course rebuild you can see from the road and the boardwalk
The golf course is the second closure, running on the same schedule as the clubhouse work. The Links at Spanish Bay opened in 1987 and is the youngest course on the Peninsula. It closed on March 18, 2026 for a 13-month rebuild led by Gil Hanse. Pebble Beach Company has set the reopening for April 17, 2027.
Much of the work is underground, so you won't see it from 17-Mile Drive. The storm drain system is being realigned and repaired, and the irrigation system, which the company says had reached the end of its useful life, is being replaced. The renovation plans also call for moving green sites, expanding greens, widening fairways and adding three acres of environmental habitat, with 12 percent less irrigated turf than before.
The company's August 26 update shows where the work is easiest to see. It started on holes 7 through 9, which run along 17-Mile Drive. By late summer the greens on 10 through 12 had taken shape and grass was going in from 12 through 14. The biggest change is at 13 and 14. The old par-five that ran back toward the ocean has been split into a straightaway par-four facing the same view and a brand-new par-three 14th.
On foot, the course work runs alongside a coastal path that came back before the course closed. The 3,900-foot public boardwalk between Moss Beach at Spanish Bay and Asilomar State Beach washed out in January 2023. The Coastal Commission approved rebuilding it in December 2024, with the route moved inland, according to the Carmel Pine Cone. At the Pebble Beach Community Advisory Board's December 10, 2025 meeting, Pebble Beach Company said the coastal boardwalk project was complete and reopened. It also said interpretive signage for the coastal trail was being prepared for submittal to the Coastal Commission and Monterey County. Those minutes are the latest official word on the path, so check conditions before planning a long walk around it.
How the winter ends
Taken together, the dates show how short this stretch is:
- Now through roughly March 2027: Pèppoli serves lunch daily from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
- March 2027, expected: Sticks reopens as a gastropub with the simulator lounge upstairs, and Pèppoli's lunch service ends.
- April 17, 2027: The Links at Spanish Bay reopens.
- Later in 2027: Pebble Beach Golf Links hosts the U.S. Open for a seventh time, more than any other course since the championship first came here in 1972.
Spring brings Spanish Bay a new pub, a simulator lounge and a rebuilt course, and lunch at Pèppoli goes away.
The holiday weeks at the Inn
The Inn's holiday calendar runs as usual during construction, and much of it fits around a Pèppoli lunch or a late-afternoon walk. These are the Spanish Bay dates on the resort's event calendar:
- Holiday Harvest Tasting, Wednesday, November 18: a seasonal tasting at Spanish Bay.
- Traps for the Holidays, December 1–30: a seasonal cocktail pop-up open from 11 a.m. to midnight.
- Carolers, December 15–23: 6 to 7 p.m.
- Lobby jazz, December 17–31: 7 to 10 p.m. Outside those dates, the lobby has jazz Thursday through Saturday and blues on Saturday afternoons.
- Holiday petting zoo, December 22–24: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Christmas Eve and Christmas Day: a pianist on December 24 and a flutist on December 25, both from 2 to 5 p.m.
- Starlight Soiree, December 31: the Inn's New Year's Eve party starts at 8 p.m. It's 21 and over, with live music, casino games, buffet and open bars, and a midnight breakfast. Tickets are $525 per person.
The bagpiper's schedule follows the season. The resort's event calendar lists him at 5:45 p.m. every evening. The resort's bagpiper page lists 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. for November through February, under Pacific Standard Time. The two pages don't agree, so call the Inn at (800) 877-0597 before heading out for sunset.
For visiting family, the public 17-Mile Drive entry fee is $12.50 per vehicle. It's reimbursed with a restaurant purchase of $35 or more, though purchases at the Pebble Beach Market don't count. A Pèppoli lunch easily covers it.
Sticks and the Links both reopen next spring. If you'd like to talk about what the 2027 reopenings and the U.S. Open year could mean for homes near the Inn and along 17-Mile Drive, I'm glad to share what I'm seeing. Susan Clark can walk you through it over coffee, or over lunch at Pèppoli while it's still serving one. Request Your VIP Listing Consultation.
