October 19, 2021 – Nearly four years after shutting down, Monterey’s historic Stokes Adobe is set to reopen to diners this week with a clean new look, local hospitality veteran Bryce Hansen in charge of the kitchen, bar manager Matty Eggleston mixing cocktails and new owners—general manager Sarah Orr and her father Peter Orr—making sure everything runs according to plans.
“We want to be a fun, casual, affordable place where the community can gather again,” Sarah told us during a sneak peek at the refurbished adobe that was previously home to the celebrated Restaurant 1833 and before that Gallatin’s.
During a recent walk through, kitchen staff were enjoying a menu tasting in the tree-shaded garden, delivery drivers were wheeling in box after box of bottles and a small army of servers were huddled in a meeting in the main dining room.
Is it just a coincidence that the famously-haunted adobe would open in the middle of spooky season, right ahead of Halloween? “This place was closed for a long time,” Sarah laughs, “there was a ton of work to do to get it ready.”
To be called simply and sensibly Stokes Adobe (the same name used by previous owners Kirk and Dorothea Probasco in the 1990s and 2000s,) the the new restaurant now gleams with a fresh coat of white paint on the walls and a new white marble bar. A waist-level interior window shows off a glimpse of the original adobe bricks. Comfy new sofas and armchairs fill the lounge next door to the bar. And the entire yard and garden has been upgraded with white-cushions, comfortable seating and new blankets for snuggling around the fire pits. The main dining room on the ground floor had not yet been set up when I visited, but Sarah said the upstairs dining room would not be used to start with. Even without that space the restaurant can accommodate up to 140 diners at a time.
The menu will revolve around sharable appetizer plates, fresh house-made pasta dishes and a handful of other entrées, including truffle chicken, scallops and wild mushroom pithivier made with puff pastry. “We want to do a limited number of things well,” she says.
Chef Hansen says they’ve done a lot of R&D and are happy with all the dishes, but added he was still waiting for a shipment of plates to arrive and was still looking to fill a few shifts in the kitchen. Hansen most recently worked as executive chef at Jeninni Kitchen + Wine Bar in Pacific Grove and before that at The Meatery in Seaside. Previously he worked as executive sous chef under chef Cal Stamenov at Bernardus Lodge in Carmel Valley.
Bar manager Matty Eggleston was busy stocking shelves when I stopped by. A native of Chicago, he spent the past three years as beverage manager at Ventana Big Sur. He underscores the basic theme of Stokes Adobe with his pledge to make “classic cocktails done right, using freshly squeezed juices.” He plans to offer a Spanish-style gin tonic program and throws down the gauntlet, saying he’ll make the best margarita in town.
It’s kind of an inside joke, since Sarah Orr and Peter Orr also own Margaritaville in Capitola—where excellent margaritas are easy to find. As EMB’s Mark C. Anderson reported when the father-daughter duo took over the Monterey landmark last winter, they are longtime locals based in Aptos but with deep connections to Monterey, where Sarah went to high school (York School) and Peter continues to serve on the Monterey Jazz Festival board. Read more about their background and run-ins with Hattie the adobe’s resident ghost here.
A soft opening is planned for Stokes Adobe this week. We’ll try to offer more details on our social media when they become available.
Stokes Adobe • 500 Hartnell St. Monterey • stokesadobe.com
About the author
Deborah Luhrman is publisher and editor of Edible Monterey Bay. A lifelong journalist, she has reported from around the globe, but now prefers covering our flourishing local food scene and growing her own vegetables in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
