Found Treasure: A Taste of Monterey Wine Market and Bistro

October 25, 2024 – The leaping blenny ranks as my favorite Monterey Bay Aquarium found treasure. 

Not only is it tucked away in the Splash Zone, the upstairs kids area on the far west end of the aquarium, it deploys a range of special talents worth honoring.

The same applies to this Found Treasure, which happens to be a blenny neighbor, just up Cannery Row, A Taste of Monterey Wine Market & Bistro (ATOM). 

That starts with the fact it’s similarly hidden, in the very back corner of the 700 Cannery Row maze of shops that border Steinbeck Plaza, with Sly McFly’s Refueling Station and Lilly Mae’s Cinnamon Rolls as its primary public face.

The leaping blenny can do things you’d never think a “fish” could. 

On brand with its name, Alticus saliens can leap out of the ocean and onto coastal rocks, and keep hopping around from there, terrestrial as long as it stays moist enough to breathe. 

Not to be outdone, A Taste of Monterey completes feats you don’t see out of many “tasting rooms,” especially when considered in their totality. 

It stocks wine from dozens of regional vintners—Bernardus, Comanche, Wrath, Scheid and Silvestri among them, 90 all told by ATOM’s estimation—which allows for cross winemaker tasting flights, and also has bottles available at retail to take home (with a 25% markdown for a four pack).

The roster of curated vino options would be enough to distinguish this place by itself. 

But ATOM also delivers a sizable menu worthy of the bistro title. 

That translates to wine-friendly classics like the sugar-cayenne-thyme-spiced almonds ($8), fennel- and citrus-laced olive medley ($8), bacon-wrapped/blue-cheese-stuffed dates ($10), and a high grade cheese catalog, with producers like Cypress Grove, Di Stefano, Marin French, Grafton Village and more listed from “soft” to “in the middle” to “firm” and “specialty.” 

Then there’s the charcuterie-salami action, with six imported Italian meats and one-, three- and five-item cheese+charcutes ($12, $24, $26) tempters.

But chef Alicia Velasco also extends the possibilities into things like garlic shrimp and cheesy grits ($16), Monterey crab dip with local artichokes ($17), and wild-caught smoked salmon ($14), though the latter two remind me how precarious the local fisherman reality remains with the fates of those crab and salmon fisheries in ongoing peril. 

And rectangular flatbread pizzas ($16-$17) like the Viva Italia with sun-dried tomato, pumpkin seed pesto, prosciutto, ricotta, fresh apple and arugula, or panini like the Monterey Cubano with carnitas, ham, provolone, pickles and mustard.

The blenny is a cool-looking creature—part timeless steampunk, part futuristic, part smooth angular, part evolutionary bulbous.

A Taste improbably wins here too (it’s not a contest), despite a several-hundred-thousand-year head start by the jumping species of combtooth blenny.

The setting here, even given the sublime wine lineup and worthy food, is the triumphant element. 

Knowing souls could rightfully say I buried the lede.

This place is striking enough that the spot would be epic if it sold grape drank instead of great wine, and 7-11 hot dogs instead of oak-grilled Santa Lucia tri-tip panini. 

These are blink-twice views, from italics worthy right on the water four-tops and cushioned couplets. 

The list of venues in the region with this type of oceanscape is shorter than my fingernails at the end of quadruple overtime.  

ATOM further styles out the space aesthetically with fine art photography—Bixby Bridge, Ribera Beach and local landscapes rendered with precision and thought—that reinforce the locality of the wines by emphasizing place in vivid ways.

One other blenny quality worth admiring has to be its camouflage. Without the ability to blend into the rock surfaces, this special athlete becomes a special snack for birds, lizards and crabs.

A Taste, keeping with the theme, outclasses the blenny there too. ATOM cloaks itself with an ungodly avalanche of tourist flypaper places including, by-the-bucket Candyland, hot sauce emporium Pepper Palace, Global Candle Gallery of Monterey, Daniel Woodland Shooting Gallery and the Holy Grail of disposable outposts As Seen on TV. 

That compilation of corny can work like a locals repellant, and/or a reminder that if you want to find treasure, sometimes you gotta dig.

Pro tip on that front: An additional choke point is parking. The garage on Foam and Prescott is a safe bet; the riskier one is slow-rolling Cannery Row hoping for spots that are more available now during shoulder season. 

To review, this place has long checked a number of Found Treasure boxes, among them: hidden location, incredible inventory, invested staff (see below), smart snacks, great drinks, singular approach, and one that matters most: heart.

I’m reminded of this as my pops and I split the Castroville artichoke-and-potato bisque, arugula salad and Pig Wizard flatbread pizzas. (For the record: The bisque delivers with balance and enough creamy artichoke yum I used every scrap of the sliced garlic sourdough to clean the bowl like a car detailer; the salad comes both unfortunately overdressed and beautifully overloaded with roast beets; the flatbread proves outstanding, with fennel sausage and multiple different mushrooms.)

While he went for the fresh lemonade over the prickly pear ($5, $6), I went for a Santa Lucia Highlands Cru Pinot ($13), while allowing only a fleeting look at little lunchtime tasting combo of the Monterey Wine Table Flights ($23-$27).

Our server Scott Kuramura manages the floor by himself while dropping local naturalist-level knowledge about the buoys and reef out the window without losing track of service timing. 

GM Jasmine Hernandez emerges to manage the welcome desk, and can’t resist checking in with former locals who have been wine club members for years and still return from SoCal for wine world updates.

Before we left, I ID’d myself, told her I was planning to make ATOM the latest recipient of these love notes to tri-county treasures, and had two fun questions for her.

Her reply, “Well, they better be fun!”

#1: Do locals still walk the world without knowing this is here?

“Oh yes.”

#2: How do you describe this combination of selection and setting to the uninitiated? 

“It’s the best job I’ve ever had. I’ve been here 18 years.”

Her longevity pinged something in the recesses of my head. 

I remembered Ken Rauh—the individual responsible for hatching ATOM in partnership with his wife Robyn and the growers—had moved to the celestial vineyard earlier this year, earlier than anyone who loves lovers of life ever wanted.

Hernandez asked if I knew him. I told her not personally, but that in covering local hospitality for the better part of two decades it would be impossible to not know of him and his outsize affection and advocacy for the regional wine world.

Her re-registering of the loss, subtly but visibly, caught me like a tractor beam, moistened my eyes, and reminded me to take in the ocean view and breathe. 

More at atasteofmonterey.com and A Taste of Monterey’s Instagram page, which has a post with Rauh’s obituary.