Sept 2, 2014 – Post Ranch Inn executive chef John Cox is launching this week a five-course daytime tasting menu that he says was inspired by the stunning drive between Carmel and Big Sur.
“Afternoon is one of my favorite times at Post Ranch,” Cox says, adding that the new lunch menu “offers guests the opportunity to try some of our more creative ingredients and techniques even if they are only in Big Sur for the afternoon or stopping in on their way down the coast.”
Tasting menus—and the risk-taking, artistic heights that chefs take them to—tend to be limited to the confines of evening dining.
But Big Sur is an altogether different setting, and many would argue that from both an aesthetic and safety standpoint, the winding route around drop-dead gorgeous cliffs is best enjoyed during daylight hours.
For those that make the trip, Sierra Mar’s five-course lunch this week will include Pacific Gold Oyster with Pine, Smoked Venison Tartare with Juniper Berry and Pickled Yucca Blossom; and Red Abalone with Black Rice, Sea Vegetables and Miso. Also on the menu will be Sea Water-Brined Beef Tenderloin with Corn Pudding and Heirloom Tomato and Hay-Smoked Schoch Junipero Cheese with Pink Pearl Apple and Acorn Bread.
Optional wine pairings are offered, as with the restaurant’s other menus.
The five-course tasting lunch menu comes with a price tag of $95, well over the restaurant’s three-course lunch, which goes for $55. But aside from offering a whole new level of culinary daring from the three course menu, the five-lunch also costs much less than Sierra Mar’s $125 four-course dinner menu its $175 nine-course Taste of Big Sur dinner tasting menu.
And, some would say, the five-course lunch will provide a priceless chance to linger longer and enjoy Big Sur’s beauty from the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows or the open air of its deck.
About the author
SARAH WOOD—founding editor and publisher of Edible Monterey Bay—has had a life-long passion for food, cooking, people and our planet.
She planted her first organic garden and cared for her first chicken when she was in elementary school in a farming region of Upstate New York.
Wood spent the early part of her career based in Ottawa, Canada, working in international development and international education. After considering culinary school, she opted to pursue her loves for writing, learning about the world and helping make it a better place by obtaining a fellowship and an MA in Journalism from New York University.
While working for a daily newspaper in New Jersey, she wrote stories that helped farmers fend off development and won a state-wide public service award from the New Jersey Press Association for an investigative series of articles about a slumlord who had hoodwinked ratings agencies and investment banks into propping him up with some early commercial mortgage securitizations. The series led Wood to spend several years in financial journalism, most recently, as editor-in-chief of the leading magazine covering the U.S. hedge-fund industry.
Wood now lives with her family in Washington, DC, where she is a freelance writer and manages communications for Samaritan Ministry, an antipoverty and antiracist nonprofit that provides struggling Greater Washington residents with highly personalized and compassionate life counseling and coaching.
