Pacific Grove did not lose a restaurant when the Grill at Point Pinos changed hands last November. It ended up with two. One failed rent negotiation at the city-owned golf course sent Tamie Aceves to Lovers Point, where she reopened Crema. It also led the City Council to write a new lease that brought chef Jerry Regester and Gail Grammatico to 79 Asilomar Blvd. Both kitchens are still adding things this month. Crema starts full brunch and Sunday hours this weekend, and The Grove still has "Full Bar Soon" posted on its website.
Each half of the story explains the other. Here's how the move happened, and what each room serves right now.
A $15,000 Number at the Golf Course
Aceves ran the Grill at Point Pinos until November 2025. Monterey County Weekly readers had voted it "Best Restaurant at a Golf Course" three years running. The city's later ordinance gives November 23, 2025 as the date the prior tenant moved out.
Aceves told Monterey County NOW that renewal talks broke down over rent. In her account, the city proposed $15,000 a month and would not come down.
"I said, 'OK, god – what's going on? I can't lose a second restaurant.'" … "I just couldn't make [the Grill] profitable."
She meant the second restaurant literally. Aceves opened the original Crema in 2012 in a Victorian house on Lighthouse Avenue. Pandemic rules cut it from 110 seats to 36 while the rent stayed the same, and it closed in September 2020.
The Liquor License Set the Clock
Leaving the Grill put a deadline on Aceves. Her liquor license would expire if she didn't find a new location. As she was closing at Point Pinos, she heard that the owners of California Seltzer Company were leaving 631 Ocean View Blvd. "I called the Realtor and said, 'I'm your girl,'" she told NOW.
Longtime residents will know the building. The Tinnery was its longest tenant and closed in 2006 after 26 years. Latitudes and California Seltzer Company followed, each for a shorter run. The room has wraparound outdoor seating and a wall of windows facing Monterey Bay. It opened without an exhaust hood, though, and that has shaped Crema's whole year.
Crema has opened in stages:
- April 1, 2026. Crema reopened at Lovers Point. With no hood, the menu was mostly soups, salads and sandwiches. Some dishes were cooked at Aceves's catering kitchen for La Créme Monterey in the Forest Hill Shopping Center and driven down the hill.
- June 2026. Edible Monterey Bay reported cocktails on the menu after the liquor license transferred. The next phase was a full kitchen and lounge buildout.
- Late September 2026. Crema stopped staying open late for bar bites. Fried chicken and waffles and the fried chicken sandwich came back.
- October 3–4, 2026. Full brunch started Saturday with eggs, potatoes and most of the original favorites. Sunday service starts today, and hours are now 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. every day.
Crema's announcement doesn't say whether the hood is installed, and we won't guess. The dishes it lists are the ones that need a real line, and they came back this week.
What the City Wrote the Second Time
The city put the Point Pinos space out to bid. Its request for proposals went out December 15, 2025, with a January 29, 2026 deadline. Two groups applied, and staff rated Fortunate Fork, LLC highest. The Council held a first reading on April 15 and adopted Ordinance 26-010 in May 2026.
The new lease charges rent in a completely different way.
| Lease term | What Ordinance 26-010 says |
|---|---|
| Rent | 7% of gross sales |
| Monthly cap | $13,500, rising 3% a year |
| Term | Five years, plus two optional five-year extensions |
| Security deposit | $11,000 |
| Name | Must be "The Grove at Point Pinos" |
| Required service | Quick-service lunch and grab-and-go menus |
| Liquor | Tenant must get and keep a liquor license |
| Event room fees | Fees for city-booked events split 50-50 with the tenant |
The cap matters more than it first looks. At 7%, rent only reaches $13,500 when the restaurant sells about $193,000 in a month. Below that, rent goes up and down with sales, so a slow foggy January costs the operator less than a busy summer. Even at the cap, the first-year rent is $1,500 a month below the figure Aceves says she was offered. In short, the city now takes a share of sales up to a limit instead of setting a fixed price.
The liquor clause sits behind The Grove's "Full Bar Soon" sign. The lease requires the operator to get and keep a liquor license, so alcohol service was part of the deal from the start.
The Grove, Two Months In
Fortunate Fork is the tenant named in the lease, and September coverage identifies Regester and Grammatico as the partners running it. Regester is also the chef at The Spotted Duck, which still serves dinner at 542 Lighthouse Ave. Thursday through Monday and is closed Tuesday and Wednesday.
Edible Monterey Bay's September 8 visit described a bigger room than many people remember. It seats 100 outside and 50 inside, and the private event room holds 50 more. The partners added a remade kitchen and a refurbished Santa Maria grill, and large landscape photographs by Kirk Kennedy hang in the dining room.
The lease requires a quick menu for golfers, and The Grove serves it from the service bar. Acme coffee drinks cost $4 to $7, and rotating sandwiches and breakfast burritos are $13. The sit-down menu runs $13 to $23. It includes Gail's Chopped Salad with pulled chicken, pea shoots and crispy lumpia skins, a ham-and-cheese panini made with Fra' Mani rosemary ham on Ad Astra bread, and a wedge salad with Baker's Bacon. The Grove Nachos come with garlic-butter shrimp under a sauce of cheddar, white cheddar, cream cheese, Gruyère, port salut and Havarti.
The menu will grow slowly. Regester has talked about smoked brisket dinners, a Prime Rib Night and tri-tip cookouts on the brick grill during golf tournaments. "We're VERY dog-friendly," he told the magazine, and the patio looks out over the course and the coast.
The Grove's site still calls this a soft opening. Edible Monterey Bay listed these hours in September:
- Grab-and-go: 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
- Breakfast: 8 to 11 a.m.
- Lunch: 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Fitting Both Into October
The two rooms are on opposite ends of the shoreline drive, and both close by mid-afternoon. That leaves room for one more stop this month. As of the museum's September 19 update, no monarchs had reached the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary at 250 Ridge Road. The museum expects a slow trickle starting in mid-October and a peak around the end of November. For comparison, last season's count was 188 on November 21, 2025, and it peaked at 226 on December 12.
A few details help when planning around all three:
- The sanctuary is free and open sunrise to sunset. Museum docents are usually there from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., weather permitting, from October through February.
- Pets aren't allowed at the sanctuary, but The Grove's patio welcomes dogs. On a morning with the dog, The Grove is the better stop, and the sanctuary visit can wait until the dog is home.
- Crema now opens at 6:30 a.m. every day, so you can stop at Lovers Point before the docents arrive.
- Tuesdays used to be tricky because much of downtown closes that day. The Block Wine Bar at 665 Lighthouse Ave. soft-opened August 12, and owner Coby Shammas opens at noon every day, Tuesdays included.
The monarch page updates weekly once butterflies settle. Crema's brunch began yesterday. The Grove's full bar is still listed as coming soon.
Questions about how city leases, liquor licenses and storefront turnover affect your corner of Pacific Grove are part of the local knowledge Dave Lucas follows every week. If you want to talk through what these changes mean for your street, let's connect.
