When Sticks closed for its renovation, the pub's staff went on vacation. When they came back, they had four days to learn how to cook and serve lunch in someone else's restaurant. That restaurant was Pèppoli, the Northern Italian dining room at The Inn at Spanish Bay. In its whole history it had only served dinner.
That quick change explains what Spanish Bay is like this winter. The golf course is in the middle of a rebuild and the pub is closed for renovation. Because Sticks is out of service, the best dining room at the Inn now serves a midday crowd with ocean light for the first time. Monterey County NOW reported that the lunch service is planned to end in March 2027, about when Sticks is expected to reopen.
Why a dinner house started serving lunch
Sticks, the sports pub at The Inn at Spanish Bay, closed at the beginning of April 2026. Work on The Links at Spanish Bay had started a few weeks earlier, on March 18. With the pub closed, Pebble Beach Company had two problems. Roy's was the only place left at the Inn serving lunch, and the Sticks crew had no kitchen to work in. The company handled both by moving that crew into Pèppoli at midday.
Pèppoli's kitchen is too small for two full crews at once. One team would be grilling burgers while the other rolls pasta dough and reduces sauces for dinner. Chef Angela Tamura and Chef Anna Marie Bayonito split the space. Lunch runs from the front kitchen and its grill. The back kitchen, where the pastas and the osso buco are made, stays with the dinner team.
That split decides what is on the lunch menu. Lunch gets the grill and dinner keeps the stove, so the midday menu leans on dishes the evening menu does not carry.
What the grill turns out at midday
Monterey County NOW reported a short menu of starters, sandwiches, a few main plates and Roman-style pizzas. The drinks list has wines by the glass and five specialty cocktails. Several of the dishes are ones Pèppoli has never served at night:
- Steak frites made with flank steak and topped with a salsa verde of herbs, capers and pepperoncini. "Flank steak – we wouldn't do that at night," Tamura told the outlet. "But I like it."
- Eggplant parmesan with bufala mozzarella, the same cheese that goes on the bruschetta at dinner.
- A sausage pizza topped with broccoli rabe, which at dinner is served alongside braised short ribs.
- A meatball sandwich, a grinder, a burger and a chicken salad with Mediterranean seasonings.
Most of the lunch menu was built from ingredients the restaurant already keeps on hand. Tamura's summary, as quoted in the same story, was "We're doing things we wouldn't do on a dinner menu." Bryan Anthony, Pebble Beach's vice president of food and beverage, told the outlet what the company sees in the arrangement:
"Can you imagine going to Pèppoli for Saturday lunch and looking out over the ocean?"
He pictured it on the patio, with a meatball sandwich and a glass of wine.
Monterey County NOW reported lunch hours of 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. daily. The Pèppoli page lists dinner from 5 to 9 p.m., resort attire. Call (800) 877-0597 before planning a midday visit.
How the rest of the Inn's day fits around it
With Pèppoli open at midday, The Inn at Spanish Bay has food and drink from early morning to late at night without Sticks. Here is the Inn's day as the resort's own pages list it.
| Time | Where | What |
|---|---|---|
| 6:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m. | The Lobby Lounge | Cocktails, light fare from Roy's, fireplace seating and outdoor fire pits |
| 6:30 – 11:00 a.m. | Roy's at Pebble Beach | Breakfast |
| 11:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. | Pèppoli | Lunch, as reported by Monterey County NOW |
| 11:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. | Roy's | Lunch |
| 3:00 – 4:30 p.m. | Roy's | Light fare |
| 4:30 – 5:15 p.m. | Spanish Bay fire pits | The nightly bagpiper |
| 5:00 – 9:00 p.m. | Pèppoli and Roy's | Dinner |
| 7:00 – 10:00 p.m., Thu–Sat | The Lobby Lounge | Live jazz |
For the first time there are two lunch rooms at the Inn, Roy's and Pèppoli, open over the same midday hours. One of them stops at 2:30 p.m., about two hours before the bagpiper starts at the fire pits.
The piping goes back to the Inn and the Links opening in 1987. Pebble Beach Company says the idea came from course co-designer Tom Watson. He remarked that the site looked enough like Scotland that you could almost hear bagpipes. Mike Gillen and Missy Olson have played since the course opened on November 5, 1987, and the rotation has grown to six pipers.
The holiday weeks on the Pèppoli Lawn
Over the holidays, many of the Inn's events take place on the lawn outside Pèppoli. That puts them a few steps from where lunch is served. The Pebble Beach Resorts events calendar lists these dates at The Inn at Spanish Bay:
- Thanksgiving Day, November 26. A pianist from noon to 3 p.m., then a jazz trio from 7 to 10 p.m. The trio plays again November 27 and 28.
- November 27–29. A Thanksgiving petting zoo on the Pèppoli Lawn, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- December 1–30. Traps for the Holidays, a seasonal cocktail pop-up open from 11 a.m. to midnight.
- December 15–23. Christmas carolers from 6 to 7 p.m.
- December 22–24. A holiday petting zoo returns to the Pèppoli Lawn, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- Christmas Day. A flutist in the lobby from 2 to 5 p.m.
- December 31. The New Year's Eve Starlight Soiree, starting at 8 p.m., 21 and over, $525 per person.
On the petting-zoo days, both the lawn events and Pèppoli's lunch fall between late morning and early afternoon. Since this is the first winter Pèppoli has served lunch, it is also the first time anyone could eat there during a daytime event on its own lawn.
Traps is the fireside bar inside the Inn, serving hearty appetizers, cocktails, beer, wine, scotch and Cognac. The December pop-up is not new. The Pacific Grove Chamber of Commerce listed the same pop-up for December 2–29, 2024, with seasonal cocktails and à la carte bites. This year, with Sticks closed, it is one of the few casual spots at the Inn for a drink before dinner.
What replaces this arrangement in spring
The midday menu at Pèppoli is tied to the Sticks schedule. Both the end of lunch service and the pub's expected reopening are pegged to March 2027, a few weeks ahead of the course.
Sticks is expected to come back in March 2027 as a gastropub with a new menu. Above it will be a 4,000-square-foot golf simulator lounge with at least four "swing suites" using Golfzon TwoVisionNX simulators. Each has a motion plate that tilts in 64 directions and a mat that can recreate 56,000 different lies. Monterey County NOW described it as all "while real golf takes place a few steps away." For now, the Sticks page says the restaurant is temporarily closed.
The real golf will be different too. The Links at Spanish Bay is set to reopen on April 17, 2027, after a Gil Hanse-led project scheduled to take 13 months. The plan Pebble Beach Company announced in February 2026 includes:
- fairways about 30% wider
- greens about 40% larger
- a new par three replacing the current 13th hole, for a par 71
- 12% less irrigated turf
- three more acres of habitat
The Carmel Pine Cone reported that the course's original permits required extensive dune restoration and native planting, because the site had been used for mining. The paper also reported that the company planned the redesign with California Coastal Commission staff to avoid environmentally sensitive areas.
When the pub reopens and the crew moves back, Pèppoli goes back to being a dinner-only room. Until then, its lunch menu is the one result of the Spanish Bay renovation that people can actually sit down and eat, with service planned to end in March 2027.
If you live in the Del Monte Forest, the reopening of Sticks and the new course next spring will change your corner of Pebble Beach more than anything else on the calendar. If you're thinking about what that means for a home near Spanish Bay, I'm glad to talk it through. Ryan Sherman can help. Schedule a private consultation, ideally over lunch at Pèppoli before March.
