The Conservatory — Restaurant in Half Moon Bay

Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay - May 2025

My wife and I celebrated our 47th anniversary at the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay (HMB) over the Memorial Day weekend. The Ritz staff gave us a fabulous experience even on a busy holiday weekend. We were greeted by name throughout the property and received a welcoming amenity of wine and desserts in our room. The restaurants added little touches to our meals to make them feel fun and celebratory.

Change at The Conservatory We were pleasantly surprised to have a new dining experience in the Conservatory Restaurant. New furnishings, new server uniforms, and new menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The breakfast menu now includes items such as chilaquiles and pumpkin pancakes. New dinner items include oysters and grilled Sea Bass. Old favorites: Eggs Benedict and Ritz parfait for breakfast and rack of lamb and Waygu steak for dinner still satisfy.

In addition to the new menus, the Afternoon Tea in the Conservatory is back for limited engagements (Mother’s Day and Memorial Day so far). Enjoying the Afternoon Tea was a perfect way for us to wait until our room was ready.

The overall hotel staff service was outstanding. The overall quality and expanded range of the menu items in the restaurants was also excellent. Our room was super clean with exceptional service from the housekeepers.

The location, the hotel itself, and the restaurants are reason enough to stay at the Ritz HMB. However I think the exceptional service and hospitality are compelling reasons to stay there.

For those interested, more details about my stay are below.

The Ritz has finished renovating all the guest rooms and both the Navio & the Conservatory restaurants. Both restaurants have new menus which makes the dining more interesting. The added room amenities make every room an upgraded stay in my opinion.

The Conservatory I first noticed the new server attire while at the Afternoon Tea when we arrived. The matching neck tie, shirt, and vest seem classier than the old uniform, but not stuffy. The restaurant felt more upscale with the servers in their new attire. The new furnishings and the new table layout preserves the informal “conservatory” feel but seems more efficient and more like a restaurant.

The Menus The Conservatory expanded the breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus by about 30 – 40% each. I think the expanded menu is welcomed by guests who stay for more than a couple of days so they don’t get bored with the same menu selections. We tried many new items and in our opinion, they seemed to be properly cooked and tasted great. It is nice to have so many choices now. The Ocean Terrace, the outside dining venue, also sports an expanded menu. All the menus are online if interested.

The Ritz and the Conservatory gets my highest recommendation for service, food and room quality. If you are celebrating a special occasion, the staff at the Ritz will help to make a special occasion a memorable one.

Tips: • Rates are generally (but not always) lower on Sun & Mon nights however Navio is not open on those nights. • Check for promotions before booking. • Tell the hotel if you are celebrating a special occasion. They’ll celebrate with you. • If you arrive at the hotel about noon (several hours before check in), you might have a better chance to get an upgrade. It’s all based on availability. While you wait, enjoy a relaxing lunch with ocean views in the Conservatory or outside at the Ocean Terrace. • If you want to experience the Club Level, you can book it for one night or for your entire stay. Unlimited beverages and high quality small bites and service. (You won’t leave hungry.) The omelet bar is now open daily instead of just on weekends. • Although the resort may not “feel” full, I recommend making reservations in the restaurants because in addition to hotel guests, Bay Area locals like to eat at the Ritz especially on the weekends and when the weather is good. • If you have an ocean front room, In Room Dining combines a great view with completely private...

PROS The Conservatory food was extremely fresh, and the servers were highly attentive. Even though the prices are a bit higher due to the location and being in the resort, they were fair for the value. The seafood for both the breakfast and the dinner menus were delicious The server at breakfast (something similar to Maura? Her name began with a “M”) was especially impressive, as she catered to different personalities and knew when to be extra talkative and friendly with certain groups while being more reserved and quiet with other groups depending on how awake each group appeared to be. She was so kind, and she seemed to truly enjoy her job

CONS The service from The Conservatory evening host was not ideal. We were running behind due to a long line at check-in, so I tried to be considerate and stopped by five minutes before our reservation time to ask the host if it would be all right for us to arrive in ten minutes (five minutes after our reservation). The host, Karen, said no, but that she could reschedule our reservation for 15 minutes later. No problem, I agreed, and we showed up at our new reservation time. There was another staff member filling in as the host by then, and she was about to seat us, only to have Karen sweep in, take the menus out of her hand, and tell us that that our table wasn’t ready. We waited another 25 minutes and watched as other same-sized groups who came after us were seated before us. The staff had been calmly and steadily clearing tables in the open section at this point, and Karen decided to abandon the host stand on multiple occasions to set the tables herself even though there were staff already doing that…? It gave the impression that the staff had an effective workflow, but as the flustered Karen became involved outside of her hosting duties, the workflow increasingly became more chaotic and inefficient. Eventually, we were seated 40 minutes after our original reservation time, and I wished I hadn’t said anything to her to begin with and had just showed up five minutes late

RECOMMENDATIONS Any of the seafood dishes were fantastic and fresh!

OVERALL Would recommend going for the...

The service here was really good but the execution of the food was horrible for the most part.

Starting with the good: The server was excellent. He was prompt and brought out some focaccia and soft butter so we're off to a great start. We ordered a beer battered fish sandwich with coleslaw and a chipotle aioli on an artisan roll, oven baked Flatbread with goat cheese, proscuitto, and arugula topped with a balsamic drizzle and a Cobb salad.

The Cobb salad had a nice presentation but the bowl it was served in was too small to mix everything together comfortably so the dressing could coat everything. Besides that, it was a good Cobb salad.

Now, the bad: The French fries that came with the fish sandwich were barely warm. The fish sandwich itself was overwhelmed by the Chipotle aioli. The fish itself wasn't seasoned before it was battered so it was bland. The batter itself had soaked up a lot of the oil indicating it wasn't cooked at the proper temperature and/or the oil was overused and it was overcooked. There were small pieces of petrale sole (not even whole pieces) extremely crunchy and not even enough fish to cover the entire sandwich. The coleslaw was practically non-existent as there were only a few strands of cabbage on the bottom of the bun. The bun itself reminded you of a hoagie bun with green speckles but the characteristics of a ciabatta roll and was extremely chewy which would smash the fish when cut or bitten into. The texture is way to tough for such a delicate protein. That roll would be much better with a protein like beef. The focaccia would be a much better choice for a fish sandwich.

The flatbread was cold and tasteless and everything on top was the same texture, soft and mushy. The proscuitto could have been heated up with the flatbread to create some texture and temperature contrast to the goat cheese, arugula and balsamic. I've never had such a disappointing flatbread in all my life.

When you're paying $37 for a sandwich and $30 for Flatbread, it needs to be executed well and this is far from what I expected from the Ritz-Carlton. We've had a better meal at Sam's Chowder House up the road. Terribly...