Stokes Adobe Restaurant — Restaurant in Monterey

I was so excited to have snagged a reservation here during one of our frequent trips to the Monterey Bay area. I have to say that this visit was not worthy of a five star review like the many five star reviews that blanket Stokes Adobe's page.

We arrived for our reservation on time, at 7:15pm. The hostess seemed very confused about how to actually seat us or even acknowledge our reservation. This was definitely not an issue, but it was a good indicator of what was to come.

We were eventually seated right around 7:20. A person that I'll assume was a waiter came by our table 20 minutes after we'd been seated and didn't even introduce himself, short of saying (literally) "I'll be right back". Alas, that was the last we saw of him for the evening.

Another 20 minutes goes by...at this point we had been seated for 40 minutes without any service. Someone approached our table and asked if we had seen a water, I said no, but we had seen someone 20 minutes before that aaid they'd be right back and promptly disappeared. That person informed us he needed to "get some paper" and he'd be back.

10 minutes later (we had now gone 50 minutes without acknowledgement from a waiter) the person returned with his paper and apologized for our non existent waiter. He advised that he typically didn't take orders but he was making an exception for us. Thanks for the favor buddy, after 50 minutes without any service you'd think that they'd have more empathy.

The rando person wrote our drink orders on his paper and disappeared. We sat for another 15 minutes with no interaction with any waiter (we had now been seated for AN HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES and decided we'd better go somewhere with waiters if we wanted to ever eat.

At that moment someone actually came to our table with drinks! Unfortunately they weren't our drinks.

After an hour and 20 minute's of literally no meaningful interaction with waitstaff and ZERO service (not even the drinks we ordered) we decided to bail and cut our losses.

In summary, we sat waiting for over an hour with no service at all. I've never had worse service ever. This place really needs to start focusing on it's customers. If you're short staffed because of Covid, don't fill every seat in the house.

It was my birthday dinner and this place let me and my husband down hard. ...

Perfect restaurant. Simple and beautiful interior, very thoughtful staff and the food is beautiful.

I came here for an early dinner on a Saturday and sat at the bar. I proceeded to have a full meal and dessert, which were all excellent. I appreciated the fact that their cocktails menu even called out a low ABV drink, which I ordered. I started with the yellowtail crudo.

The crudo was beautiful looking, and the cuts of fish were the perfect thickness with the right delicate firmness to the bite that made me appreciate that this was very fresh fish.

Next, the Australian Waguy steak I ordered had a perfect cook and I couldn't get enough of the Bordelaise sauce that came with it. I did think the potato puree on this plate was just fine, I think I prefer mine more heavily salted, and the small dollop of it on the plate got a bit cold by the time I began eating it.

During this course one of the staff poured me a bit of wine, and I have to say that was a great gesture because I wouldn't have ordered it myself but, the pairing made the steak dish so much richer in flavor. Certainly, a better accompaniment than the cocktail I ordered earlier. Great customer service! I was impressed.

Finally, I enjoyed the app and dinner courses so much I decided dessert must be great at this place as well, so I ordered the Basque burnt cheesecake. It did not disappoint. The sweetness of the cheesecake was perfectly balanced, with the burnt crust adding a bit of that bitterness to cut through the richness. These types of cheesecakes are typically without a crumble crust, so they provided a sort of deconstructed crust with some cookie crumble and a delicious peach sauce. I ended up taking a piece of the cake and dipping it into the sauce and cookie crumble, and that took the dessert to an 11/10.

So TLDR, this place deserves its reputation as a fine dining establishment, and if you want a meal that is guaranteed to impress your eyes and your palette just go here. I could hardly imagine anyone not enjoying...

After checking top rated restaurant's menus all day online to decide on one for dinner we settled on this one for the high rating and the appeal of the menu. We were glad to easily get a reservation but, now we believe there was a reason they had open availability because the food was not good at all. We ordered the crispy potatoes and shared and they were a 3ish out of 5 at the most. I could have, and have, made better at home. Then our entrees came out, in which we both ordered the Waygu steak meal. The only positive thing to mention is that the temperature was correct. Despite ordering the same thing, our meals tasted completely different. Mine steak tasted void of any seasoning and his was inconsistently seasoned from one bite to the next with one side having so much seasoning it was nearly inedible to the last bite which had no seasoning at all. His steak was tough to cut as his knife wasn't sharp and also not a steak knife. The artichokes were okish but better than the steak which is supposed to be the star of the meal. I didn't care for the honeynut squash puree. It was odd and didn't compliment the steak at all in my opinion. We both did finish it only because of the price and nothing else looked appealing to us on the menu. Originally we were going to order dessert but after dinner being such a disappointment we were not going to risk it. I do have to give credit where credit is due as our server, Olivier, was very good. He was friendly, quick, and we didn't have to wait on him to clear anything nor ask for anything as he already had everything taken care of without...