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King’s Highway (Palm Springs)

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King’s Highway, the restaurant in the same building as the Ace Hotel lobby/check-in area, is what I pictured a diner in the 70s to look like, maybe a bit hipper. Likewise, the food is a hipper version of 70s diner food.

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Upon sitting down, an interestingly dressed older woman with fantastic glasses plopped down a small jar of pickles.  She quickly gave me a look and muttered, “Here are the pickles, that’s all you’re getting, it comes with your dinner” or something to that effect.  I noticed she said the same thing to other people who sat down after us.

The pickles were intensely sour with an over-whelming taste of vinegar and a nice piquant bite to it. What I thought were slices of ginger turned out to be thin slices of potato.  I’ve never had pickled potatoes before, but these made me a fan.

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The menu doesn’t have many vegan options — I think the BF ordered about everything there was that he could eat.  We started with the couscous salad with meyer lemon dressing.  The dressing didn’t really taste like meyer lemon but actually reminded me of some sort of bottled Italian dressing.  The pistachios in the salad were probably the best thing about this salad.

Next came the white bean dip with pita chips. The dip was decent, had a hint of spice, and the chips were crispy.  It wasn’t exciting or fantastic, but solid.

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I had the stinky grilled cheese sandwich with bacon (extra) which was pretty much what I expected. The stinky cheese wasn’t terribly stinky, unfortunately. It was better than plain ol’ American cheddar cheese, but certainly not anything to write home about.  I did appreciate the basil in the sandwich, which gave it another dimension.  The bread part was greasier than I’d like, but that could have been solved if it had cooked longer on the pan and got more crispy. As it was, one side was already soft and soggy by the time I took a bite.

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There was some confusion with the waitress about the vegan-ness of the vegetable pot pie.  She claimed it was vegan and I thought it was too good to be true that a place like King’s Highway would have vegan pot pie.  Even after we asked her twice before ordering, it turned out that there’s butter in the crust and it’s not vegan after-all.  In the end, the BF got the vegetarian chili sans corn bread.  It was unexciting and had mushy, overdone vegetables, but at least the waitress was nice enough to comp it because of the mix-up.

We weren’t expecting anything too fantastic from a hotel restaurant and our expectations were met.  As a whole, we didn’t have our hopes too high for good food in Palm Springs, which was good.  The food at King’s Highway was decent — for a hotel kitchen. I stayed away from ordering anything from the “dinner only” section of the menu because the dishes were so expensive there and I wasn’t sure if the place was up to snuff.  A wise choice.

King’s Highway @ ACE Hotel
701 East Palm Canyon Drive
Palm Springs, CA 92264
(760) 325-9900

Weekend in Sunny Palm Springs

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My weekend was spent quietly relaxing in Palm Springs.  I joke that it’s a town where only old people go to vacation, and that’s not far from the truth, but the BF and I had a low-key, calm weekend there.  We stayed at the Ace Hotel (expensive, but worth it), got a couples massage (corny, but felt great!), lounged around pool-side, read our books, soaked in the hot tub, sweated in the steam room, and basically enjoyed a nice weekend to ourselves.

On the way back, I stopped by the Cabazon outlets to see if there were any great deals. No great deals, but a great deal of people!  Judging by the insanely crowded parking lots, the hoards of people with giant shopping bags, and the amount of buying, the recession seems to be over.

Asilomar Conference Grounds (Monterey)

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Where to stay in Monterey?  That was what we were wondering when planning our trip last month.  We decided to give Asilomar Conference Grounds a try.  The spot is less than a 10 minute drive from Canary road, where the aquarium is, but it’s not in the super-touristy area that we were trying to avoid.

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Unlike a traditional hotel, Asilomar Conference Grounds is a collection of cabin-like buildings more suited for a retreat. The rooms are rustic and instead of a television, there’s a fireplace.  Our room, even though it was just the two of us, had a queen bed, three twin-sized beds, and a rollaway bed all in one big room.  The toilet had its own door. The bathtub had its own door. The double sinks were in another separate room with closet space. It was all set up to be easy to use for people not used to sharing living spaces — strange for us, but good to keep in mind.

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What I really loved about where we stayed was that we were within walking distance to the beach.  We just had to walk down a path past the dining hall, onto a boardwalk, cross a street, and we were on the coast. It was fantastic to wake up, put on a sweater and just take a walk on the beach.

Asilomar Conference Grounds isn’t the cheapest option in Monterey, but it’s a pretty good deal if you can split the room with a bunch of friends — there certainly are enough beds to go around. It’s rustic enough without having to rough it too much and it’s just a pleasant place to stay when in the area. (Unless you have loud, young kids that you can’t control. In that case, please go somewhere else or learn how to discipline your brats!)