SUMMIT AT PLAY

MONTEREY CAR WEEK 2025

Summit’s guide to where to stay, eat, shop, and unwind during the Peninsula’s most design-driven week of the year.

Every August, Monterey Car Week welcomes an extraordinary mix of visitors to California’s central coast—collectors, designers, architects, and aesthetes who come for the rare vehicles but stay for something more enduring: the landscape, the architecture, the food, the quiet excellence found in the margins. At Summit, we’ve spent decades designing for this kind of environment—where the outdoors is lived in, not looked at. And so, we’ve assembled our own guide to the sites and sounds of the Monterey Peninsula: a refined itinerary for those who appreciate the balance of form, setting, and stillness.

Out toward the water, The Inn at Spanish Bay remains a Car Week mainstay. Its expansive outdoor lounge areas, many of them furnished with Summit pieces, are some of the best places to unwind after a day of events—particularly at sunset, when the bagpiper appears on the links and the fog begins to roll in. Quail Lodge, tucked into the valley just off Carmel Valley Road, is another quiet favorite, especially for those looking to stay close to the action while avoiding the crowds.

Carmel-by-the-Sea remains the region’s most evocative setting—storybook streets, sculpted gardens, and a sense of timeless scale. For design-minded visitors, Downtown Carmel offers some of the best people-watching of the week, where linen suits, rare sunglasses, and vintage watches pass by under a soft, coastal sun. The Barnyard shopping village, just down the hill, offers a different rhythm: a meandering outdoor retail center with a mix of fine goods, independent shops, and courtyards that invite you to linger.

Dining during Car Week is as much about atmosphere as it is about the plate. Aubergine at L’Auberge Carmel is a must—its tasting menu and intimate setting are celebrated far beyond the region. Foray, one of the newer additions to the scene, brings a sharp focus to seasonal ingredients with a restrained modern touch. Over in Monterey, The C Restaurant offers waterfront dining with panoramic views of the bay and a menu that lets the ingredients do most of the talking. And for a more casual but still impeccably designed morning, Captain + Stoker is the go-to for coffee—bright, open, and detail-driven.

For accommodations, L’Auberge Carmel is the gold standard—elegant, discreet, and well-located for both the action and the escape. Le Petit Pali is a new favorite among those who prefer things on a smaller, more curated scale—thoughtful interiors, light-filled rooms, and just enough distance from the crowd. Carmel Valley Ranch sits further inland, offering wide skies and hillside views, with suites and terraces that feel purposefully immersed in the natural landscape.

This is also a week of serendipitous encounters—architects running into yacht designers, collectors chatting with landscape architects, everyone somehow linked by a shared appreciation for the details that make things last. The sidewalks, cafes, and lobbies of Monterey become a kind of open-air salon. If you know where to look, design is everywhere: in the rake of a fender, the pitch of a roofline, the curve of a teak armrest.

For those who understand that great design is felt as much as it’s seen, Monterey Car Week offers an experience beyond the expected. It’s not just a showcase of vehicles—it’s a masterclass in proportion, material, and restraint, played out across buildings, gardens, tables, and terraces. And at its best, it’s not a spectacle at all. It’s a quiet conversation between form and setting.