Old Fishermans Grotto
39 Fishermans Wharf, Monterey, 375-4604
Like a good joke, amazing clam chowder and calamari should need no explaining. For those that need an explanation, in a word, they mean comfort. Grotto does them heroically, with a cookoff-winning recipe heavy on garlic (yum) and butter (yum yum) on the chowder front, and precisely spiced light crunch on the calamari quotient. This place crafts the purest and most habit-forming foods that define a place by the bay called Monterey.