C Restaurant hosts a Steinbeck-inspired dinner.

Before phrases like “local and seasonal” or “farm to table” became a laurel hung on upscale restaurants, there was John Steinbeck.

The famed novelist favored foods from the land or sea around him – common for the characters of his novels, who had little choice. In his writing Steinbeck had a way of imbuing even the simplest meals with an essential quality, from a short-order cook smashing burgers on the grill in The Grapes of Wrath to Liza rolling out pie dough in East of Eden.

“Beans,” he wrote in Tortilla Flat, “are a warm cloak against economic cold.”

While food and drink help set scenes throughout Steinbeck’s work, there is a caveat. “He wasn’t a very adventurous eater,” observes Joe Valencia, food and beverage manager at C Restaurant + Bar in Monterey, who notes that steak and potatoes was one of his go-tos. “If you read his version of posole, it’s not something you want to eat.” Indeed. A can of chili poured over a can of hominy – even Steinbeck referred to the creation as “pissole.”

So in settling on a menu for the restaurant’s upcoming Steinbeck-inspired wine dinner, the kitchen team had to take a little artistic license. Yes, steak is the centerpiece of the five-course spread. But it is a prized Wagyu cut with sauce bordelaise.

The idea is a natural. The restaurant sits on Cannery Row and Doc’s Lab is a neighbor. “It’s something we’ve talked about for quite awhile,” says Chef Matt Bolton.

But that doesn’t mean the process was easy. For Steinbeck’s struggling characters, food was often basic and communal – plates of fried chicken, pots of boiling potatoes. The purpose was not to recreate dishes and drinks from the novels. After all, in Cannery Row, Eddie pours the remains of different liquors into a jug for Mack and the boys to share.

“I’ll bet some day you’ll go in and order a beer milkshake.”

“We’re not going back to high school,” Valencia says with a laugh.

Instead, Bolton and Michelle Lee, the pastry chef, took inspiration from Steinbeck’s life and writing then turned it up a notch.

“It was a learning experience for me,” Bolton admits. When he came across a mention of abalone, his mind raced. “A lot went into the abalone dish,” he adds – sunchoke that is roasted as well as pureed with Meyer lemon for starters. “We had a lot of fun with it.”

The courses start with a calamari hors d’oeuvre followed by a baby gem salad, highlighting the produce of Salinas Valley and the farmworkers Steinbeck described with such power.

Bolton’s process began with a wine tasting, the bottles being a selection from Wrath winery, naturally. As he begins to pick out the flavor profile of a wine, food pairings come to mind.

C Restaurant generally plans one event each quarter. But this wine dinner menu came with an added level of difficulty. Not only did the chefs have to match each course to a particular wine – a 2023 Rosé for the salad, for example – they also had to reference Steinbeck’s world.

“Matt wanted to do a sardine souffle,” Valencia says. An obvious nod to Cannery Row and the pioneering work of Ed Ricketts, the fish are burdened by association with the oil-soaked filets from tins. “I said no.”

But there were a couple of matters Valencia and his team could not avoid. The Jack Rose was Steinbeck’s favorite cocktail, and that gets the evening started. And then there’s the more fanciful concoction.

Per Cannery Row: “‘I’ll bet some day you’ll go in and order a beer milkshake.’ It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milkshake would taste like.”

Lee wasn’t thrown by the suggestion of a beer milkshake. “I have a really good chocolate-Guinness ice cream recipe,” she points out.

So you know where this is going. The dinner will end with an actual beer milkshake. Just keep in mind Doc’s conundrum. “If a man ordered a beer milkshake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.”

Then again, why not on Cannery Row – and on Steinbeck’s birthday, no less.

STEINBECK DINNER 5:30-9pm Thursday, Feb. 27. C Restaurant + Bar, 750 Cannery Row, Monterey. Includes tour of Doc’s Lab. $140. 642-2013, thecrestaurant-monterey.com