Another disaster in Big Sur claims a beloved community gathering place, Big Sur Bakery.

Big Sur just cannot catch a break. Sara Rubin here, thinking about many perfect scones I’ve enjoyed over the years on the rustic deck of the Big Sur Bakery. The beloved restaurant burned down in a kitchen fire on Friday afternoon. The good news is that fast-responding volunteers from Big Sur Fire arrived right away—they smelled the smoke and saw a black plume from their nearby headquarters even before a call came in—and were able to prevent the fire from spreading to any nearby structures, and nobody was injured. 

“Honestly, I am just so relieved by those two things,” owner Mike Gilson says, even as he is still processing the wreckage. 

Most of that processing today, three days later, has to do with concern about what the roughly 15 employees will do. They’ve already been out of work for five weeks since a chunk of Highway 1 collapsed down a cliff, leaving the only paved road into and out of Big Sur with limited access. (Public access to and from the south has been blocked for a year-and-a-half due to slides. Access to the north is open to the public, but only at 7am and 5pm daily. Plans at the Big Sur Bakery were to reopen Memorial Day weekend, when Caltrans expects to allow access from the north 24/7, with a traffic signal.) 

An estimated 1,000 members of the Big Sur workforce are out of work right now, something that happens periodically. It happens when a community relies on a single paved road built on the edge of a geologically active cliffside. 

“The hardy folks of Big Sur are used to these closures, but it’s very difficult—this one especially is difficult because it’s right as the busy season is starting,” says Carmel restaurateur David Fink, who lived in Big Sur for 10 years. 

He is helping out by leveraging the skills of some beloved local chefs and wineries, employing a relief model that has helped before (during the 2017 closure when the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge was compromised, resulting in “Big Sur Island” with access cut off entirely on all sides). 

A benefit event tomorrow night at La Playa Hotel in Carmel invites people to be wined and dined and to support the Big Sur Disaster Relief Fund at the Community Foundation for Monterey County. Ticket prices ($500 per person, reduced by half to encourage more attendance) will go entirely to the relief fund; those funds will then go to the Community Association of Big Sur, which will distribute funds as needed to economically impacted community members. 

The people of Big Sur are resilient, a necessity given the circumstances. It’s too soon to know what resilience looks like for the Big Sur Bakery—there is insurance and such to sift through before a plan for the future. Gilson isn’t entirely sure whether to speak about it in past or present tense, as he acknowledges an outpouring of support from around the world in the past three days. “It has affected so many people, so deeply, because of how special of a place it was—is—was,” he says. 

It’s hard to describe the magic of a place like Big Sur Bakery, even for Gilson. “It’s so at the center of the community of Big Sur—its location, and historically,” he adds. “It’s just not a regular business—it’s been a passion, for the employees. I can’t put it into words. It just has…you can feel the love there. I can still feel it, standing inside the burned-out building. It’s just very special.”

The same goes for Big Sur as a whole. It’s a special place, on the precipice of the continent, a location that imbues the place with both great beauty and peril. 

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