Big Sur Inn | CARMEL VALLEY | Phoenix | tour manager | Andy

Deetjens is the sweetest, most romantic restaurant. It's at the Big Sur Inn. The food is incredible; they have great wines. The people there are so sweet. They've been there for a long time, and you get a real sense of the Big Sur hospitality and warmth. It's an equally great place for huge breakfasts. If you want a really big breakfast spread in the morning, they have the greatest eggs Benedict, pancakes … wonderful.

You've been getting into wines lately, right?
Yes, my tour manager, Andy [Proudfoot], and I are into wines. Carmel Valley has many wineries. [Ryan and I are] redoing our house right now, and we have a bit of storage space for wine in the kitchen, and we're going to get a chilling-fridge thing to stick in the garage. I've been collecting [wines while I've been] on tour. Andy is my wine mentor, because I am admittedly just a beginner.

Robert Talbott Vineyards in Carmel Valley is really good. They make a great top-class Chardonnay because the vineyard is by the coast and it's cool. Cool grapes work best for Chardonnay.

Are you a shopper?
Yeah, I love to shop. The Phoenix bookshop - I call it the bookshop, but it's actually just a shop - has a lot of the books and poetry by writers who lived in Big Sur. It's a great shop for jewelry and oils, and every once in a while they feature some really eclectic, special jewelry designers.

The Phoenix also has the best cookies on the planet. I think they're called Selma's Cookies. They're chocolate chip, and they're award-winning. And after we first partook, we wound up ordering a bunch online and then had a freezer full of them. They're the greatest chocolate-chip cookies ever. So they sell those at the Phoenix Shop, and that's just underneath the restaurant Nepenthe. And Nepenthe is amazing. I love their Ambrosia Burger. It has a really great sauce that they make.