Maligne
Klaus Georis wraps beets in cheesecloth and smokes them two days before he slices them thin and rolls them into cigars. He cooks over oak cut in his parents' backyard, in a former upholstery shop in Seaside, and he holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for it.
Why go
Georis lasted two weeks at culinary school, then talked his way into Quince at 19 after a meal there and worked ten months as commis and garde-manger. Europe took him to Maaemo in Oslo, a Paris bistro where the chef screamed, and then to Kobe Desramaults at In De Wulf in Flanders, where he foraged inside thirty miles and learned to smoke and ferment. He came back in 2018 to Bar Crenn and Atelier Crenn, left in 2021 to build this room, and opened in June 2022 in a building his parents own. The hearth is the whole kitchen and it burns oak his parents cut in their backyard. Georis on why: Cooking on fire is a very familiar thing for people. Everybody has been to a barbecue. That element of smoke is just primal.
2 He wanted Carmel and did the arithmetic instead: The restaurants in Carmel are paying $20,000 to $40,000 a month in rent and they are triple-net.
Seven months in, he closed for two weeks, brought the prices down and added lunch, and the Bib Gourmand landed within three months of reopening.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the beet salad. Jessica Yadegaran on it, having eaten it:
It will ruin you for all future beet salads.
The branzino au poivre and the butterflied chicken parm are the two Georis says he cannot take off, and the tarte tatin closes it. - Avoid: Monday and Tuesday. The room is dark both days, and Sunday service stops at 6:30pm.2
What locals & experts say
- MICHELIN Guide California, Bib Gourmand (read 21 August 2026):
spectacular local ingredients that make even all-too familiar dishes like Caesar salad memorable.
1 - Monterey County Weekly (Dave Faries, 1 November 2022), on the onion rings:
The shell cracks, mellow and malty. The onion snaps, with a sweep rasp.
Georis told him there was no trick to it, only beer batter and rounds of onion.3 - Klaus Georis, on the menu he is stuck with:
You become a victim of your success. You can't imagine going to Zuni Cafe and not seeing the chicken on the menu.
2
Good to know
- Timing: Wednesday to Saturday 5pm to 8:30pm and Sunday 3pm to 6:30pm as of November 2025, closed Monday and Tuesday.2
- Booking: through Tock. The room is small and it fills.
- The family: Walter Georis came out of post-war Belgium and opened a Carmel restaurant in 1974 that became La Bicyclette. Casanova and Corkscrew Cafe are the family's too, which puts three Georis rooms on this one day out.2
- Getting there: Broadway Avenue in Seaside, ten minutes up the bay from downtown Monterey. The building has no sign on it.
Verdict
should-visit — A Bib Gourmand in a former upholstery shop, cooking on a hearth fed with oak from the chef's parents' backyard. Georis staged at Maaemo and In De Wulf and came home through Bar Crenn and Atelier Crenn, and the technique shows in a beet that gets a two-day smoke before it is sliced and rolled. It is the one room on this day out where a $20 plate is doing three-star work, and Georis opened in Seaside rather than Carmel because Carmel rents are $20,000 to $40,000 a month.