Fairmont Grand Del Mar resort debuts Fireside Lounge

The new Fireside Lounge layout at the Fairmount Grand Del Mar resort in Carmel Valley.

April 9, 2021 6 AM PT

The Fairmont Grand Del Mar resort has introduced a new open-air, socially distanced dining and drinking program called Fireside Lounge.

Diners can reserve one of 10 cabanas with firepits or eight separate firepits that are positioned on a grass lawn at the Carmel Valley resort. The cabanas comfortably seat six people and the firepits seat up to four. There’s no fee to use a cabanas or firepits, or a minimum food order, but reservations are required.

The Fireside Lounge menu features small plates like hangar steak tartare and a cheese and charcuterie board priced from $16 to $32, and desserts like a s’mores kit for two or chocolate marquise pastry, priced from $10 to $16.

There are also specialty cocktails, wines, local craft beers and Champagne. The resort is at 5300 Grand Del Mar Court in Carmel Valley. For menu and details, granddelmar.com.

Kragen writes about restaurants for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Email her at pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com.

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Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.