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Category: San Luis Obispo

Apple Farm, San Luis Obispo, California, United States of America

Apple Farm, San Luis Obispo, California, United States of America

Our family loves the Apple Farm Inn located in San Luis Obispo, California.  We have been coming here for years.

Front view of the restaurant to your right and the gift center to your left.
Front view of the restaurant to your right and the gift center to your left. The inn portion requires that you drive into the parking lot behind the buildings you see in this image and enter the hotel behind.

Note: this review is for the hotel and not the motor inn.  We have never stayed at the Apple Farm Trellis Court portion of this property.  We were told that rooms are half the size and only one bed.  They do cost less than the inn.   You are next to the Apple Farm Restaurant.

Apple Farm Trellis Court
This image above shows the Trellis Court portion of the Apple Farm property. Note that the rooms in the court access directly too and from the parking lot. The inn portion of the facility has much larger rooms requiring entry to the main building and each room is off a hallway.
Apple Tree Inn
The Apple Tree Inn is the hotel which we review in this post. The inn sits behind the gift shop and restaurant. You need to drive into the parking lot beside the gift shop to view the inn shown in the image above.

What we like about the Apple Farm Inn:

  • Its location is very good.  It is right off the 101 highway.  You can walk about 20 minutes down Monterrey Street to get to the downtown. There is also a trolley that costs 50 cents one way and stops right in front of this hotel.  There are other restaurants that are not too far away you can walk too.  Caution:  When coming up from the south on the 101 make sure you take the correct off ramp, Monterrey.  We failed once to do this once and because this hotel is at the north extreme of town and where the 101 enters a canyon, there were no roads to turn around for quite a few miles.
  • Rooms are really cute, spacious, clean, comfortable, quiet and not too expensive.  The room air conditioner is very good.  You can set a temperature for the room and we have not found any past AC units to be noisy.  The windows can also be opened for fresh air.  Every room has a gas fireplace which, by the way, does heat up the room.
Room-323
Room 323. Note that the Apple Farm is conducting renovations so this room may look different in the future.
  • Parking is convenient and easy to navigate.
  • There is a very good restaurant on the property.  The menu, service, and ambiance is good.  The food we had here was better than places we ate in town. We noticed that food dishes now have a way higher quality.  The cooks really are doing an excellent job.
  • There is also a gift shop that is quite large.
  • They also sell bakery items for sale.
  • You will get 2 very large chocolate chip cookies when you check in.
  • You get complimentary wine each night (one glass per person) from 3 pm to 7 pm.
  • Each room has two 10 fl oz of Martinelli’s Apple Juice.  Two 500 ml purified waters are provided.  Coffee for the coffee maker is also in the bathroom with the coffee maker.  We use the coffee maker to make tea.  Tea bags of various flavors are offered near the front desk along with small packets of honey.
  • A free local newspaper, the San Luis Obispo Tribune, is just outside your door each morning.
  • Look carefully in the basket holding the juice as you will find some chocolate kisses.
  • In the closet are two rather thick terry cloth bathrobe you can use during your stay.
  • Free WiFi.
  • There is a heated pool and hot tub.
  • Each night from 3:30 pm to 5 pm they feature a different local winery for a wine tasting.  They also offer some simple snacks along with the wine.
  • The hotel lobby rotates different drinks depending upon what part of the day it is.  Morning you can find coffee with cream and sugar.  Evening you may find tea and coffee.

What we do not like:

  • When we make tea in our room and use tap water we noticed large particle floaties.  This typically means the water is not that pure.  The Apple Farm provides two 500 ml free purified drinking water each day for each room.  We use that water and purified water we bring from home to make our tea.  It would be nice for San Luis Obispo to do a better job of filtering their water.

2015 Monterey Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
info@applefarm.com
Phone: 1-800-255-2040 or 805-544-2040
Web site: http://www.applefarm.com/

I would like to thank Gustavo who works at the Apple Farm front desk for proofing the content of this post (April 3, 2015).

August 2016 update for one hotel room #100:  Room 100 Allegedly Flawed

July 7, 2017 update:  The Apple Farm offers a $5 dining credit with their Green Apple Program.  I do not recommend it.  We put the door knob placard out and found that nothing had been done to our room  We did not get apple juice, nor water, nor new towels, nor fresh sheets, etc.  The placard appears to tell room service not to enter to do anything!

Room 209 has a few minor flaws.  The commode does not properly flush.   The activation handle needs to be raised upward after pushing down to activate the flush.  If you fail to do this it never stops flushing, thus wasting lots of water.

The second mistake is the electrical wiring in the bathroom.  The light switch over the sink also turns on the vent over the shower and tub.  The second switch illuminates near the tub only.  The tub light should be married to the exhaust vent.

When I come to this hotel, many of the rooms have sink faucet handles that turn the wrong way, quite odd.

I did not enjoy the guest wine tasting reception held every night, July 7, 2017.  They moved this event to the Garden Room.  This is a much smaller space and lacks enough tables.  I like to bring my study materials such as books or laptop and writing materials and place them on a table to conduct work while drinking their free wine.  The Garden Room was way too small and lacked enough tables in their patio area.

Novo Restaurant Lounge, San Luis Obispo, California, United States of America

Novo Restaurant Lounge, San Luis Obispo, California, United States of America

My wife and I were taking a walking tour of downtown San Luis Obispo and decided it was time for lunch.  We had no idea of where to eat so we walked into an upscale clothing store and asked one of the sales ladies where a good place to eat for lunch.  She recommended Novo and told us where it was located.  We thanked her for her recommendation and once out of their shop I looked the restaurant up on my cell phone and the restaurant indeed had a very impressive consumers collective  score.

Novo-Restaurant
Front of restaurant, street view. There are two doors on either side of the front window. You can enter either door.

When we arrived at this place, we found two similar doors on either side of the front.  We could not figure out which door to use.  Both open into the bar.   Once inside you find yourself in a dark illuminated bar with some dining tables in front of the bar.

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This is what you will see when you first enter the restaurant from the street. (There is a second entrance from the creek side). When we first arrived the front of the restaurant was quite dark, which is why I described the bar as being dark.

If you want to eat on the patio, take the long hallway back past the bar, the restrooms and kitchen until you come out of the building again on to their patio.  It was slightly interesting to find waiters and waitresses standing along both sides of the wall between the kitchen door and the back patio.

20150404_125821_resized
This is the narrow hallway that links the front bar area to the back patio. Along this hallway are the restrooms and kitchen. This image was greatly brightened. It is normally quite dark. (This shot actually is taken from the patio side looking toward the bar).

Once out of the main building, walk up to the hostess station in front of you and they will seat you.

2015-04-04 13.32.32_resized
As you end your walk down the long dark hallway to the patio, you come upon a raised deck where the host station is. Check in here to be seated. Note the chairs along both sides of this deck for people to sit and wait their turn to be seated.

 

20150404_140543_resized
This view of the patio dining at the back of the restaurant is taken from a rather high bridge which links both sides of a narrow creek, behind the restaurant.

What we liked:

  • This restaurant has a large back patio which we enjoyed.  They put up large umbrellas because the day was hot.  I noticed that they have rows of heaters along the creek.  One umbrella was slightly burned probably being placed too close to the heaters.
  • Service was good.
  • The salmon bisque was very good.  This one dish, for me is the reason to go here.  It was full of seafood and vegetables.
  • The sandwiches were good.

What we did not like:

  • The table napkins were too small and light.  I would really like to see much larger napkins with a heavier weight to them.

Location: 726 Higuera Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
Phone 805.543.3986
Web site: http://www.novorestaurant.com/