Felton chef Jessica Yarr joins culinary heavyweights at star-studded Pebble Beach Food & Wine festival

Pebble Beach Food & Wine doesn’t err on the side of modesty when it bills itself as “the nation’s premier culinary event.” But the annual four-day food festival aims to live up to the superlative with a star-studded list of more than 200 chefs and beverage vendors, and dozens of tasting experiences, seminars, lunches and dinners from Thursday through Sunday at the luxe Pebble Beach Resort on the Monterey Peninsula. 

There is one Santa Cruz County chef showcasing their talents at this year’s event. Chef Jessica Yarr, owner of The Grove Cafe & Bakery in Felton, is returning for her second year, joining a lineup of vendors that includes television personalities Andrew Zimmern and Maneet Chauhan, famed restaurateurs Nancy Silverton and Alice Waters, and renowned chefs Stephanie Izard, Sean Brock and Kwame Onwuachi.

At The Grove, Yarr’s vegetarian-friendly café in her hometown, the Felton native serves cozy yet vibrant breakfast and lunch featuring farmers market-sourced produce and sandwiches on fresh bread, plus monthly community-focused dinner events. While well-known in Santa Cruz County for her decades working in and leading local kitchens, she doesn’t (yet!) boast the James Beard award, Michelin star, cookbook or TV show that so many of the celebrities lining the Pebble Beach roster do. 

Nevertheless, Yarr caught the attention of the festival organizers last year, and was personally invited to participate at the first event after a four-year hiatus.

Yarr said she was “really taken back” last year when she received an email asking if she would present at the Saturday tasting pavilion, one of two cornerstone events at the four-day festival. She’s not sure how the organizers found her, although she suspects it might have something to do with her performance on the Food Network show “Beat Bobby Flay” in October 2023 (where she was, in the opinion of this writer, unjustly defeated). 

“Any opportunity that I have to collaborate with that level of chef is worth it to me,” said Yarr. “Even though my restaurant is a small café in Felton, I’ve had the opportunity to have a broad reach with my reputation. Something’s working for me, because [the festival] picked up on it.”

Yarr has participated in the Big Sur Food & Wine Festival at least six times, but Pebble Beach Food & Wine is a much larger event, and she was a little intimidated. “It’s a massive scale operation. There are huge prep kitchens, all of these different refrigerator and freezer trucks, and tons of action going on all around. It’s pretty overwhelming,” she said. “You’re sharing space and prepping with chefs from all over the country.”

For attendees, deep pockets are as vital as an empty stomach. A $450 general admission ticket gives the holder access to unlimited small bites and drinks at either the Saturday or Sunday tasting pavilion, the two cornerstone events around which numerous satellite experiences orbit. Admission to smaller dining and educational classes, hosted by celebrities and famed chefs and beverage makers, are not included in the price of admission, and range from seats at the opening night reception, hosted by the James Beard Foundation, for $525, a barbecue seminar hosted by renowned pitmaster Chris Lilly for $395, and an aperitivo hour in the company of Italian American cooking show host and cookbook author Giada De Laurentiis for $275 per person. 

At the tasting concourse in 2024, Yarr was given free rein to create whatever dish she wanted, so she made 2,000 intricate deviled eggs in three different flavors: a vadouvan curry deviled egg; a Sichuan chili crisp egg; and a “spring egg” with salmon roe, pickled onions, and dill. “That was crazy,” said Yarr, who used tweezers to place delicate details on each bite. “But we got such great feedback. We had other chefs coming up to us saying how beautiful it was.”

The whirlwind weekend led to memorable connections, including trading sunglasses with Zimmern, host of Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods.” The experience of sharing space and preparing food with chefs from all over California and the country was one of the best parts of the event for Yarr, and a big reason why she’s coming back for Round 2. 

In addition to serving at the Sunday tasting pavilion on April 13, this year Yarr was invited to make the dessert course for a ticketed vegetarian lunch for 60 people on Saturday, April 12, alongside three other chefs, including Franklin Becker, a star on Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters.” Yarr offers creative takes on plant-based and what she calls “plant-forward” dishes at The Grove, so it felt like a natural fit. For the event, she’s making a vegan pistachio panna cotta with rose and geranium, poached strawberries and rhubarb, and saffron meringue kisses made with aquafaba. 

If deviled eggs were challenging, this year, Yarr is pushing herself to create ice cream-filled macaron cookie sandwiches in three different flavors: black coconut macarons with coconut and makrut lime sorbet; an almond and poppy seed macaron with apple and celery ice cream; and a saffron macaron with pistachio ice cream. Two weeks before the festival, she made three different ice creams, thousands of cookies, and combined the delicate desserts before freezing them so they could be transported to the event. 

And how will she serve a frozen item at the perfect temperature at an outdoor festival? By storing the cookie sandwiches in a cooler filled with dry ice at sub-zero temperatures, then tempering each piece in another ice chest until just chilled, and presenting them on a display made with stones and dry ice so the vapors wash over the brightly colored treats. 

It might not be easy, but rising to the occasion is part of the fun of participating in an event like this, said Yarr: “It’s really a balance between showcasing your art and giving people an experience they’ll be happy with. I also wanted to do something really outstanding, and the idea of doing ice cream sandwiches at that scale for an event like that is very ambitious.”

Beyond the glamour and the rigor, Pebble Beach has created opportunities for Yarr to participate at other high-end festivals. Last year, she was invited to serve food at Motorlux, an event at Monterey Car Week that features a similar caliber of chefs, through a connection she made at Pebble Beach Food & Wine. This year, she hopes to push that door open even further to gain access to Ojai Food & Wine and the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. “They have food and wine festivals all the time everywhere,” said Yarr. “But this one, I think, is considered the best.”

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