Spa D'Etat: Dolphin Bay Resort & Spa, California

Manning up on the massage table.

By Kevin Raub
Published: Jul 10, 2008

If you're like most people – well, most men, anyway – you find the idea of telling someone you are intimately entwined with that they aren't doing something right excruciatingly uncomfortable. So much so that we usually just keep our mouths shut lest we ruin the moment. I find telling a massage therapist they aren’t doing something right just as difficult, even something as simple as asking them to turn the pressure up or down. I don't know why I feel this is an uncomfortable request – after all, I'm paying for this hour of bliss, so why the hell shouldn't I get the most out of it? If the therapist is rubbing me all the wrong ways, why can't I find a polite way to let him or her know I would appreciate a little more of this, a little less of that? I don't have an answer, other than to say it reminds me of the above intimacy example, and I wallow in silence in that situation as well.
I bring all of this up because I recently visited Central California's newish Dolphin Bay Resort & Spa, pretty much the only five-star hotel between Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur and Bacara in Santa Barbara, a distance of 200 miles. The resort is a beautiful breath of fresh air and even finer cuisine in Shell Beach, the slightly less seedy northerly cousin to Pismo Beach, one of Central California's most popular surf towns. Where once stood a grassy swath of nothing along dramatic coastal cliffs between motel-style resorts now sits this little resort that almost could, a welcomed luxe addition when it hits its mark, a resort a bit in over its head when it doesn’t. Regardless, if you are of the thread count-tallying ilk and are making the iconic coastal drive along California's Highway 1, this is your rest stop nearest to the requisite Hearst Castle diversion.

Dolphin Bay excels on two key points. Firstly, the 1- and 2-bedroom accommodations are modern and spacious, with fully-equipped kitchens, yummy sink-into beds and Kodak views along the rugged coast. Secondly, the Latin-leaning flavors of Chef Evan Treadwell at Lido are innovative and impressive (most notably his chipotle burger with manchego cheese and his pequillo pepper soup), which wash down wonderfully with the best cocktail list I've seen this side of Los Angeles. Where the resort still needs refinement is in the details – at times it can come across as trying to be something it's not, a bit trailer trash in new shoes, if you will, which brings me to the spa.

La Bonne Vie spa offers six treatment rooms clocking in at just under 3000-sq-feet total, nearly none of which is devoted to two important elements of a destination spa: A welcoming and relaxing waiting room (guests wait for their therapists on chaise lounges in the reception area. I repeat: The reception area) and locker rooms, where there should be a steam room, a sauna, a Jacuzzi or at least some shaving cream. Instead, it's a small room with a few lockers that would be a tight squeeze if two folks showed up at the same time. I slap on my robe, which I discover has no pockets – where am I supposed to hide my reporter's notebook? – and laugh to myself as I think about the receptionist asking me what my "sandal" size was, as if the answer would be different from my shoe size. Anyway, semantics.

There was a little confusion when Janne, my therapist, came to fetch me for my treatment, which was billed as a 90-minute Extraordinary Treatment, which sounded wonderful (perhaps even extraordinary) until I heard the words, "Hot Stones." If you're a devotee of this column, you know I detest hot stone massages, but I realized it was likely me, in some sort of momentary stupefaction no doubt brought on by prolonged exposure to aromatherapy, who accidentally arranged this treatment for myself. Kudos to Janne, though, for being able to instantaneously adjust, toss the whole hot stone idea out altogether, and commence with a 90-minute relaxation massage as an alternative.