Carmel-by-the-Sea Has Three Bars, and the Permit Stays With the Building

Carmel-by-the-Sea has 58 restaurants. According to Planning Commissioner Stephanie Locke, 32 of them have full bars. The city counts three bars. On paper, the only places in town where the drink is the main business are the room on Lincoln Street that used to be Sade's, Barmel on San Carlos and A.W. Shucks in the Doud Arcade.

Two of those addresses and a steakhouse nearby made news in 2026. A bar that had run for close to a century closed. A new owner opened on the same site. A neighboring steakhouse spent an evening in front of the Planning Commission over whether a countertop is a bar, and an oyster house spent most of a year proving it is one. Each story turned on one fact that the Carmel Pine Cone put plainly in October. In Carmel, a bar designation "run[s] with the land." It belongs to the property owner.

Three Permits, Eight Blocks, 200 Feet

The rule is short. Section 17.14.040(I)(2) of the Carmel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code has three limits on "drinking places":

• Maximum number: three
• Allowable locations: blocks 70 through 77 on the city map
• Spacing: at least 200 feet from any other use selling distilled spirits, for drinking on-site or to take away

The Pine Cone's October report traces the cap to a city policy calling for "methods that will result in limiting or reducing the number of certain uses including but not limited to drinking places, art galleries, gift shops, T-shirt shops, and jewelry stores" in the central commercial district. The code was amended to match.

The cap is the reason a Carmel bar can't relocate the way a café can. A business can't take its bar status down the street, because the status stays with the space. The only way to open a new bar is to occupy one of the three spaces that already have it.

The Permit Stayed on Lincoln When Sade's Left

Sade's poured its last drinks on January 30, 2026. KSBW reported that owner Parker Logan, who had run the bar for seven years and drank there long before that, called it "the backbone to Carmel, it's where locals and travelers who frequent the area all gather to tell their stories and share their joy." His lease was not renewed. He told the station, "Sade's will rise again."

A Sade's somewhere else would need a bar permit, and under the cap every one was taken. According to the Pine Cone, Logan argued at one point that the city should treat A.W. Shucks' permit as abandoned, which would have opened a slot for him to reopen elsewhere. The permit on Lincoln stayed with the building. Logan's former landlords leased the space to restaurateur Bashar Alsneeh.

What the Old U-Bar Serves Now

BashBar opened in September at 654 Lincoln Street, between Ocean and Seventh avenues. It bills itself as a neighborhood bar pouring cocktails, California wine and local beer, and it is 21 and over. Its website lists hours as open daily from 12 p.m. until late.

Mark C. Anderson visited for Edible Monterey Bay and found the old-school U-shaped bar and back bar still there, with extra seating added so groups can sit together. Faux gold brick now covers much of the walls, paintings of vintage race cars hang above, credit cards are accepted, and "the community well" is written on the front glass. The menu he reported:

1. Five signature cocktails, among them a bourbon sour, an espresso martini and a Boilermaker of Bulleit and beer, at $14 to $18
2. Five "Filthy Favorites" such as a black cherry sour, a Paloma, a margarita and a Grey Goose martini, at $14 to $16
3. Seven wines by the glass at $12 each
4. Ten beers at $8 to $10

Alsneeh also runs Dametra, PortaBella, Catch and Char. He told the Pine Cone the new bar would be "something Carmel will be proud of." The owner and the décor are new. The room and its permit are where they were in January.

The Counter at Char Had to Stay a Counter

Two blocks away, Alsneeh's other project shows how strictly the city holds to the number three. Char, a steakhouse, opened in early August in the former Cantinetta Luca space on Dolores Street between Ocean and Seventh. Edible Monterey Bay describes a menu of Certified Angus Beef Prime steaks, seafood, house-made pastas, wood-fired pizzas and cocktails.

Char already has a staffed bar like any full-service restaurant. Alsneeh wanted to turn the former Salumeria Luca space next door into what he called "a high-end lounge area where people can come hang out and have drinks." He told the Planning Commission he needed a counter there to display expensive bourbons and tequilas and to hold "a dishwasher and all that stuff," but that it would not be a bar.

At the August 19 meeting, as the Pine Cone reported, commissioners spent time on a question that doesn't usually come up in a land-use hearing: what is a bar? Commissioner Mel Ahlborn was concerned that if staff made drinks at the counter, it would work as one. She said a customer who could walk in, order tapas and a drink, and get them without a server going to the other room would be using a bar. LePage disagreed:

"If you can't walk up and order a drink, it's not a bar. They're going to give you a menu, you're going to order, they're going to make it and bring it back to you."

The commission approved the lounge unanimously. It called the counter a "service counter" and had Alsneeh move the four seats drawn at it in the layout. Under the approved plan, lounge guests order from a menu and their drinks are brought to the table, and that arrangement is what keeps the count at three.

A.W. Shucks Spent a Year Proving It Was a Bar

The third permit nearly went the other direction. A.W. Shucks is in the Doud Arcade on Ocean Avenue. The current owners say the site opened as Whitney's Bar in 1933, became A.W. Shucks in 1992, and has been theirs since July 2023. The menu runs on rotating oysters, New England and Manhattan chowders, "Shuckefeller" oysters and oyster shooters.

That kitchen became the issue. According to the Pine Cone, the 1993 use permit described a drinking place with limited food. The planning commission held hearings in October and December 2025 and then ruled on February 11 that A.W. Shucks had become a restaurant. Its kitchen was fully built out and food sales dominated, so the commission found its bar designation abandoned. The property owner, TSD Carmel Properties, which owns the Doud Arcade and therefore the permit, joined owners Randy and Karen Basi in asking the city council to overturn the ruling. In April the council sided with them and told them to apply for an amended permit.

The amended permit came back on October 14. Randy Basi told commissioners, "We are a bar. It's always been a bar that serves food because you have allowed it over 35, 40 years." The vote was 4-1, with Locke dissenting. LePage closed the matter: "This is primarily a drinking place, and it is one of three. That issue is off the table."

LePage also pointed to the bigger issue the case raised. He said staff and the commission need to write "an ordinance which is fair to all the operators in the community, because what we have now is not fair." Commissioner Stefan Karapetkov asked for specific criteria in the code that would show when a secondary use has become the primary one. Under the code as written, a bar that serves a lot of food and a restaurant that serves a lot of drinks can look the same from a barstool.

The One That Stayed the Same

Barmel is the permit holder that made no news this year. It sits on San Carlos Street and opened in 2016. The bar describes itself as a place for craft cocktails, bar snacks, music and dancing, with bands, DJs and holiday events. Its current calendar lists live guitar, DJ nights, and karaoke and open-mic evenings.

So the count is the same as last year. There is a bar on Lincoln Street with a new name and gold brick on the walls, a bar on San Carlos with a DJ on the calendar, and a bar in the Doud Arcade that is shucking oysters with its status settled. On Dolores Street, Char's approved lounge plan puts drinks at the table and no seats at the counter.

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