The signage is pink, the rooms are pink, and the rose-patterned carpet is pink. However none are as quintessentially pink — or recognizable — because the lengthy, hand-peeled ribbons of custom-dyed white chocolate atop the pink Champagne cake on the Madonna Inn.
The Central Coast’s quirkiest landmark is legendary for its 110 candy-colored visitor rooms themed to the likes of cavemen, carousels and pioneer America, however this maze-like, kaleidoscopic lair of chroma and whimsy can also be dwelling to a few of the most iconic meals on the Central Coast.
The motel turns 100. Discover the state’s greatest roadside havens — and the best stops alongside the best way.
Husband-and-wife staff Alex and Phyllis Madonna opened their white picket lodge with solely a dozen rooms on Christmas Eve in 1958. By way of the years extra rooms would debut, together with extra wings to satisfy the demand. In 1960 they started development on the principle construction, which now homes a steakhouse, a copper-and-wood-accented cafe, a bakery, a cocktail bar, a wine cellar, a food-focused reward store and a dance ground, along with private-events areas adorned with gold, stained glass and, in fact, loads of pink.
Resort rooms at Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, Calif., Friday, April 18, 2025.
(Nic Coury / For The Instances)
“Our inn may not suit everyone’s taste, but from the number of pleased guests we’ve had from practically every country in the world … we feel that we have contributed to the joy of traveling,” the late Alex Madonna as soon as wrote to The Instances.
On the Madonna Inn almost every little thing is made on-site, and what isn’t is commonly sourced from close by specialists. San Luis Obispo’s long-running Cattaneo Bros. makes the linguica sausage that’s served as an appetizer at Alex Madonna’s Gold Rush Steak Home and a filling for the Copper Cafe’s omelet. A number of the fish is caught from the close by coast. Castoro Cellars’ native San Miguel facility makes the lodge’s house-brand wines.
On the Silver Bar company swivel on pink-and-wood stools to sip vacation-perfect cocktails such because the signature Pink Cloud, which comes topped with whipped cream and the motel’s ubiquitous house-dyed pink sugar. Monstrously thick wedges of cake make their means from the bakery to almost each desk at each restaurant, whereas entire muffins relaxation in brilliant pink cardboard packing containers, lids solely half-closed at an angle and taped to the perimeters — a testomony to the dimensions of those well-known baked items.
And no cake is as well-known right here because the pink Champagne cake.
Behind the scenes on the bakery
It’s a little bit of a misnomer; there’s no pink Champagne within the cake in any respect. Bakery supervisor Margie Peau says it was served throughout the lodge’s “Champagne hour” and the title caught. Since its inception roughly 50 years in the past, the recipe stays almost similar and intently guarded. Layers of springy, fluffy white cake are surrounded by a butter-yellow Bavarian cream and whipped cream, all frosted and coated in shards and ribbons of custom-dyed pink chocolate and a dusting of confectioner’s sugar, a textural, creamy delight.
Final 12 months musician Kacey Musgraves swooned over “the layers and ruffles of [her] favorite pink Champagne cake” in her tune “Dinner With Friends.” Dozens of copycat recipes are unfold round TikTok, Instagram, private blogs and publications comparable to America’s Take a look at Kitchen. Everybody needs a style, with some company driving hours for the deal with.
Pink champagne cake at Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, Calif., Saturday, April 19, 2025.
(Nic Coury / For The Instances)
“I think it’s just so unique,” Peau says. “We have a lot of people who came as children, and now they come back as adults and they’re just kind of in awe of it. Nothing has changed; it’s like going back in time. They’re getting the same cake that they got when they were little kids, and now they’re bringing their grandkids and they’re getting the same cake.”
They arrive in all shapes, sizes and colours: full sheet muffins, half-size muffins, spherical muffins and marriage ceremony muffins, single layers, double layers and extra. Peau as soon as weighed a 12-inch German chocolate cake, which rang in at 25 kilos.
Eleven individuals comprise the bakery staff, they usually make tons of of muffins all through the week for slices — 80 on weekdays, 100 on weekends. They churn out as many as 65 cake orders every day for weekend pickup, plus extra muffins for occasions held on-site.
“We always have an extra stash of cakes that we can sell whole when people are like, ‘Oh shoot, I forgot to reserve my cake for my kid’s birthday’ or something like that,” Peau says. (However to be secure, place your whole-cake order on-line at the very least 48 hours upfront, or three weeks out throughout the summertime peak.)
The work begins at 4 a.m. when the primary shift arrives on the pint-size bakery, with most working round a small middle desk.
Bakers put the ending touches on pink champagne muffins at Madonna Inn.
(Nic Coury / For The Instances)
“It’s tiny!” Peau says. “It was for a couple people; it was definitely not for this volume back then. We are always in each other’s space for sure, but we like each other a lot back there.”
In the course of the holidays the bakery can really feel much more cramped because it cranks out seasonal additions, comparable to 1,600 mini cupcakes and muffins for Easter and Mom’s Day brunch and tons of of extra pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The bakery staff whips up 9 flavors of pie, plus danishes, eclairs, big cinnamon rolls, cream puffs and cupcakes, all of which gleam from their wood-and-glass instances at a nook of the Copper Cafe. As soon as they promote out for the day, they’re carried out.
Its tandem restaurant, the Copper Cafe, is the place locals typically cease by for breakfast: copious corned beef hashes, tacky linguica omelets, fruit-topped Belgian waffles and different Americana set to the clatter and clang of a busy diner. This one simply occurs to have a roaring fire at one finish.
Crown-jewel steak
Simply past the bakery and the Copper Cafe is the inn’s culinary crown jewel: the ornate Alex Madonna’s Gold Rush Steak Home, a red-pink-gold dreamscape of a restaurant adorned with a 28-foot-tall golden fake tree on the middle of its eating room, cherubs, candlestick lights and seasonal decor hanging from its sprawling branches.
Beto Zamacona began as a dishwasher on the Madonna Inn when he was barely 18 years previous. After 25 years, he’s now the top chef on the steakhouse.
Beto Zamacona cooks steaks on the grill contained in the restaurant at Madonna Inn.
(Nic Coury / For The Instances)
In accordance with Zamacona, the inn’s recognition exploded over the past 5 years. Pre-pandemic busy nights had been Friday to Sunday; now, he says, they’re busy Thursday to Monday, and generally serve 300 company on the steakhouse alone. Fifteen years in the past, he cooked for under 35 to 50 company on weeknights.
“It’s getting insane,” he says.
Reservations typically ebook up weeks upfront, particularly for weekend eating; it’s not unusual to identify company feasting on the steak dinners with gold-jacketed baked potatoes on the close by bar or cafe, which function overflow seating.
Zamacona grills hand-cut steaks Santa Maria-style over a red-oak dwell fireplace, from behind stained-glass rose window panels. Given its proximity to the Central Valley, the restaurant’s greens are nearly at all times regionally grown. He and his staff prepare dinner rib-eyes, swordfish steaks, prime rib dinners, lamb chops, fried rooster, beneficiant shrimp cocktails and extra — most of which have been served there for many years — plus month-to-month specials that Zamacona creates underneath the steering of the top chef of your entire property, Jacqui Burns.
The steakhouse additionally caters occasions, and Zamacona says he’s cooked as much as 850 filets of steak for a single social gathering. At Christmas and Thanksgiving, the steakhouse serves at the very least 1,400 individuals every day.
There’s consideration to element and kitsch in every little thing right here. Adorning the eating room every season takes two to a few weeks: bunnies and multicolored paper Easter eggs in spring, pastel pumpkins and cartoonish scarecrows in fall, Santas and twinkling lights and faux-snowy bushes towards the top of the 12 months.
“There’s something magical when you walk in there,” says server Jamie Jorgensen. “You look around and you’re just like, ‘Wow, who thought of this?’”
The eating room at Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, Calif., Friday, April 18, 2025.
(Nic Couryw / For The Instances)
She started working on the steakhouse in 2013, the place she met and fell in love with Zamacona. They married 4 years later, and nonetheless work within the restaurant collectively.
Jorgensen frequently serves a mixture of locals and vacationers, together with repeat clients she acknowledges from years previous. Some come to dinner in costume that’s themed to their rooms, others in midcentury glamour. One couple, she says, travels from Oregon twice a 12 months, eating within the steakhouse each evening of their weeklong visits.
Like her husband, Jorgensen didn’t foresee working on the steakhouse for therefore lengthy — however she definitely hoped she would. It’s, she says, in contrast to anyplace else.
“It’s really difficult to walk in there and be in a bad mood,” she says. “I always tell people you have to stop at least one time and check it off your bucket list.… If you want to see some people dolled up on a weekend, come on over to Madonna because we have the glitter and the sparkle and the rhinestone.”
