Calico Motor Club & King’s Road Chippy: A Monterey Original in the Making
If you’ve spent enough time around Monterey, you learn that some of the best local discoveries aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest signs or the most polished storefronts. Sometimes they’re tucked into places you’ve driven past a hundred times without giving much thought. That’s exactly the case on Dela Vina Avenue, where a serious automotive shop has quietly become home to one of the more unexpected food stops in town. Just outside Calico Motor Club, surrounded by vintage cars, race memorabilia and the unmistakable energy of a working garage, you’ll find a food stand called King’s Road Chippy—a British fish-and-chips operation with a surprisingly deep connection to Monterey Bay.
The pairing sounds unusual until you meet the people behind it. Justin and Veronica Todd have spent years building businesses around two very different passions: cars and food. Calico is Justin’s world; King’s Road is Veronica’s. Together, they’ve turned those passions into something that feels less like a calculated restaurant concept and more like the kind of place they genuinely wanted to have in their own backyard.
Two Businesses, One Family
The story of Calico Motor Club really starts with Air-Cooled By-the-Sea, the Monterey County automotive business founded by Justin and Veronica Todd. Justin’s interest in cars goes back to his high-school years, when a Power, Energy & Transportation class introduced him to the mechanical side of the automobile. What began with projects like rebuilding a small Briggs & Stratton engine eventually developed into an engineering education and, ultimately, a career built around cars. Over the years, Air-Cooled By-the-Sea grew into a comprehensive resource for enthusiasts and collectors, handling everything from routine maintenance and mechanical repairs to suspension work, fabrication, wiring, ECU tuning, race preparation, vehicle storage, transportation and collection management.
Calico Motor Club is a natural extension of that history. Rather than simply creating another place to have a car worked on, the Todds wanted somewhere people could actually spend time with their cars and with one another. The club brings together enthusiasts, collectors and drivers with vehicle storage, automotive services, a lounge, memorabilia, race films, coffee, drinks and events. There are rallies, coffee-and-car gatherings, movie nights and other opportunities for people who enjoy cars to meet without the atmosphere feeling overly formal or exclusive. That seems particularly fitting here. Monterey County has been intertwined with automotive culture for generations, from Laguna Seca and the Pebble Beach Concours to the rallies and the annual spectacle of Car Week. Calico takes that same passion and gives it a more relaxed, everyday home.
Then there is King’s Road Chippy, which is where Veronica’s side of the family story comes into focus. Locals who frequent the Pacific Grove Farmers Market may already recognize the name, because the business built its initial following there before moving into its current home at Calico. Veronica is a first-generation American with family roots in London, and British food was part of her upbringing. Her grandmother Elizabeth and great-aunt Dot and great-uncle Frank Hill were part of that family history, while her mother also helped operate Rockhouse Pub & Grill in Livermore, a restaurant known for its English food. So when Veronica started King’s Road, she wasn’t simply trying to figure out how to make an American interpretation of fish and chips. She was drawing from a tradition she grew up with.
That comes through in the food. King’s Road’s fish is fried to order in a light, crisp batter, with the goal being that delicate crunch without a heavy coating overpowering the fish. The business has also sourced rock cod directly from Monterey Bay fishermen, including Stagnaro Brothers in Santa Cruz, allowing the menu to have a genuine local connection while still maintaining its British identity. It’s a combination that makes sense once you think about it: a London tradition, prepared by someone with a personal connection to it, using fish from the waters just down the road.
So, What Should You Order?
The obvious place to start is the fish and chips, which come with thick-cut chips, mushy peas and house tartar sauce. Local food coverage has been particularly positive about the dish. Edible Monterey Bay’s Mark C. Anderson recently visited the Dela Vina location and highlighted the crisp texture of the batter and the quality of the fish. But King’s Road has also grown beyond the traditional plate. Depending on the day, the menu can include a fried-fish sandwich served on corn brioche, the King’s Road Burger with a half-pound chopped beef patty, smoked bacon, Red Leicester cheese, tomato chutney, garlic mayo and pickled onion, along with fries and rotating specials.
The changing menu is part of the appeal. Veronica has talked about cooking being driven by curiosity, whether that comes from a cookbook, a magazine, a particular ingredient or simply an idea she wants to try. That gives King’s Road a little more personality than a restaurant where the menu has been set in stone from day one. You can go looking for the classic fish and chips and find something completely different catching your eye, which is a pretty good reason to come back.
Of course, the food is only half of what makes the place interesting. The real novelty is eating a plate of fish and chips while surrounded by an automotive collection and the sounds of a working garage. There’s a 25-foot food truck outside serving the food, while inside Calico you’ll find the cars, memorabilia and lounge that make the motor club what it is. On paper, a British chippy and an automotive club sound like two businesses that should have nothing to do with one another. In person, the combination feels much more natural. Cars bring people through the door, food gives them a reason to stay, and conversation tends to take care of the rest.
That was the idea from the beginning. Justin and Veronica have described the concept as a longtime dream: Justin would build the automotive side, Veronica would build the food side, and eventually the two would find a way to bring them together. They’ve now done exactly that. The fact that the business is also a family endeavor adds another layer to the story. The Todds have six children, and they’ve spoken about wanting their kids to see work as something that can exist alongside family life rather than something completely separate from it. There is something refreshingly personal about a business built around the things its owners genuinely enjoy rather than around a concept developed primarily because someone thought it would sell.
A Place Worth Knowing
Calico also doesn’t fit neatly into the traditional idea of a private motor club. You certainly don’t need to arrive in a million-dollar collector car to appreciate what is happening there. The events are built around driving, gathering and enjoying cars, and the atmosphere is as much about community as it is about the vehicles themselves. Even the café membership has a certain sense of humor to it: because of the way the food and beverage operation is structured, Calico operates as a private club, but membership is currently just $2 per year. It’s hard to imagine a more approachable way to join a motor club.
For those of us who live on the Monterey Peninsula, that may be the most appealing part of the whole operation. We have no shortage of places designed to impress visitors, and we’re fortunate to live in a place where restaurants, hotels, golf courses, galleries and attractions draw people from around the world. But the places that become part of local life tend to be different. They’re the places where the owners are actually there, where you run into someone you know, where the menu changes because somebody got excited about an ingredient, or where you can walk in for lunch and end up talking about cars with someone you’ve never met.
That’s what makes Calico Motor Club and King’s Road Chippy worth knowing about. Neither business is trying to be something it isn’t. King’s Road isn’t attempting to recreate London on the Monterey Peninsula, and Calico isn’t trying to imitate some ultra-exclusive automotive club. Instead, the Todds have taken two things they genuinely love and built a place around them. The result is a little unusual, a little eccentric and very easy to enjoy: serious cars, good food, local fish, British tradition and a community of people who simply like being around interesting things.
And perhaps that is exactly why the combination works. Spend an afternoon at Calico, look at a few cars, watch a race, talk with some fellow enthusiasts and order a plate of fish and chips, and the pairing starts to seem less strange than it did when you first heard about it. In a county where the automobile and the ocean have always been such a big part of local life, maybe a British chippy inside a Monterey motor club isn't such an unlikely idea after all.
Calico Motor Club and King’s Road Chippy are located at 237 Dela Vina Avenue in Monterey. Menus and food-service hours can change, so check their current schedule before heading over.
