Fairmont Grand Del Mar: Southern California’s Italian-Influenced Jewel

Fairmont Grand Del Mar is a resort that feels like a home

The Fairmont Grand Del Mar is an Italian-inspired oasis that transports your family to a Tuscan estate. Located thirty minutes from San Diego International Airport, travelers enter Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve, and soon arrive at an exterior that takes cues from Addison Mizner’s Italian-influenced creations in Palm Beach and Boca Raton.

Fans of The Breakers will feel right at home in this Golden State version of a five-star hotel and family resort. Our Fairmont Grand Del Mar reviews highlight dining, spa and kids club experiences that were truly memorable.

Even though the Grand Del Mar was built in 2007, the interior public spaces evoke the residential flow of a Gilded Age residence. Deceptively expansive, the property feels intimate, expanding down a slope, with guest rooms located on floors below the main level of this luxury hotel.

We never learned how to find our room without the use of signs, with all of the twists and turns of its corridors, but that hardly distracted us from the pleasure of returning to such a beautiful suite or discovering all of the different alcoves of the property.

Families will find suite accommodations spacious, formal, and tassled. All room types offer anticipated perks such as free wi-fi, flat screen TVs and deep soaking tubs in bright, well-appointed bathrooms. Of course, a real Tuscan estate would look very different on the inside. It is more apt to describe the style here, with its abundance of shiny black marble, as an Italian residence modeled after the Venetian or Palazzo hotels in Las Vegas.

The Grand Del Mar Pool & Beach Service

The pool area is memorable. There are two in addition to the most inviting kiddie pool you’ve ever seen, and several hot tubs located throughout with spectacular views of the golf course and neighboring hills. Spa guests and adults have a separate pool off the fitness center for quiet sunbathing.

Impeccable service was offered poolside, and the staff worked hard to provide five-star service despite large crowds. The jockey red cushions, awnings, and umbrellas at the outdoor pools playing off the ceramic pink terra-cotta tones of the buildings delivered postcard perfect scenery. It inspired me to order a red drink just to partake in the surroundings, and the strawberry mint refresher was, indeed, grand.

When I return I will absolutely purchase a vintage-style red halter one piece, black cat-eye sunglasses, and have my toes painted red to go with this theme.

Even the polish of the large kiddie pool will feel like a true, family vacation for those still weighted down by soggy swim diapers and those who have to change them.

Guests can arrange beach service with the concierge, and the hotel escorts your family to the Del Mar beach in the resort car, sets up chairs and umbrellas, provides beach toys, and arranges a pick-up time to collect you.

Restaurants at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar

The resort restaurant, Amaya, offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner next to the pool. Most families will eat their meals there, or poolside, or grab fast items at the Cennt’Anni Café, which serves breakfast sandwiches, pastries, fresh pressed juices, gelatos, and sinful viennoiserie items. Early rising East Coasters can reward themselves with warm chocolate croissants fresh from the oven made by a Paris-trained baker. Room service dining was an elegant experience given that our suite offered a dining table.

Our children had such an incredible time at the Grand Del Mar kids’ club called the Explorers’ Club that they begged to return at night. My husband and I decided to experience a very adult meal at Addison without the kids, the highlight of our stay.

Addison

Addison overlooks the Fairmont Grand Del Mar golf course and is a short drive in the resort BMW to enjoy a key culinary destination, the only Relais & Châteaux restaurant in southern California and the only one to have received the AAA Five Diamond Award and Forbes Five-star award.

Chef William Bradley focuses on an ingredient’s core flavors, showcasing everything at its best, making an extraordinary tasting menu where each plate will likely be the best duck or king crab you will have ever tasted. Honestly, I don’t think that we’ve had a meal like this since our last trip to Paris at L’Astrance, one of my all-time favorites.

Our eleven-course tasting menu had been customized to accommodate my husband’s gluten preference. The gold dusted potato-flour popover balls were flawlessly made as comfort food for the gods, and my husband and I could each have eaten ten or twelve had no one been watching.

(Tip: In general, always make it easier on the chef for tasting menus to have the table share the same menu if a preference/allergy is gluten or dairy. If at least two people will be eating a special menu, it will motivate the kitchen’s creativity.)

Family Activities & Kids’ Clubs

The Fairmont Grand Del Mar shines with a kids’ club that was one of my children’s all-time favorites. They offer a more customized experience which allows siblings of different ages to remain together if that makes them more comfortable. It’s often hard on families when resorts insist on separating children by ages. The counselors also plan activities based on the feedback of the children.

The kids’ club area is difficult to find so start your adventure treating it like a treasure hunt and give your oldest child a resort map to lead the way. The space is massive with games crafts, screens, and closets stacked to the ceiling with toys and props for any possible activity.

I asked if my children could be outdoors that morning in case they ended up returning to the kids club that night, and their counselor grabbed equipment to create an elaborate obstacle course for them to race against their own best time.

This is the kind of kids’ club where you may need space in a suitcase to bring home all of the craft projects they’ll create: sand art, melted mosaics, drawings and more. (Another tip: don’t pack the sand art to bring home. You’ve been warned.)

In addition to the Explorer’s Club, the Fairmont Grand Del Mar offers additional family programming including a regular appearance by a local critter specialist. And these critters definitely didn’t disappoint and were not your garden-variety birthday party animals. A brave brother and sister, with eyes closed, had a large snake placed in their hands.

The Fairmont Grand Del Mar offers instruction on its two tennis courts and kids (and adults) can find bicycles to borrow, and visit an equestrian center where they can ride, observe, or groom the horses.

For adults seeking to play, The Grand Golf Course is a Tom Fazio-designed beauty with seven full acres of practice areas (including driving range) and is open year-round to resort guests.

The Grand Del Mar Spa

The Fairmont Grand Del Mar resort takes wellness (and its presentation) very seriously. Its exceptional, five-star spa welcomes guests with framed Hermès scarves in all of the public areas, wet areas, and locker rooms. The fitness center also offers daily classes that usually end up outside in good weather (almost all of the time).

If you don’t live in Southern California, simply sitting in the outside areas of the spa will feel like a massage because of the incredibly temperate climate and the lush surroundings.

I chose the signature experience called Renaissance, described as having a similar feeling of being in a womb.

I was very curious to know what it feels like to bounce around in amniotic fluid.

I started on a platform and received a nourishing marine mud wrap before being cocooned in towels. The platform descended into a dense water-bed-like mattress until it dropped low enough that I was floating, feeling the water-bed on all three sides without the experience of gravity while my skin absorbed the nutrients of the marine mud.

I found that my mental rhythms slowed down after the fascination of the sensation.

I rinsed in the Vichy shower to remove the mud from my body in privacy and then returned to a traditional massage table for a full body massage.

I would absolutely recommend this treatment instead of jumping to a Swedish 60 or 80-minute massage because I think that it provided additional meditative benefits that any parent could always use.

I did learn that the Fairmont Grand Del Mar spa practitioners have a specialty with lymphatic drainage, and my massage therapist had received extensive education on this type of modality which makes me want to try that on my next visit.

High praise for the Fairmont Grand Del Mar

Overall, the Fairmont Grand Del Mar is a full-amenity resort able to create the feeling of a private Mediterranean estate which just happens to entertain on a grand scale.  Given that the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and Legoland (Carlsbad, CA) are each a half-hour in either direction there is enough to keep a family happy for a week.

In the weeks that followed returning from the Fairmont Grand Del Mar, I kept thinking of a walk that we took, circling the property at sunset. Serene terra-cottas, red cushions with white piping, sun-drenched landscapes of purple and green, and the taste of warm chocolate croissants — in other words, memories of paradise.

Although we were guests of the Fairmont Grand Del Mar, 5300 Grand Del Mar Court, San Diego, California, these opinions are completely my own.