Dinner Under the Fig Tree: Fairmont Miramar, Santa Monica

You arrive at the Fairmont Miramar under a tree. It is a Moreton Bay fig, well over a century old, and it is so large that the whole forecourt of the hotel sits in its shade, the roots spilling over the ground like something poured. Dogs stop dead when they see it. It is, by some distance, the best tree any of them has ever met, and it stands at the front door of a hotel in Santa Monica that will give them the run of its gardens and a place at dinner afterwards.

A Garden by the Ocean

The Miramar is a rare thing on the Los Angeles coast, a hotel with grounds. It sits at the top of Wilshire Boulevard where the city runs out and the Pacific begins, and behind the fig tree are the Miramar Gardens, palms, lawns and winding paths with the bungalows tucked in among them. Your dog is welcome in the gardens, which means the first walk of the morning and the last one at night happen without leaving the property.

Dogs of any size are welcome here, so the big breeds are as welcome as the small ones, and two can share your room. Cats are welcome too. It is worth knowing that not every room takes dogs, so book early and tell the hotel you are bringing one.

The Welcome

In the room there is a dog bed waiting and real food and water bowls, with treats to say hello. If you have travelled light, the hotel sells dog food, and it hands out waste bags for the walks you take yourself. The services are the strong suit. The hotel offers dog walking and dog sitting, and grooming if your dog needs tidying up after a few days of salt air.

You will use the sitter. Dogs may not be left alone in the room here, and they are not allowed in the spa or by the pool, so a morning at either means making an arrangement. The hotel makes it simple.

Dinner Under the Tree

Where the Miramar earns its place is at the table. Your dog can join you in the bar, in the lounge, and on the terrace at FIG, the hotel's restaurant, which takes its name from the tree and cooks farm to table California food. Dinner outside with the dog under the table, in a garden, a short walk from the Pacific, is what most people imagine a California holiday to be. Very few hotels on this coast will actually serve it to you.

A Fee That Does Some Good

The pet fee is a hundred and twenty five dollars, once, for the stay, with no deposit. Ten per cent of it goes to Wags & Walks, a Los Angeles rescue that pulls dogs out of crowded shelters and finds them homes, on average within two to three weeks. It is a small piece of arithmetic that changes how the fee feels. Your dog's holiday helps pay for another dog's way out.

A Day Here With Your Dog

One rule first. Dogs are not allowed on Santa Monica State Beach, so the sand in front of the hotel is for looking at. Everything else is open to you, and all of it on a lead, which the city asks you to keep to six feet or shorter.

Start across the road. Palisades Park runs along the top of the bluffs on Ocean Avenue, directly opposite the hotel, a long ribbon of lawn and palm trees with the ocean below and the pier in the distance. It is one of the great city walks in America and it starts at your front door.

For a run off the lead, Santa Monica has proper city dog parks. The Herb Katz Dog Park at Joslyn Park has more than an acre of fenced ground with separate areas for large and small dogs, and there is another at Airport Park, in the Ocean Park neighbourhood.

Lunch is easy, because restaurants here are allowed to welcome dogs on their patios and a great many do. The Albright, on Santa Monica Pier, serves seafood at outdoor tables with water bowls put out for dogs. In Ocean Park, Ashland Hill is a beer garden with a covered patio and bowls for dogs dotted about, and Il Forno keeps room on its patio for the dog. Then it is back up Wilshire to the tree, and dinner.

Why It Matters

Los Angeles is full of hotels that take dogs and then ask them to stay out of sight. The Miramar gives them a garden, a seat at the restaurant and the bar, a walker, a sitter and a groomer, and sends a share of the fee to the dogs who have none of those things. It is a grand old hotel that has worked out that a dog is part of the party.

Read the official Roch Dog review or visit the hotel's website.