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.

A Century on the Bluffs

The Miramar has been a hotel since 1921, and before that it was the seaside estate of the senator who helped found Santa Monica. Greta Garbo, Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe all stayed, and the fig at the door is said to have been planted by the senator's wife in the 1880s. The rooms are in three places, and with a dog the choice matters. The Ocean Tower is the restored 1950s block with the Pacific filling the window. The Palisades wing is the older, residential building with the quieter rooms. And the bungalows, from the 1930s, sit in the gardens with their own front doors, which with a dog is the thing to book, because the garden is on the other side of it.

Five acres on the bluffs is enough room for five places to eat and drink. FIG, the bistro named for the tree, cooks seasonal California food. Soko does sushi, The Bungalow is the bar, Dogtown Coffee does the mornings, and the Poolside Kitchen runs an outdoor cinema by the water on summer weekends. The spa has outdoor treatment rooms, and the whole place has the unhurried feel of a hotel that has been looking at the same ocean for a hundred years.

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.

The sitter is the one to book. With a sitter arranged, a morning in the spa or an afternoon by the pool is entirely yours, and your dog has company and a walk in the gardens while you take it. 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

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.

Good to Know

Not every room takes dogs, so say you are bringing one when you book and the hotel will put you in the right one. Dogs are not left alone in the room, and the spa and the pool are kept for people, which is what the walker and the sitter are for. Santa Monica asks for a lead of six feet or shorter, and the state beach in front of the hotel is for looking at rather than walking on, with Palisades Park and the dog parks taking its place.

The Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows scored a Roch Rank of A+. Read the official Roch Dog review or visit the hotel's website.