The question swirled like Pisoni Pinot in a Burgundy bowl. Given the sudden and successful rise of Pebble Beach Food & Wine, it went, How the hell did these guys do it?

Maybe Windy City mob money made it happen. After all, event co-founder David Bernahl lived in Chicago as a kid and fellow founder Rob Weakley worked there for Hyatt.

They’d heard other explanations.

“Ponzi scheme,” Bernahl says. “That was a good one.”

“Dave was selling himself on Craigslist,” Weakley says. “‘Casual encounters.’”

The speculation was understandable. One minute best friends Bernahl, 31, and Weakley, 35, were a successful retail clothing salesman and an unemployed food and beverage guy, respectively. Nine months later, they were center stage in a temporary tent the size of Sand City – complete with indoor carpeting, dozens of celebrity chefs and more top-of-the-vine wineries than you could shake a Kobe skewer at – clinking glasses of Cristal with Jacques Pepin, Charlie Trotter and Thomas Keller.

Pebble Beach Food & Wine conducted so much electricity its first year, 2008, they doubled the inaugural’s capacity. Some 4,000 people attended. By contrast, the staff of PBF&W parent company Coastal Luxury Management remained about as big as a dot of Beluga caviar: Weakley, his wife/bookkeeper Micaela, Bernahl, and Senior Event Coordinator Tonyia Sampognaro, who had worked with Weakly at the Masters of Food and Wine. Then-V.P. of Operations Gary Obligacion came on three months before the opening.

This was hospitality so staggering in its scope it was hard to digest. At just one of the dinners, more three-star Michelin chefs assembled in one kitchen than ever before. In retrospect, though, it was just a nibble of the smorgasbord to come.

In the space of the last year alone, Coastal Luxury Management not only bid on and bought one of Monterey County’s most storied restaurant properties (the former Gallatin’s and Stokes Adobe), but secured one of Cannery Row’s cornerstones (the onetime O’Kane’s and Willy’s Smokehouse), and took over arguably the area’s most devoutly adored annual foodie festival (TomatoFest). Its team streamlined and expanded the third annual PBF&W, selling out its Grand Tastings and each dinner last month.

In their spare time, Coastal Luxury started coordinating national events for Lexus, assumed the apron of the American Institute of Wine & Food and started scheming a 20-person, $30,000-a-head, food-and-wine event on Richard Branson’s private island – and welcomed three new Weakley and Bernahl babies into the world.

The rumblings were renewed. Bernahl caught one the other day: “How on Earth can a group of punk kids start six things at once?”

A series of discussions with the principal players reveals an answer: namely, faithful adherence to a recipe built on flat-out opportunism, gutsy pay-it-forward financing, and chiseled vision. It also reveals headier-than-expected ambitions for the new restaurants, scheduled to come on line by next month’s U.S. Open. Finally, it reveals that – with a brand-new partnership with the same Dick Clark Productions that puts on the Golden Globes – this is just the beginning.

~ ~ ~

Before there could be a beginning, there had to be an end. This one came during a dry-cleaning convention in Vegas and helped trigger an awfully angry pizza purchase in Aspen.

June 2007. Two men stride through the crowds of fabric softener salesmen and detergent dealers like albino Wookies in Ewok village, towering over the throng of largely Asian entrepreneurs in Las Vegas, Nevada for the annual Clean Show.

“Can you imagine that?” Weakley says. “Two guys, 6 foot 3 inches and 6 foot, both well over 200 pounds, one in a white suit? We created a scene.”

At the time, they were eager to hatch a business plan. (They still claim the dry cleaning idea is spotless, albeit “less sexy” than their food-and-wine work.) Weakley had been informed his position at the Carmel Highlands Hyatt was being eliminated, but he wanted to stay in the area and, he adds, “support [his] wine habit.”

Then confirmation came mid-conference: After 21 years, the Masters of Food & Wine at Highlands Inn was over. The tradition was flying south to Argentina.

Bernahl and Weakley’s previous attempts to pitch Hyatt on keeping the Masters local had failed. “We liked the pitch,” Weakley says; “Guess they didn’t.” They had already begun entertaining the idea of approaching Pebble Beach Company about parlaying Weakley’s chef connections and Masters savvy with Pebble’s world-class facilities and event management acumen. They figured now was the time to make it happen, jumping a flight to Aspen Food & Wine, intent on cornering its American Express Publishing powers for a powwow on Pebble’s edible potential.

Except Aspen was booked. Tickets were sold out. Their appeals for an audience whiffed. The pair found a creaky hostel (“The kind where you use tongs to put the blanket in the corner,” Weakley says) but couldn’t secure a way in.

Then, finally, their calls scored a meet with Food & Wine chief Christina Grdovic at the bottom of the gondola that flew foodies up Ajax Mountain. They got there a half hour early and lingered. Industry friends streamed by – “Oh, yeah, we’ll see you in there” – as an hour melted into two, two and a half.

They were stood up, shut out and a little bitter. Vinegar in their veins fed a binge that led to a line snaking into the street from the only late-night pizza joint in town. The two pickled Peninsula guys discovered the two huge pizzas in front of them were the last pies left.

“We bought both,” Weakley says.

“We hated everyone in Aspen,” Bernahl says. “‘We’re taking your late night snacks!’”

~ ~ ~

During this year’s Pebble Beach Food & Wine, one of the best wine palates alive paused to make a point during a vertical tasting of Krug Champagne. “Really,” Paul Robertson said. “It should be Pebble Beach Wine and Food.”

His assessment is more accurate than he may realize.

CLM doesn’t form without wine: Bottle after bottle tipped in Weakley’s office. There were still more pours at the firepit at Bernardus Lodge, where they frequently trampolined ideas off Marinus Restaurant GM Obligacion, a universally respected veteran of Northern California’s finest dining destinations, Mission District’s Boulevard and Pebble Beach Lodge among them.

“We’d polish off five bottles of wine writing business plans until 5am,” Weakley says. “I’d come out in the morning and see bottles of Opus and Chateau and not remember drinking them.”

Without wine, CLM’s already wobbly balance sheet might’ve teetered. After the partnership with Pebble fell into place, Weakley took a $40,000 personal line of credit against his Carmel home, and they acquired an office and hired Sampognaro.

Coastal Luxury Management was born – and was soon hungry for more money. Fortunately Monterey County Bank’s Charles Chrietzberg believed in both of them. He had known the 18-year-old Bernahl as the youngest and smartest employee (and ultimately manager) of Beverly Hills 90210’s Jason Priestley’s La Gondola in the Barnyard, where Bahama Billy’s now sits, then as a partner of Pacific Tweed – banking for him at both places – and like many, felt Weakley’s experience at the Masters carried considerable weight. The next line of credit was for more than $200,000, with Weakley’s Carmel home as collateral.

Still, chef airfare and hotel bills add up quickly, and soon their cavalry of credit cards was completely leveraged. Their needs sent Weakley to his cellar – and a form of fatherly heartbreak.

“I sold a bunch of wine to a restaurant: old Bordeauxs, Burgundies, Cabs,” he says. “It’s like selling your kids.”

Bernahl, who waived any salary for the first year, had a veteran comfort with this no-cash-flow, touch-and-go scenario that Weakley didn’t.

“He had done the start-up thing with Pacific Tweed, put it all on the line already,” Weakly says. “Throw the car keys on the table – take it.” (Bernahl, laughing, acknowledges he had repeated run-ins with the repo man when launching Pacific Tweed.)

Sponsorships would mean everything. Weakley pulled in some small pillars from the Masters, KitchenAid and Nestle included, but they needed some presenting powerhouses. Well-researched profiles of target event guests and the mouthwatering lineup of already confirmed chefs – the Michelin stars lighting up the list represented no small coup – went out to 30, then 40 food-and-wine playmakers. Phones at their tiny Carmel office rarely hit the cradle. The hours approached obscene. Wine and coffee substituted for sleep.

Wine Spectator wanted on board. American Express Publishing was intrigued. When they asked, “Why didn’t you come to us earlier?” Weakley and Bernahl almost spat out lunch. As a deal came closer, “Meet you at the gondola” became a partnership punchline.

But American Express Publishers wanted to meet before the deal was finalized. CLM successfully ducked it, fearful their youthful appearance might trip confidence in the collaboration. The instant the ink was dry, though, they were up in Napa at the American Wine Awards hosted by American Express Publishers’ Food & Wine.

“‘Huh,’” Weakley remembers them grunting upon handshake. “‘You’re younger than we thought you’d be.’”

Lexus called the same day to sign on. But even with these sumo-size sponsors, Coastal Luxury was still pinned financially. The cavalier confidence they responded with isn’t what you’d expect in the current economic climate. But it was the only option they could execute. “It’s called paying it forward,” Bernahl says.

Once a sponsor check arrived, bills and employees got paid. “Stealing from Peter to pay Paul,” he adds.

“We’d negotiate contracts to where we wouldn’t have to pay deposits until our American Express or Lexus checks cleared,” Weakley says, “or hold off on signing contracts because we didn’t have the 50 percent deposit they needed.

“It was a good thing the first Food & Wine happened so fast,” he continues. “People were excited to jump on – the bills were due later.”

“We put the fear aside,” Bernahl says, “and said, ‘Long term we’ll be OK. We’re making the leap, taking the plunge.’ With careful planning, now’s the time.”

With one deal, that set-aside fear disappeared.

~ ~ ~

Ascot in place, spendy shoes laced, Bernahl is known for his fashion sense, not his dance moves. A profound partnership finalized the same week as Pebble Beach Food & Wine 2010 could help him there – new CLM partner Dick Clark Productions produces So You Think You Can Dance. But other Dick Clark expertise will aid CLM far more.

Neither party will disclose how much money that deal was worth, but they do indicate how CLM gathered the scratch for the half-million-dollar down payment on the Stokes Adobe while struggling to cover their payroll.

Dick Clark Productions, which throws galas like the American Music Awards, Golden Globes and American Country Music Awards, originally approached Coast Luxury after its leaders fell in love with Aspen Food & Wine (and upon finding out that Aspen’s and Miami’s food-and-wine spectaculars were owned by massive, less-amenable companies). A short-term bridge loan cemented CLM’s bid for Stokes, and provided a partnership primer of sorts. Today Dick Clark Productions’ stake in CLM is a clean 50 percent, though CLM retains control via its three-seat majority on the five-person board of directors.

Nothing will change for CLM’s local projects – or at least the parties concerned insist as much. But something of crucial importance will change.

“It means stability,” Weakley says. “Chief heavy” and built to grow, CLM can now do precisely that. Star chefs for both restaurants were hired last week. Bernahl estimates almost three hires must be made daily to staff each spot in time for opening.

It means more than stability, though. It means dozens of other potential projects. With the partnership official and each party familiar with the other’s colossal soirees, last week Bernahl and Weakley drove to L.A. for an “exploratory meeting” with Dick Clark leadership (pausing nearby to drop mini customized PBF&W chef whites for Wolfgang Puck’s kids); Dick Clark Productions will reciprocate with a trip to the Peninsula this week. They’re talking television programming using the culinary personalities CLM knows well, and parlaying Pebble Beach Food & Wine demos and special dinners into more TV content. Ways to enhance, say, the American Country Music Awards with chefs versed in superb southwestern flavors will also make the agenda: “For them, food, wine and parties become revenue sources,” Weakley says, “instead of expense items.” There will be mention of more PBF&W-style events in major urban centers like Seattle and Dallas.

“Instead of wondering who do we deal with on a sponsorship level,” Bernahl says, “they can help – and probably know the people personally. We can handle the chef invites. The partnership opens up a lot of doors.”

~ ~ ~

Open up the custom glass door at the center of the striking new entrance-to-be at Cannery Row Brewing Company, scheduled to open in less than a month, and behold the beer. Scores of kegs stacked shiny and high, 73 on tap at a time (in addition to bourbon and root beer), all behind a tall glass window backing the bar: Tipsy Seagull American Pale Ale and Madam Flores Bavarian Hefeweisen, New Belguim Lips of Faith Biere De Mars and Delirium Tremens, Speakeasy Bootlegger Black Lager and 21st Amendment Hell or High Watermelon.

The new door has shifted from its awkward spot on the Rec Trail to the corner of Prescott and Foam, where two multi-story garages and tour buses toting hundreds dump clumps of the 4 million people-a-year Cannery Row crowds. Arched brick will frame covered open air space before the door, channeling guests to a retail store peddling steins, growlers and sweatshirts to the right, and the restaurant and bar to the left. Its floor will be built of shiny copper.

“Pennies, all be heads up,” says Carissa Duncan, a Santa Catalina grad who splintered from her former design firm to make the Brewing Company, the upstairs CLM office and 1833 her first solo gigs. “For the ‘Good Luck Entryway.’”

Beer snobs and everyday lager lovers won’t be the only ones feeling lucky. Anyone with even a remedial feel for the local restaurant scene can acknowledge there’s titanic untapped upside for a blockbuster grill, especially next to the still-new IMAX and InterContinental, where room reservations are already up significantly over last year.

Burger lovers will be feeling blessed too. “It’s not molecularly frozen-sardines-on-broccoli-bun burgers,” Bernahl says, “but grind our own meat, cut our own fries. It’s casual food with fine-dining perfection, not gastropub but a real American restaurant with stuff you’re craving when your belly’s growling – a triple bacon cheeseburger, with really good bacon and really good blue cheese.”

A primary reason it will work: Former Pacific’s Edge chef Mark Ayers was just named CLM corporate chef. Beyond orchestrating the needy symphony of celebrity chefs at each PBF&W – where his longtime experience with the Masters of Food & Wine will harmonize nicely – and being the ultimate authority at both the Brewery Company and 1833’s kitchens, his duties will include playing executive chef here. One of the stated goals is to have the best burger in the area. A recent joust with Ayers’ joyfully juicy Gruyere-dripping rendition at California Market reveals they’ve got the right guy there.

Another reason it will work: CLM restaurant pointman Gary Obligacion. A veteran of landmark spots like Chez Panisse, San Francisco’s Greens, Bernardus and Pebble Beach Lodge, he’s been in every conceivable restaurant position, from valet to saucier, dishwasher to GM. He’ll demand the feel be as important as the food – “you don’t go there just to eat,” he says.

Elements like the occasional DJ spinning in a giant wine barrel will help, as will vintage neon beer signs and a re-pimped outdoor lounge with three firepits overlooking the bike path. Patrons will be able to buy gallon to-go “growlers” of any draft, and sign up for the mug club. Classic rock and 17 flatscreens will further accent the atmosphere.

They won’t be without considerable challenges, of course. Primary among them: Drawing enough thirsty customers to slug enough suds to keep their beer lines clean and their brews tasting good.

Upstairs, in the new CLM corporate headquarters, Duncan hopes to carry on the “Cannery Row nostalgia” feel with exposed brick and cement floors stained and buffed to a deep-and-sleek denim, joining lots of glass and clean modern lines. On its exterior, “Cannery Row Brewing Company” was just stenciled on the brick in big, white letters.

By design, the lettering looks like it’s been there a long time. If those involved successfully execute their wishes, the spot will soon feel the same way.

~ ~ ~

The adobe at 500 Hartnell has been there a very long time. CLM realizes that is the place’s greatest asset – “The historic property itself is a great investment,” says Monterey County Bank’s Chreitzberg – and one CLM is wisely capitalizing on. Its name is taken from the year the building was built. The menu gravitates toward ingredients obtainable 177 years ago. Tables, chairs and accents will echo that theme – no white tablecloths, but perfection by imperfection.

The bar will take on an apothecary aspect appropriate for an era when medicine and alcohol were often interchangeable, lined with antique bottles and manned by bartenders in labcoats applying a scientific appreciation to a mixology-style menu heavy on botanicals. “Hattie’s room” will carry appropriate tributes, including salt crystal samples in homage to the resident ghost’s alleged tradition of salting glasses of wine.

And Hattie won’t be the only thing glowing. Duncan says the bar itself in the reconfigured entrance area will be 4-inch-thick green onyx illuminated by imbedded LEDs. Antique lighting fixtures will drip near what she calls “romantic niches” hugging the immense oak and soaring redwood out front as part of a reimagined “secret garden” guarded by a hedge. Light from period floor lamps, lounge-friendly furniture and ottomans will give the bar-adjacent “library room” lounge a casual sensibility.

Tim Mosblech was just announced as chef last Wednesday. A veteran of three-Michelin-star restaurants in France, Spain and Germany, having commanded the kitchen at lofty L’Auberge in Carmel and worked with Walter Manzke and Laurent Gras, he’s got the chops to execute carefully crafted rustic. Items on the wine list and menu will reflect the influence of the predominant populations at that point in time on the Peninsula, primarily Spanish and Italian. Mosblech’s palate – he’s been making wine at Joullian with Tom Ridge for the last and year and a half – bodes well for wine pairings.

A place with seven distinct spaces appropriate for a range of occasions, meanwhile, bodes well for a downtown currently hungry for good dinner options and starved on lunch spots.

Mosblech’s drafting preliminary menus already, though he hopes they’ll change as often as every day. He’s thinking plates small (salt cod croquettes) and very big (whole halibut), dishes from the wood oven (rabbit cabbage flatbreads) and à la plancha (spot prawns and hearts of palm), tastes both far flung (lamb tongue) and totally local (red abalone).

~ ~ ~

So how the hell did these guys do it?

“They didn’t just have an idea; they came up with a plan,” Chrietzberg says. “They had a 100-page blueprint for Cannery Row Brewing Company alone.”

They weren’t just buying and trying every appetizer and burger on Yardhouse’s list in L.A.; they were shuttled to 22 different burger joints in Chicago by James Beard Foundation honoree Rick Tramano of TRU. They know how many parking spaces the garages next to Brewing Company hold (2,600) and what a fine-dining treatment like sous vide does to a blue-collar treat like a chicken wing (it’s damn good). And if anything goes wrong, they have celeb chef Jacques Pepin on speed dial.

They didn’t just bring anyone aboard. When Bernahl explains the recent signing of Mosblech to chef 1833, he could be talking about any member of the squad. “It’s about finding careful balance, someone to grow with, to take on more projects, but someone that fits with team – and a rock star,” he says. “[Mosblech’s] instantly likeable, likes to have fun like us, but at the end of day he’s serious about what we do. You don’t have to ask, ‘Is that gonna be right?’ He does it right for himself.”

Meanwhile, the quality of people quietly choosing to work with them speaks volumes. Thomas Keller’s case for best chef in the world is built upon his obsession with perfection. He’s been prominent at each Pebble Beach Food & Wine and serves on its board of directors. Obligacion could have any number of GM positions – and has. Yet, though he has a wife and kids, he left Bernardus to work for CLM when it had two employees. Chef Ayers, meanwhile, walked away from one of the most lucrative and celebrated posts the international Hyatt dynasty has to run a burger joint that hasn’t even opened.

Anand Menon, who worked with Ayers and Weakley at the Masters and left Hyatt himself to be CLM’s V.P. of Operations, says that’s a tribute to inspired foresight and uncommon closeness.

“To communicate a vision like this, to sell it without having it built, that’s not a gift everyone has,” he says. “And these are not random people, these are close friends and family getting in on the ground floor of something special.”

When it comes to staying synchronized with the community, the Coastal Luxury family’s not just layering on lip gloss. Carmel High grad Bernahl serves on six boards, including the Monterey County Workforce Investment Board, Court Appointed Special Advocates and the Leadership Council for Monterey County, chairing several; Weakley serves on another three, including Boys & Girls Club of Monterey County. “They put much more into the community,” Chrietzberg says, “than they ever take out.”

That’s not to say they’re shy about seizing opportunities to drink magnums with princes in Miami or dine with the world’s best chefs in Europe. Evidence is as close as Bernahl’s Facebook page. “It affords us a neat lifestyle,” he says. But their local allegiance feels authentic.

“Neither David nor I ever want to leave Monterey, that’s one of reasons I left Hyatt,” says Weakley, who spent 13 years with the hotel chain in places like Beaver Creek, New Orleans and Chicago. “I didn’t want to move any more.”

Though this coast might be their home, that doesn’t mean they want to measure their efforts against a Central Californian quotient.

“I don’t think it’s a worthy benchmark to be the best in Monterey County,” Obligacion says. “Between San Francisco and L.A., now we’re talking. West of the Mississippi… OK.”

They do happily compare themselves against two native traditions: The AT&T National Pro-Am and the Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance. So does Bob Cowdry, the first Pebble person they pitched on Pebble Beach Food & Wine.

“I’m not the easiest guy to sell,” the then-senior vice president of sales and marketing veteran says. “But I look at it this way: Fifty-some years ago guys talked about having a car show there; 60 years ago a celebrity talked about having a golf tournament.”

He adds that, for a guy who heard “a lot of people with a lot of good ideas,” it wasn’t just the concept that sold him, but “the passion and confidence.”

“I can’t give them more credit,” he says, “I can just say they had a good dream and they were able to bring it to life. We’ll be able to look back and say we were there.” And that it was just the beginning.