Here’s a holiday gift idea: cooking classes from Alessandro Pirozzi, chef and owner of Mare Culinary Lounge in Laguna Beach and the three Alessa restaurants.
I can’t think of anything more enticing than purchasing one or more of Pirozzi’s upcoming Culinary Collection Cooking Classes where he will reveal secrets of some of his most acclaimed dishes. Participants have a class; a meal; wines to match, if desired; and recipes for cooking success at home.
Alessandro is a totally engaging, charming and funny chef. His customers know his mega-watt smile, wit and exuberance, which ensure even more that those receiving your gift will be greatly appreciative.
There are four classes in the collection, one to highlight each course in a meal. The items demonstrated can be paired with a perfect wine for tasting. Classes are $55 each with a $25 saving on the cost of attending all four.
The $55 price includes the class, tax and gratuity. Wine pairing is an additional $20.
Another go-to choice for culinary classes is Anaheim’s Eat Street, which is owned by former restaurant owner Katie Averill and offers single sessions or professional training series. I referred a friend who subsequently introduced a whole group of people to the classes.
Keeping with the gift-buying theme, how about gifting a membership to Sherman Gardens in Corona del Mar or Bowers Museum in Santa Ana? Both have restaurants associated with them.
Most restaurants offer gift cards, and ditto for your favorite wine shop. Some examples: China Moon restaurant in Laguna Niguel has extraordinary Chinese food; The Ranch in Anaheim is one of the most unique new venues this year with ingredients from their own agricultural land turned into amazing dishes; and Costa Mesa’s Golden Truffle continues to astound us under chef/owner Alan Greeley.
Or pick up some specialty vinegars and marvelous olive oils—pure and blends from around the world—from Olive Oil & Beyond on Balboa Island. Be forewarned that this place is addictive, and you may find it hard to use other products after experiencing the finesse in these bottles.
Holiday Parties
For companies still trying to arrange a holiday party but not ready for a big bash, there’s a really neat solution offered by the Island Hotel in Newport Beach.
The Island Hotel Holiday Office Party invites companies to join together on Dec. 13 for a unique holiday celebration and a change of pace from the usual holiday office party. The evening features restaurant cuisine in a lavish banquet setting as well as drinks, a popular local DJ, dancing and festive holiday decor in the hotel’s newly expanded ballroom.
Reservations are required, with prices starting at $85 per person or $110 per person with hosted bar, excluding tax, gratuity and $10 valet.
A festive Christmas Eve four-course dinner will be served in the main dining room at $75 per adult, $95 with wine pairings. (A children’s menu available.) And its Christmas buffet will feature traditional offerings accompanied by live entertainment for $95 per adult, $29 per child (5 to 12 years old), and free for children 4 and under, excluding tax and gratuity.
There will be a New Year’s Eve celebration at the hotel’s Club 690. Guests can dance the night away with a popular DJ, balloon drop, midnight champagne toast and hosted bar inside the Cabana Room and outside under Island Hotel’s newly covered, heated and lit Cabana Terrace.
And its Palm Terrace Lounge buffet on New Year’s Day should get everyone’s year off with good taste as will the New Year’s Day “recovery” breakfast.
Details of all of the holiday offerings are available on the hotel’s website.
Fleming’s Refurbishment
Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar at Fashion Island, a longtime favorite, is completing a major refurbishment of the property.
The foyer, bar and wine cellar downstairs, which is used for private dining and wine dinners, all have been redone. Woodwork, carpet, paint, lighting and artwork have been enhanced.
For the holidays, Fleming’s has created a couple of fun seasonal cocktails for us, and they are offering New Year’s-themed celebrations from Dec. 28 to 31. In addition to the full a la carte menu, three deluxe entrées will be featured on those nights, with a signature shrimp appetizer as part of that inclusion.
Operating partner Russ Bendel has been at the forefront of the fine service and consistently fine food for several years at our Newport Beach location. It is worth having a bit of food and wine conversation with him, as he likes knowing his customers. And he’s a fountain of culinary information that makes our meals all the better.
It’s hard to believe that this month marks the 13th anniversary of the time when partners Paul Fleming (P.F. Chang’s, Paul Martin’s) and Bill Allen (former chief executive of OSI Restaurant Partners Inc.) decided to up the concept in the prime steakhouse world. Instead of a stuffy-men’s-club approach, they lightened the perception and created a sophisticated but lively restaurant that appealed equally to women.
They then created a stellar collection—revised annually—of 100 wines, known as the Fleming’s 100. I also admire Fleming’s yearly collaboration with a world-class winemaker/winery to make a private-label boutique wine, which they’ve now done for six years.
Fleming’s director of wine has worked with famed wineries and winemakers to create limited-edition label Forty-Six Diamonds, with each vintage a one-of-a-kind wine. The goal every year is to make food-friendly, harmonious wines that reveal their distinctive origins.
Forty-Six Diamonds has been crafted with highly respected wineries such as Flora Springs, Georges Duboeuf, Michael Mondavi, Schug Carneros Estate and last year, one of my favorites, a Toscana made with Il Borro, the Tuscan wine estate owned by the famed Ferragamo family.
This year, Hall Winery’s owner Steve Reynolds and winemaker Steve Leveque created Forty-Six Diamonds, a Bordeaux-style blend of exclusive Hall-estate-grown grapes: 75% cabernet sauvignon, 1% petit verdot, 12% merlot and 12% syrah. As the winemaker says, “This wine has rich and opulent aromas of black cherry, spice and toasty oak. It is vivid and focused and gives way to supple tannins and a long, balanced finish.” It is now available in each of Fleming’s 64 restaurants across the U.S. Production of this premium boutique wine was limited to 350 cases of 750-milliliter bottles and 60 cases of magnums. The wine sells for $20 a glass or $80 a bottle.
Note: Prior allotments have sold out quickly, so perhaps you should not wait too long to savor this one.
Fleming’s headquarters, right here in Newport Beach, is led by industry veteran Skip Fox, who gave out a bit more good info. Fleming’s will soon open a restaurant, its 65th, in the heart of Beverly Hills with an outstanding location on North Beverly Drive between Dayton Way and Wilshire Boulevard.
Drop by Fleming’s and have one of those December cocktails. The Haute Holiday ($10.95) is made with Quay Elysim (a muscat dessert wine), St. Germain (made from hand-picked, fresh elderflower blossoms from the French Alps), and Mionetto prosecco presented in a champagne flute garnished with a Luxardo cherry. Merry Mint Spice ($11.95) mixes Gentleman Jack with Domaine de Canton (the world’s first ultrapremium French ginger liqueur) and Pom juice, with mint leaves—shaken and served on the rocks.
Better thought: Take friends to dinner and share the Forty-Six Diamond wine with them. They won’t be getting that treat elsewhere.
Fleming’s: 455 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach, (949) 720-9633.
New in OC
On the new restaurants front, you can get ready for chic and sleek, wonderfully tasty Mexican food and California/Mexican crossover cuisine like OC has never seen.
Super Chef Rick Bayless is bringing his Red O restaurant to Fashion Island next summer. I know it’s not happening for a while, but I’m just trying to head off all the various speculation that circulates as projects take shape.
Bayless, winner of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters in 2009, is known for changing the image of Mexican food in America. Many know him from his highly rated PBS series, Mexico—One Plate at a Time, and from his eight cookbooks.
In 1987, Bayless founded Chicago’s sophisticated Topolobampo and the neighboring casual Frontera Grill, following those with Xoco in 2009.
We have eaten at those first two restaurants and found Topolobampo so interesting that we repeated and expanded our adventure. Bayless opened Red O on Melrose in L.A. in 2010, and it’s been riding high.
You can put that one on your bucket list if you’re curious to see the very attractive surroundings and taste dishes like pork belly sopas, the decadent duck taquitos, and cochinita pibil (suckling pig in banana leaves) before they come to us.
The restaurant will be a unique 7,000-square-foot free-standing building with a 1,500-square-foot dining patio situated near the old Coco’s location, which itself will soon become a Fig & Olive eatery.
Add in the Lark Creek restaurant in the former Daily Grill space that will open in the spring for yet another layer of dining sophistication for us.
Sad Closing
I’m sad that Sage Eastbluff has not been able to renegotiate its lease and closed at the end of December.
Chef/owner Rich Mead will no longer be elevating the stature of the Eastbluff Center after years of truly soulful cooking with a farm-to-fork philosophy long before it became the trend of the day.
We still have all of this month to enjoy his food in this location, so I encourage you serious foodies to tuck a reservation somewhere in your busy agenda. Thereafter, we will be driving to Anaheim Hills to see him and keep on enjoying the fresh and comforting food at his Canyon restaurant.
Canyon’s phone number is (714) 283-1062.
