Dining at Andrei’s serves two purposes. You get to enjoy a superb meal in a nice environment, and you are helping to raise money for a good cause.
Natalia Olenicoff Ostensen and her brother Andrei Olenicoff had often talked about opening a restaurant together. After the loss of Andrei in an auto accident in 2005, Natalia and her family decided to pursue that culinary goal in memory of Andrei.
The nonprofit Andrei Olenicoff Memorial Foundation was established in November 2005 to support local nonprofit programs that are making a huge difference in the lives of others.
Andrei’s opened four years later at the Century Centre office complex at Main and Jamboree—which is owned by the Olenicoff family’s real estate firm, Olen Properties—with the goal of donating all of the restaurant’s net profits to the Andrei foundation. Its tagline promotes a menu of “conscious cuisine and cocktails.”
Olen President Igor Olenicoff, one of OC’s wealthier business execs, is a frequent diner at the restaurant.
More than $500,000 has been donated to organizations that include Hoag Hospital Foundation, Miracles for Kids, Braille Institute, Guide Dogs for the Blind, OC Makapo Aquatics and the Laguna Canyon Foundation. An emphasis has been placed on organizations that support the blind and visually impaired as well as medical research related to eye diseases like retinitis pigmentosa, an affliction which Andrei experienced during his lifetime.
Inspiration for the restaurant’s menu was drawn from Andrei’s love of travel, combining traditions and flavors of many cultures.
Andrei’s chef Porfirio Gomez has carried that vision forward for the past decade. A native of Zapopan—a suburb of Guadalajara—Gomez was initially drawn to cuisine at the age of 8 while learning to make cheese at his mother’s cheese factory.
By age 10, he was delving into the world of butchering livestock. His beginnings as a cook stemmed from watching his grandmother make elaborate meals from ingredients she gathered whenever they had company.
In 1992, Gomez immigrated to the United States at 15 and began working as a fieldworker, picking green beans in Irvine. From the fields he moved to McCormick & Schmick’s kitchen, where he went from manning the salad station to executive sous chef within a year.
Since then, he’s worked at some of the most revered restaurants in Southern California, including the former Four Seasons Newport Beach (now Pendry Newport Beach), the legendary Scott’s Seafood (now Water Grill), and now at Andrei’s.
The chef launched his fall menu in November with several new seasonal dishes, including New York Stroganoff, shrimp and grits, ahi nicoise salad, and grilled cheese served with tomato bisque. The classic stroganoff is made with a twist—featuring New York strip steak, seasonal mushrooms, asparagus and bowtie pasta.
Some dishes, however, never disappear.
“The roasted chicken and the chopped salad. We cannot touch those. People come for those all the time, and the calamari,” said Gomez, who explained that he makes seasonal menu changes twice a year.
“I start planning three or four months before we change the menu to see what’s going to be available,” Gomez told the Business Journal. “It is really tough to get the same things all the time. It’s tough for the farmers to keep it up. We have to work around them, so whatever they have is what we’re going to use and bring it to the table.”
Now that new dishes have arrived, his work is not finished. He must train his kitchen staff on the new menu, so he spends time with them adjusting recipes and making sure there is consistency with each dish.
The fall menu will be available well into the new year, which is when Gomez will start to plan his spring menu.
And then there are the daily specials that chef Gomez adds depending on what is available, so frequent diners can get something new and different.
“And we use really fresh fish every day,” he said. “We deal with local fishermen down in Oceanside. They go fishing overnight and the next day they text me and tell me what they caught. I say bring it over, I can use it for fish and chips or fish tacos.”
On top of all that, Gomez noted that Andrei’s is a “cool place to work.”
“The clients are super nice. They inspired me to keep going. People love us, but that’s not just me. It’s the entire team that makes everything possible.”
Andrei’s, 2607 Main St., Irvine, (949) 387-8887, andreisrestaurant.com.
Trela’s Take
I had lunch at Andrei’s shortly after chef Porfirio Gomez launched the fall menu, which is extensive and portioned into several sections: share plates, soups, starter salads, main salads, sandwiches & tacos, sea, burgers and land.
My dining partner Malena Gordon and I decided to share an order of calamari along with artisan bread and herb oil while we perused the menu and had our server make suggestions.
The tasty calamari is flash fried with sauteed garlic and shallots, but it was the bread with herb fused olive oil that caught our attention. Chunks of herbed focaccia were piled into a basket accompanied by olive oil on the side. We savored the bread dunked in the olive oil but forced ourselves to stop, knowing we needed to order entrees.
Gordon, a food writer, is a lamb fan, so she ordered the lamb burger featuring New Zealand ground lamb, feta mousse, tomatoes, arugula, and chimichurri aioli on a rosemary brioche bun. I opted for one of the new menu items, shrimp and grits, prepared with a California twist. It featured sauteed white Pacific shrimp, white Tillamook cheddar grits, tomatoes, white wine, Cajun butter, chopped herbs and ciabatta crumbs.
Gordon proclaimed her lamb burger excellent. I enjoyed the shrimp and grits, which strayed a bit from a traditional southern style yet packed a flavor punch. The shrimp were large and succulent, and the grits displayed a nice flavor—not overly seasoned and not overdone with too much cheese.
For dessert we chose the Eton Mess: seasonal berries, orange custard, whipped cream, fresh baked meringue and caramelized orange peel.
We learned that the name originated at Eton College in England. Apparently in the 1800s, in the school’s mess hall, they threw together everything that they had in the back of the kitchen, which included layers of meringue and custard plus berries in season. They christened the dish Eton Mess.
Instead of trying to wedge our two spoons into the glass container, we dumped the dessert onto our plates, creating a “mess” that lived up to the name.
We also learned that Andrei’s is partnering with Girl Scout troops in Orange County next year on a new dessert. Apparently, the scouts are launching a new cookie flavor called Exploremores, a rocky road ice cream-inspired sandwich cookie filled with chocolate, marshmallow, and toasted almond-flavored crème. Andrei’s will craft a new dessert using the cookies for a crumble topping. There will also be an adult version that adds Woodford Reserve Whiskey.
