Always volatile, the restaurant industry has seen more changes than usual during the recession.
Vessia in Irvine has closed. We’ve enjoyed this warm and friendly place for the past 11 years. Owner Franco Vessia now is concentrating solely on Frankie’s Steak & Seafood in Temecula, which he opened in 2007.
Meanwhile, Clubhouse at South Coast Plaza has announced that it will close at the end of the year. For me, it lost its edge and its ability to make me feel like an appreciated customer when management changed about four years ago. The company lost Jim Hall, a general manager who truly understands what hospitality is all about. Jim and co-owner Paul Kraft, also an alumnus of the Clubhouse organization, have been keeping us happy since then at their Café Tu Tu Tango at The Block in Orange. I haul food-loving friends over there for the best array of truly international small plates in the county. The Bohemian artist’s loft surroundings offer a getaway feeling with artisans practicing their crafts and delicious, high-quality food and sangria. The owners roam around getting to know their customers. Add in low prices and you know why you should be there.
Michael Jordan, the longtime general manager and master sommelier at Napa Rose in Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, has left that position. Restaurant manager Joy Cushing is keeping things on an even keel. Keep in mind that Andrew Sutton’s signature wine country cuisine has gotten global publicity for Napa Rose and he’s still there making sure that every dining experience is special. We love this place.
Chef Franco Barone is leaving Antonello Ristorante in South Coast Plaza Village at the end of October to open his own restaurant in the space on MacArthur Boulevard that has housed Pleasant Peasant for many years. Franco will be joined by his wife, Donatella, who has been the longtime manager at Nello Cucina, on the first level of the home store wing at South Coast Plaza. (Nello also is under the umbrella of Antonio Cagnolo, owner of Antonello.)
Even though we wish Franco and Donatella much success, after 30 years it is hard to say goodbye to such a cute French eatery as Pleasant Peasant, which has had an interesting history. It was founded by Burt Blender, now the proprietor of the three Grinder restaurants in Los Angeles, and Harry Boand, a kid from Kansas like me. After years of running it himself, Burt turned Pleasant Peasant over to Lisa, his daughter, and her chef/husband, Laurent Ferre. They have decided to take over operations of the Grinders for Burt and thus are making way for Franco to begin his new solo restaurant venture. I will let you know when Franco’s restaurant is open as he has to do some remodeling first.
Oktoberfest
Oktoberfest tends to conjure up images of large steins of beers, overcooked bratwurst and splintered wooden benches. But at the Balboa Bay Club’s First Cabin, Oktoberfest is a cultural joy.
It’s not hard to fall in love with the tender herring in two styles, luscious schnitzel (pork or veal), spätzle (tiny noodles), roulades of beef, Bavarian bratwurst and the most tender pork shank ever. And, the apple strudel just out of the oven finishes off whatever you’ve ordered.
Some swell beers to accompany the Oktoberfest fare are listed on the menu. From the sommelier’s suggestion, we’ve enjoyed the 2003 Weingut Schmitt Kinder silvaner, 2003 Pechstein Forster Spatlese Riesling (marvelous with some of our more savory dishes) and the Iby Chevalier-Blaufränkisch Barrique (a rich, berry-laden, harmonious red wine)—all very cooperative with the themed food. Of course, the full a-la-carte menu also is available.
Silver Anniversary
La Vie en Rose’s 25th anniversary celebration will include a champagne and hors d’oeuvre reception from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday followed by a special four-course optional dinner at only $50. Without taking a trip to France, this is truly a Gallic experience tucked into a Normandy-style home that’s become
the place where the French Chamber of Commerce, ex-pats and Francophiles gather.
Successful Renovations
We wanted to see what the renovation of the Hilton Waterfront Resort in Huntington Beach looked like and what direction chef Jeff Littlefield had given the menu at Shades, its signature restaurant, for the fall and winter season. Nice surprises on both fronts. The renovated rooms are quite upscale and beautifully decorated and all rooms have dreamy ocean views. The public spaces are adrift in marble and fine furnishings and I found several places to read and relax indoors and poolside (also with ocean views).
Meals in Shades can be taken indoors or outdoors on the grand terrace—my choice for seating. It gets a blue ribbon for the easy to navigate, one sheet menu with simple graphic dividers for categories, and you can understand the personality of every dish with the clear writing. Eight categories with 27 stand-up items (not counting desserts), many of which quickly grab your attention.
From our dinner shared with a table of select foodies, we started with briny fresh jumbo lump crab, formed into cakes and served fancy cocktail style. Appetizers of carpaccio made from superior beef, diver scallops with a creamy lemon risotto and baba ghanoush with grilled veggies and garlicky rounds of toasted ciabatta bread kept things flowing nicely.
Had we not had other courses coming, I think all of us would have done a reorder on the beet salad with whipped goat cheese and lemon dressing. Salmon rubbed with barbecue seasonings came sided with a hash of leeks and potatoes. Veal osso buco is falling off the bone and swathed in a genteel Milanese sauce that found all of us swiping up the extra sauce with pieces of the warm bread. Hangar steak is one of the most flavorful cuts of beef and this prime piece of meat takes you in two directions with cippolini onions on one side of the plate and seductive sweet potato fries on the other. Lamb from Niman ranch is roasted and available on Tuesdays as a special (each day of the week has its own added entrée special), and Niman products are highly regarded for their quality.
Choosing only a few of the artisanal cheeses to taste was difficult as there are several from some of America’s finest cheese makers, but we finally narrowed it down to five with various degrees of texture and savory elegance. For dessert, we decided to also have a sampler plate done up for us so that we could continue our avowed culinary decadence.
Hush in Laguna Beach has undergone a mini-renovation. There’s not much that one would want to change in the stylishness of the dining room, the inviting bar or the terrace with ocean views—and certainly that array of fantastic wines needed to stay put—but upholstery and carpeting do take a beating. So, those cosmetic things were addressed, and the glitterati, fashionista and foodie crowd showed up big time to have a look a couple of weeks ago with cocktails and appetizers from chef Ronnie Arnold.
We were happy to catch up on restaurant talk with Danny Reyes, the suave managing partner of Hush, bar license attorney Michael Cho and even Chuck Rock, the owner of the restaurant, while we worked our way family-style through a few plates of food. We’re headed back in the next few days to try more of the contemporary American entrées on chef Arnold’s newest menu.
If you want to help Orangewood Children’s Home while cocktailing it and having a four-course dinner of Arnold’s food aboard a luxury yacht cruising the harbor, call Hush at (949) 497-3616 to participate. The Cruise for a Cause fundraiser is on Oct. 23 at 6 p.m.
Island Oasis
The Island Hotel describes its Palm Terrace restaurant as “an urban oasis, as fresh and casual as it is refined and cultivated” and I can’t say it better than that. When the restaurant got a redo about two years ago, it took on a more tropical vibe, but in a very cosmopolitan way with accents on palm trees and tropical-themed wall coverings. Adding terraced outdoor dining to the more sophisticated setting of the actual dining room gave diners choice seating to fit their mood.
Generally for a leisurely evening meal, I find the linen-draped tables indoors with their attractive tableware my preference for relaxation. For lunch, the terrace gets my nod.
Recently, four of us did what we could in one evening trying executive chef Bill Bracken’s food and pastry chef Michael Owings’ fashionable desserts. If you’re interested in how food can come to the table, course after course, as art on the plate so beautiful that you sort of hate to mess it up with a fork, then you’re in for a treat. But, when the flavors follow the eye-popping presentations, the whole experience takes on an edge of excitement, drumming home what a terrific culinary team is in place here.
I wrote about chef Bracken in the Business Journal many years ago, when he was here in the early days of this hotel (then under another corporate banner). I loved his food even then. But, he went off to Beverly Hills and became really acclaimed and, luckily, he was lured back. Like his reputation, his food has become even more dazzling and layered with distinguished flavors.
If you have drinks in the very charming lounge on your way to dinner, you’re likely to encounter some popcorn drizzled with truffle butter; it’s as addictive as anything you’ve ever eaten.
Our travels of the taste buds found our first encounter to be a quartet of appetizers tucked on the four corners of a square plate. In a little compote on one edge was the definitive mac and cheese with artisanal cheeses melting into a bit of truffle essence—not at all your mom’s version of the comfort food. Tuna tartare was across from that with hints of ginger and shiso essence also announced that this food was like no other in the county. A tiny bowl of soup with Dungeness crab commanded a third corner of the plate and, finally, the chef’s take on a small salad brought that mix of ingredients into a whole new world of art.
Some menus attempt to be so broad-based in their entrées that deciding what to order can be cumbersome. Not so here. There are about 18 choices centered around beloved meats, poultry and seafood, so your choice more depends on mood than anything else. The homemade shrimp ravioli with English pea puree happened to be ultra pleasing for us. Scottish salmon with ratatouille of artichoke, organic chicken with wild mushroom risotto and Madeira wine, roasted rack of free-range lamb, butter-poached lobster with risotto gnocchi and short ribs braised with just a hint of rum had us shuffling all these plates around the table.
