The Business Journal for more than two decades has honored culinary standouts in the community of business, naming a Chef of the Year and Restaurateur of the Year.
Ross Pangilinan of Mix Mix Kitchen Bar and Terrace by Mix Mix is our Chef of the Year for 2019. Laurent Vrignaud of Moulin is 2019 Restaurateur of the Year.
Art Attitude
Vrignaud opened French bistro Moulin in September 2014 with little fanfare but lots of hope on Bristol Street in Newport Beach, in space formerly occupied by Pascal’s Patisserie.
“We did not throw a party or advertise. We just opened,” Vrignaud recalled as we sipped coffee at that first Moulin. “We got overwhelmed. We still get overwhelmed.”
Moulin’s popularity grew to where Vrignaud opened a second site in downtown Laguna Beach in September 2016.
This month, he debuts Moulin “trois” in San Clemente; more are in the works, including Moulin in a Box, built in a 40-foot shipping container at the Corporate Park office layout near Jamboree Road and Barranca Parkway in Irvine.
Not bad for a guy who spent half his life in action sports sales and dreamed of one day opening a small French café.
“I have been in this country for 35 years, but I grew up in Paris, in Montmartre,” said Vrignaud.
Montmartre is in the City of Love’s famed 18th “arrondissement,” or district, once roamed by Picasso, Modigliani and Van Gogh, among others—Henri Charrière, of the book and films “Papillon,” was convicted of killing a local gangster in 1931—and home to everything from the massive domed Sacré-Coeur basilica to the infamous cabaret Moulin Rouge.
“Montmartre is the real deal, and Moulin is the real deal: it’s Montmartre in Orange County. We have a little bit of an attitude, we speak our mind, and we serve a basic sandwich in an environment which works. It’s Paris away from Paris. It’s a true Parisian experience.”
That’s what sets Moulin apart—that and Vrignaud knowing better than to set foot in its kitchen.
“The day you see me in the kitchen, you should not eat here,” he joked. “You have to know your place. If I did not surround myself with good people, we would not be where we are today.”
If you have a question about a dish, ask the chef, Jeoffrey Offer.
“The number one person in the kitchen is Chef Jeoffrey,” Vrignaud said. “He has been here since day one. Anybody that makes food reports to him. If they don’t make food, they report to me. I am good at picking chairs and telling kids what to do.”
Restaurants fail, the proprietor of a growing chain of successful ones says, because they don’t focus on excellence.
“You need to surround yourself with experts,” he said. “I went into this business with zero restaurant experience, which is probably why we have been very successful.”
Taste Full
Vrignaud gives the vision, based on personal taste and experience.
“I go out at night and I know what I want,” he said. “I grew up with the product we serve every single day. I did not grow up making it, I grew up eating it.”
He’s hands-on—that social media post is his—and visits each restaurant every day.
In addition to the three restaurants and the slimmed-down hepcat offering in the shipping container, Vrignaud also has a new antique store and catering office, a few doors down from the Newport Moulin.
“My places are gathering places,” he said. “It starts with good food, but the objects are very important. Our food is classic, basic, does not cost an arm and a leg. You can have a $2 or a $20 experience. It’s the best of everything.”
Everything French.
He has plates full of confidence but shuns market research.
“It’s all instinct,” he said. “Everything I do is based on instinct. And no failures. Do I make corrections? Yes, but raw instinct that this is the right spot, the right person. No research. Only experience.”
How French is Moulin?
“I love oatmeal, but I don’t serve oatmeal here. It’s not French,” he said.
“I love avocado, but there are no avocados in our restaurants,” he said. “People wonder why they cannot get avocado on their omelet,” and the answer is easy.
“It’s not French.”
Feeling Blue
One key to authentic French cuisine: packaging, which Vrignaud calls the “blue box.”
“When I was 20 years old and lived in San Francisco with roommates, I remember the guys would tell me ‘my girlfriend wants a blue box’”—a Tiffany engagement ring.
“A blue box. Has to be a blue box,” he said. “There are a lot of diamond stores; only one is in the Tiffany business.”
For people to think other rings aren’t good enough, yours, “has to be in a blue box. That always stuck with me: the product is one thing but you’d better package it right.”
Many make good food, Vrignaud said, but “we have separated ourselves with the box.”
He looked around his restaurant.
“People come here for everything else around the food. These people are not here for me, I’m not in the celebrity chef business. It’s [first] about the food—the food brings them here—[then] the overall experience, the box as I like to put it, that’s what brings them back.”
How blue?
As blue as Vrignaud’s version of Bleu de France, his rendering of the French national racing color in motor sports, one-half of the flag of Paris, one-third of the national flag and a shade associated with French nobility and monarchy for at least 900 years.
“We offer a complete French experience. The chairs have to be authentically French, so do the tables and signs—no reproductions. Most people with a restaurant mind would never do this.”
The list goes on like the “La Marseillaise” scene in “Casablanca.”
“The fact that we put that little chocolate next to every coffee drink,” Vrignaud said. “We use wrapped sugar cubes imported from France. We go out of our way on the details, I am constantly working on the details.”
It goes on, like the scene, as long as it has to—until it wins.
“People come from all over and tell me there is nothing like this anywhere else.”
Moulin Newport Beach: 1000 N. Bristol St., (949) 474-0920
Moulin Laguna Beach: 248 Forest Ave., (949) 715-6990
Moulin San Clemente: Coming Soon
Moulinbistro.com
Mix It Up
Ross Pangilinan lets the dishes dish.
He’s a man of few words who lets his food speak for him.
His eyes are on the dish he’s preparing for you; his mind is always a few steps—more recently, restaurants—ahead.
“I am always working on the next thing and what we need to do to improve,” he told the Business Journal during a recent meeting in Costa Mesa.
His accomplished résumé speaks to that adventurous spirit.
After graduating from culinary school in 2002, Pangilinan worked in the kitchen at Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach. He went to France and worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant then returned to the U.S. and, at 21, was named sous chef at Pinot Provence in Costa Mesa, under Chef Florent Marneau, who went on to open Marché Moderne.
After a stint at Patina, Pangilinan left for Las Vegas to help open Sinatra restaurant at Encore. In 2009, he took over the executive chef role at Leatherby’s Café Rouge at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa.
There Pangilinan ran a restaurant serving familiar favorites to please theatergoer palates, and was able to unleash his creativity with themed menus to match the Broadway musicals that came to town.
He researched the shows and developed menus built around specific elements of each one.
An example: for “The Sound of Music,” Pangilinan’s starter was The Lonely Goatherd dish of grilled country bread piled with local goat cheese, figs, warm honey comb, and petit greens. The entrée was a Do-Re-Mi pork chop schnitzel with warm potato and Brussel sprout salad on top, along with crème fraiche mustard dressing. The Edelweiss dessert was St. Germain and lychee verrine, fruit gelee, fresh berries, and coulis, with a Chef Ross treat: liquid nitrogen, which means the dessert was served emitting smoke. A delightful concoction’s symphony of flavor in every bite.
Charted Course
Pangilinan left Leatherby’s after seven years and brought that same creativity to his new endeavor: Mix Mix Kitchen Bar, which opened in November 2016, in downtown Santa Ana space formerly occupied by Little Sparrow.
It’s a vastly different ambiance from Leatherby’s: an open kitchen and a casual, upbeat dynamic that invites robust conversation. Mix Mix’s menu of global dishes—“New American,” he calls it—with influences from France, Italy and the Philippines.
Pangilinan meshes flavors and textures into palate-pleasing dishes.
What cuisine most excites him?
“I love working with ingredients at their peak,” he said. “In California, you can get good ingredients year-round.”
Mix Mix quickly made a mark on the local culinary scene. The restaurant was voted Best New Restaurant at the 2017 Golden Foodie Awards, and Pangilinan was named Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2018.
Last fall, Pangilinan was lured back to South Coast Plaza, where he opened his second restaurant, Terrace by Mix Mix, on Level 3 of the Crate and Barrel Wing.
At Mix Mix, a six-seat chef’s counter offers a six-course dinner. He’s adding a chef’s counter to Terrace that will provide six diners with up to 13 courses on a tasting menu.
Connection at the counters gets his creative juices flowing.
It’s “where we can keep on creating, switching it up, with smaller portions that we can plate nicely.”
Terrace has a large terraced patio, as well as interior dining. The menu again reflects Pangilinan’s heritage and culinary travels: bacon wrapped dates with grated manchego, almonds and harissa yogurt, pork adobo fried rice, Filipino longanisa hash; hamachi with jalapeno, green apple, ponzu gelée, cucumber and puffed rice.
My favorites: roasted mushrooms with oyster sauce, pork rillettes toast with house pickles and mustard cream.
His favorites: the Filipino longanisa, a type of sausage—a treasured breakfast of Pangilinan’s youth, which he offers for brunch and lunch, as well.
“On the lunch menu, it’s served with garlic fried rice, chimichurri, pickled chilis, and a fried egg. For brunch, we serve it with hollandaise [sauce] and breakfast potatoes instead of rice.”
Pangilinan hosts private cooking classes on weekends and can be found serving tastes of his cuisine at the Newport Beach Wine and Food Festival, Pacific Food & Wine, and other events.
He and his team handle numerous catering assignments, and they have frequent buyouts on the Terrace patio. For those unfamiliar with Terrace or Mix Mix, both restaurants are participating in OC Restaurant Week March 3 to 9.
A weekday, three-course express lunch at Terrace is $20.
Mix Mix Kitchen Bar: 300 N. Main St., Santa Ana 92701, (714) 836-5158,
mixmixkitchenbar.com
Terrace by Mix Mix: 3333 Bear St.,
Unit 316, Costa Mesa 92626, (657) 231-6447, terracebymixmix.com