Local destination marketers say that as food adventures have taken
more precedence in people’s lives—anchoring malls, driving a growing list
of food halls, and ever more popular on TV cooking shows and food
networks—their impact on tourism and travel has also increased.
The Business Journal’s Paul Hughes asked those who feed Orange
County visitors’ hunger to discuss one key change they’ve made this year—new dishes or drinks, food events or initiatives, whether at a hotel, a restaurant that caters to travelers, or even citywide food achievements. They responded bountifully. Here are edited excerpts of their responses:
Tom Donovan
Managing Director
Resort at Pelican Hill
Newport Coast
We’ve enhanced elements from menus and music to uniforms and service to align with the approachable restaurant experiences our guests want. Locals in particular come for informal dining in a casual, elevated environment.
n Our Italian restaurant, Andrea, focused on its warm and attentive service approach, and redesigned its menu without a formal cover. Chef Jonah’s seasonal dishes include simpler pasta and entrees for regular visits, not just special occasions.
n Coliseum Pool & Grill got new items, including Chef Oscar’s lettuce wraps, poke bowls and other lighter dishes; servers now wear bistro aprons, denim jeans and crisp white shirts; and upbeat music streams through the terrace, dining room and lounge.
n Pelican Grill reduced glassware for simpler table settings. Chef Marc introduced a weekday express lunch, and a burger or pizza paired with a craft beer. Academy Awards and Kentucky Derby parties drew sold-out crowds this year.
Each restaurant strives to create their unique, specific dining experiences; each has its own website, social media presence, branding, logos and photography; and our neighbors love the changes.
One area with no change: valet parking remains complementary.
Katie Green
General Manager
Rooftop Lounge
La Casa del Camino
Laguna Beach
We’ve been focusing on a younger demographic by introducing more photo-friendly drinks and dishes. Those customers—with the rise of apps, such as Instagram and Snapchat—tend to take more pictures to post on social media.
New drinks and dishes and the photos they generate get us more exposure and help us keep up with ever-changing restaurant consumer tastes.
We’ve, for instance, watched the renaissance of rosé wine with a younger generation, but rather than a standard glass of it, we created a frozen cocktail that appeals even more to millennials and fits our beach vibe. Another new drink option is champagne bottle service that’s now served with fresh fruit.
On the food side, our version of avocado toast comes topped with chopped lobster and truffle pecorino cheese.
Good food can be inherently visual when made with fresh ingredients, paired with the right cocktail or wine, and enjoyed with a view of the Pacific Ocean. Constantly changing and adapting what you offer makes an item unique.
The concept stays the same, but the item is ours while still on-trend, and more likely to be shared visually.
Mark Hagopit
Executive Chef
Restaurant & Bar
House of Blues
Anaheim
House of Blues is open at GardenWalk after moving from Downtown Disney last year.
The new venue includes the renamed Restaurant & Bar, formerly known as Crossroads, OC’s first House of Blues Foundation Room—the only one currently at our restaurants in California—and a new, carefully crafted menu with signature items made from scratch.
Our new menu celebrates the roots of blues music—our “band of chefs” play on the deep roots of Southern cooking and the flavors of New Orleans, Cajun bayous, the Mississippi River delta, and Texas Hill Country barbecue.
It updates traditions with global ingredients and lighter options for today’s evolving tastes in what we call “Blues cooking.”
Items include Southern-fried chicken, a smokehouse platter, and a spicy Nashville fried chicken salad.
Other new dishes include a jambalaya, shrimp and grits, the latter served as a cake instead of creamy, and a signature Cajun appetizer called Voodoo Shrimp made from an Abita Amber reduction; Abita is a lager from Abita Brewing Co. outside of New Orleans.
The Foundation Room is a feature of House of Blues locations. Our venue offers an upscale menu of tapas-style dishes that include chicken tikka skewers, Korean barbecue riblets and cauliflower tempura.
Roberto Hernandez
Executive Chef
Avalon Grille
Catalina Island
We watched what was being ordered and listened to what guests were looking for, and we noticed recently that dishes with a Hispanic flair were most popular.
We saw a huge potential to bring forth food from my roots in Mexico City into the cooking we do here. Some dishes I’ve eaten forever, now they have a personal touch and can be shared with guests. Several dishes also come out lighter and healthier, another guest request right now.
The Spanish grilled octopus cooks for three hours at 350 degrees with bay leaves, thyme, orange, garlic and sherry vinegar, then is grilled-to-order and served with roasted eggplant puree, gigante beans, chickpeas, serrano chili, and piquilllo pepper vinigrette.
The roasted tomato soup doesn’t use cream or dairy—its tomatoes, thyme, whole garlic, shallots and olive oil, from California of course. Most of our sauces are made with vegetables, fruit juices and vinegars instead of the typical cream and flour approach.
The team here brings additional influences, from Puerto Rico, for instance, and farther back these cultures draw food practices from their origins in Spain. We share ideas and recipes and have found that the Hispanic cultures globally use many of the same ingredients but with different cooking methods.
Working with these influences produces new and unique flavors and dishes.
Peter Lai
Executive Chef
Oak Grill and Aqua Lounge
Island Hotel
Newport Beach
We’ve made changes based on sourced, local products and preparing items in-house instead of purchasing mainstream to maximize flavors, boost the wellness factor, and support the California food industry. It’s quite an undertaking for an all-day kitchen, but we’ve been listening to guests, who want to know exactly what they’re eating.
In lieu of buying sauces, for example, we now make them daily from scratch, which ensures flavor and quality. Notable examples are our Russian dressing on the Reuben sandwich, and toppings for our signature burger. A spicy ketchup, the bacon marmalade, and sweet pickled onions are made in-house, as is the baked brioche bun.
Local relationships with food sellers bring us flavor and interesting ingredients: watermelon radishes for the ahi poke, purple ninja radishes in our Simple Green and Caesar salads, and micro organic greens as garnish, from Fresh Origins in San Marcos.
Beef suppliers include Brandt Beef LLC in Brawley—we use bison for sliders at Aqua Lounge—and nightly seafood choices have included striped bass, clams and halibut.
Our guests also want healthier breakfast choices that provide more energy for their full days, food that isn’t heavy and that slows them down. New menu items are on the way, including a berry chia breakfast bowl, an avocado toast item, and a freshly squeezed juice bar.
Paulette Lombardi-Fries
President
Travel Costa Mesa
Costa Mesa
The city has been a DreamEats destination since February. DreamEats is a program from Visit California, the state’s destination marketing organization. The designation resulted in two video segments on dining in Costa Mesa shown on the state’s YouTube channel, Dream365TV, and used in wider tourism marketing.
The first video was “Costa Mesa’s Amazing Aged Steaks” and focused on Vaca in the lower level of an office building across the street from South Coast Plaza and the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel. The restaurant is owned and run by Chef Amar Santana, who gained fame on Bravo Channel’s “Top Chef.” Its menu includes charcuterie plates of meats and cheeses flown in from Spain.
The second video highlighted Master Pastry Chef Stephane Treand’s pastry school and chocolate shop, ST Patisserie, which is at the SoCo retail and restaurant center.
Other local standouts include Taco Maria from Chef Carlos Salgado—twice nominated for the James Beard Foundation Award—Kitakata Ramen Ban Nai, one of only two U.S. locations of the Japanese noodle house; and Din Tai Fung dumpling house in South Coast Plaza.
Later this year, another Bravo “Top Chef” alum, Chef Richard Blais, will open his family restaurant, Crack Shack, in Costa Mesa.
A trends report from travel industry information provider Skift in New York called dining a deciding element of travel for more than half of tourists.
Costa Mesa’s culinary experience is a pillar of our destination marketing, and we’ve trademarked a term for it: “Eatcation.”
Blake Mathias
Restaurant Manager
Pacific Hideaway
Kimpton Shorebreak
Huntington Beach
The recent transformation of our previous restaurant, Zimzala, into Pacific Hideaway, means we had to answer several questions: What style of food should we provide? What culinary effort does this city lack? What ambiance should we aim to create?
Our answers ended up involving a menu of fresh, local ingredients mixed with the influences of Chef J.T.’s Filipino bloodline and the coastal soul of California and the Pacific Ocean. Our goal was to offer a chic, fun experience where guests leave thinking, “I want to come back and try … ”
An example is the Tai Snapper served whole and fried. Tai Snapper is a Pacific fish that can be found from New Zealand to Japan and across the Pacific. Here, it’s caught locally and served as a dish with roots that go back to J.T.’s childhood.
It’s a lavishly herbed, two and a half pound fish on a wooden serving platter—an instant head turner as it is carried through the dining room. We think it ties in with healthy eating and the city’s casual ambiance.
A second new dish tapping the casual vibe is the Lao Sausage plate. This is house-made pork sausage with lemongrass, served with rice cakes, lettuce cups, and fresh herbs and vegetables blended into a spicy Bang-Bang sauce. It lets guests go with a lettuce wrap or dig right into the bowl—it’s up to them.
Cesar Pinacho
Executive Chef
The Fifth
Grand Legacy at the Park
Anaheim
I came on in March with the mandate to bring a fusion of fresh ingredients and a unique cooking style to The Fifth, our rooftop restaurant and bar at the hotel. We’ve introduced several dishes so far.
Small plates to share include a roasted pear salad, Prince Edward Island mussels, and a chorizo macaroni and cheese. New signature dishes on the way include an edamame falafel with jalapeño, cilantro, and lemon curd and a paella: Spanish chorizo, pork, mussels, shrimp and chicken. Desserts include a salted caramel creme brulee and mini doughnuts with ganache or raspberry sauce.
The hotel is across the street from Disneyland Resort, so it’s got the views while you eat, and cocktails and local brews that change weekly.
Memorial Day weekend was our one-year anniversary. The festivities included drink tastings, live music, and prize giveaways.
Brian Sundeen
Executive Chef
Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel
Dana Point
To celebrate the summer, we’re holding a series of food and wine experiences—cocktails, wine and seasonal cuisine made outdoors—where guests engage and interact with chefs who prepare that evening’s specialties.
The idea behind these dinners is to have a half family dinner, half cooking class, where outside on the Dana Lawn, my chefs and I will prepare the meals while they enjoy their drinks and a show. It will be like Sunday dinner at grandma’s house, but with the Ritz-Carlton chefs.
Experiences set for the summer include a June barbecue—classic American cookout dishes made on a yakitori grill, a mesquite charcoal grill, and in a smoker. This particular event includes Ketel One and Nolet Gin cocktails by the evening’s mixologist.
July’s event is an Italian-inspired seafood feast: fresh fish and other ocean-going entrees, with a cheesemaker on hand to select the evening’s cheeses and educate guests on the different varieties and flavors, and how to incorporate them into a meal, along with a selection of wines.
September’s food and wine event is Baja-inspired and includes room packages keyed to the Ohana music festival at nearby Doheny State Beach.
Rob Wilson
Executive Chef
Montage Laguna Beach
Laguna Beach
Montage is expanding its live-action stations at food events, as compared to the traditional buffet. Some of our popular stations are a poke bar with ahi tuna and salmon, and stations for seared scallops, cheeses, coffee, crepes, desserts, and a baking station that includes, for example, sticky toffee puddings and souffles.
We change our banquet menus every year and our restaurant menus every season, so we’re always challenged to stay current. Interactive stations as a concept aren’t new—guests interact with chefs, including plating and presenting the dish—but what we do with them is.
For the seared scallops, for example, it’s the scallops, sauce and garnish served in the shell. Poke stations are one of the newer things, where we have a beautiful sushi case, and we prepare the base—hamachi, salmon or ahi tuna on a bed of sushi rice, scallions, chili oil, touch of soy, let’s say—and then guests choose from about 25 toppings, sauces, and so on, and it’s served in a bowl or even a martini glass.
Various action stations have served grilled oysters or lobster; barbecue and smoker with a carving area for steak, chicken and ribs; shrimp and vegetable brochettes, and lamb with violet mustard. There’s a lot you can do.
One we have fun with is our soup shooter station—three different soups lined up in 10 or 15 shot glasses apiece. You can put, say, heirloom tomato soup with grilled cheese on top, and guests drink from the glass.
