How does a chef make it in OC’s crowded and competitive culinary landscape?
Passion, creativity, perseverance and excellence are vital—but they’re prerequisites to get through those white swinging doors to a restaurant’s inner sanctum.
For Business Journal Chef of the Year David Shofner, a Santa Maria-style grill helps put him over the top.
Shofner is executive chef at Fable & Spirit, a block from boutique hotel Lido House on the Peninsula in Newport Beach, as well as Dublin 4 Gastropub and Wineworks for Everyone, both in Mission Viejo.
His toque is made for traveling. The trio is part of a local passport stamped with stops for Le Cordon Bleu training in Pasadena and at a half-dozen premier restaurants in O.C. and L.A. prior to coming aboard with husband-and-wife Darren and Jean Coyle, who own them.
The wonder of the Santa Maria is the ability of its wizard—here, Chef Shofner—to raise and lower the grill, steadily amending, adjusting to get flame and flavor just right. Fable & Spirit flesh, including the octopus, finds final form in its fire.
Aspiration
After Le Cordon Bleu, Shofner got an early gig at Splashes in Surf & Sand Resort in Laguna Beach. Two years later, he migrated to Troquet and Aubergine, then to L.A. as chef de cuisine at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel.
He repatriated to OC to open Opah Restaurant at the Marketplace in Irvine with Chef Marc Cohen, then ran Chat Noir and French 75 in their heyday before being hired as the opening executive chef at Dublin 4.
At the time, “French 75 was the pinnacle in Orange County,” Shofner recalled. Then, “you pass your goals and set new ones.”
Dublin 4 is a district in Ireland’s capital that’s home to embassies and Google’s local headquarters, and that comes into play during national discussions on politics, economics, wealth and Ireland’s aspirational middle class. Darren Coyle grew up there and in County Mayo, on the opposite side of the island, famed for its craggy cliffs.
Both Dublin 4 and Wineworks—Shofner reworked its menu after Dublin 4 opened in 2012—are near Mission Viejo Country Club. Fable & Spirit, for its part, was named Best New Restaurant at last year’s Golden Foodie Awards.
Acclaim
Its immediate accolades—it’s less than 2 years old—surprised even a longtime food traveler like Shofner.
“We were doing 300 to 400 covers a night right out of the gate … from zero to go,” he told the Business Journal. “The first few weeks were brutal.”
Like much of Ireland’s 40-shades-of-green terrain—inland from its roiling coast—it rolls more smoothly these days.
Shofner’s menus are essentially California coastal with French influence by way of Ireland, even when it comes to traditional dishes such as a burger, fish and chips, and cottage pie—the more proper name for what Americans are sometimes tempted to call Shepherd’s Pie.
He traveled to Ireland with the Coyles to acquire a sense of the coast, the cottages, the coneys—rabbits—and the cuisine.
“Those were big challenges for me,” he said. “The family is Irish; Dublin 4 is an Irish pub. It was exciting.”
This was coupled with his classical French training and style to craft and cultivate an epicurean evolution.
“If there is an Irish dish here, there’s a French backbone to it,” Shofner said.
Adaptation
It was then up to him to interpret, integrate—and introduce—items for what has become three distinct offerings at a trio of unique sites: authentic Irish-American pub fare; stylish wine bar with a New American menu; fine dining on the coast.
“My hands were not tied so I thought let’s go for it, let’s push,” he said. “Let’s look at local, fresh, organic, globally inspired.”
With Fable & Spirit, he “wrote the most progressive menu of my career and it was so well-received,” he marveled. “You want to challenge your diners, but it has to make sense.”
A rabbit fricassee made sense, for instance. Handmade pastas stretched the possibilities a bit: beet agnolotti and cracked pepper bucatini, both handmade daily.
Small plates include woodfired octopus and Mangalitsa pork belly—from a hairy breed of pig sometimes called the Kobe beef of pork—take welcome detours via unexpected ingredients—a bed of pearl couscous, let’s say.
Even the fish and chips—an Anglo-Irish tradition altered at one’s peril—surveys the hinterlands a bit with pea puree and curry remoulade.
Afterthought
Then he’s off even more round the bend, trifling with another time-honed tradition: bangers, or Irish sausages.
“I will take an idea, a dish, and try to make it my own,” he said, even when the dish is a thousand years old.
“You can’t get a traditional one here,” Shofner said; a sausage maker delivers a “Dublin 4 banger designed for us,” hewing to Shofner’s recipe, which then gets a refinement atypical to the common item: a potato puree on the plate, whole grain mustard and Jameson cream sauce, with a micro green garnish.
One Fable & Spirit item—tapping yet another Irish institution—was an afterthought entirely. Guinness brown bread was “not even on the original menu; now we bake 50 loaves a day, seven days a week.”
The Irish are a fighting race but Shofner’s scratch kitchen—along with baked-in Guinness, Irish whiskies, and other spirit-filled potions—covers a multitude of sins. He cures meat—bacon slabs hang for a week or more—and there are homemade sauces, such as the onsite-original aioli instead of mayo.
“You can never be complacent,” he said. “I am always learning, always trying to push myself.”
Burger meat—short ribs, brisket and sirloin—is ground fresh daily.
Such steps mean “that final product that sets us apart from everyone else. I am passionate about what we do.”
