In Uptown I like Mimosa Grill (pecan crusted trout). They also offer cooking classes that I've signed up for, but haven't been to yet. If they venture over to NoDa (hipster, artsy district) I'd recommend Davidson St Public House (Pork belly fried green tomato sliders), Haberdish (roasted okra in bacon jam, chicken and waffles), and Growlers (good drinks and pub sandwiches). All of those are New Southern cuisine. They aren't exactly hidden, but I like them because the menu changes by season.

I went tonight for a light dinner and drinks. The ceviche sampler was amazing. Tuna in a lime-laced guacamole, salmon in an oniony crema, and a mixed shellfish ceviche as well. All very fresh fish. We also had short rib tamales with a tangy roasted tomato salsa. Absolutely spot on for the food (though with Santa Ana nearby I feel a little guilty ordering tamales).

The Albarino was also pretty top notch with tropical fruit and the right crispness.

The yelp reviews complain about the service but I though things were pretty well on par for most joints in the first couple of weeks and will smooth out a good bit as the staff gets the hang of things. Given the venue of Fashion Island I think it's a pretty excellent option, and one I'm likely to hit up fairly often before the movies at the theater nearby. But as a warning the crowd is _very_ OC.

Definitely worth a try. Looking forward to hear how it goes for others.

I love Broadway. I think it is some of the best food in Orange County. The dishes are beautiful, delicious, and the technique is spot on. They have bone marrow, which is rich and savory, as well as a nice duck 3 ways (breast, smoked leg, and ... I have forgotten what else). I've also had a gorgeous Beet salad there scattered with edible flowers that was light and refreshing. (Photo below- looks better in real life. I don't use flash at dinner.) With the beets I chose a fish dish which was amazingly light and perfectly cooked.

They have spots at the bar surrounding the kitchen where you can watch the chefs cook, but only a few of those, so call ahead to reserve them. It is admittedly expensive, but I think worth the price given the level of craft. Amar recently did a dinner at the James Beard House in NY, and is a top-notch chef.

I just came back from ARC tonight at the OC Mart mix. The food is all done in the wood fired oven or on a wood fired grill. They have a very nice duck with berry jam, sizable portion of roasted beets, and chocolate chip cookies for dessert that are all gooey in the middle. I understand they have a good lunch as well, but have not been yet. It definitely has a cozy feel with really nice comfort food. The nicest spots, in my opinion, are at the bar where you can watch the fire, which would probably make a good date night.

The real win at Arc though is the cocktails. They've stolen Koire, formerly of the SideDoor/FiveCrowns who has created their bar menu. Tonight I had the Green Chimney, an herbal citrusy drink with a bit of fennel/anise to it. Awesome drink and I regret having to drive or I would have had more.

Both restaurants are worth going to, though they have very different feels. Broadway especially is worth driving to Laguna and I would put it at the top of my must-try restaurants in OC.

This may be a little late for your particular trip, but I'd read so many nice reviews of Red Medicine that I finally decided to head up to LA and give it a try.

I'll start by saying that I had a really fabulous cocktail- gin and lime with thai basil, citrusy and herbal, which generally tends to be my favorite. I only regret that I had to drive and could not have more than one.

Unfortunately, from there, I found the food to be wholly disappointing. Every dish I had was covered in sugar and acid, and was completely without balancing herb or spice that could have transformed the dishes into something more palatable. Textures were maimed and often did not complement one another within a dish, and plates often had large pieces for decoration which made dishes unwieldy and added little to their flavors.

My first dish was one of 'barbecued' leeks in a yuzu buttermilk sauce with charred ash. When the leeks arrived, they had clearly been boiled out of their misery, soaked in some form of sweet acid, and then supposedly grilled, though they did not have the caramelized smoky flavor one might expect from the fire. The leeks were plated whole, but had lost almost all structural integrity after being cooked for so long and were nearly unrecognizable-- except for the internal ribbing, which made them long, stringy, and difficult to cut through with the butter knife they gave me.

On top of the leeks was some kind of fennel or anise, served raw in 4in+ stems, again almost impossible to manage. The yuzu and the acid soaked leeks paired, in my opinion, poorly with the buttermilk, the charred leek ash was sparse, and the fennel too large to manage with a bite of anything else. At one point I even wondered if the chef had ever tasted his own food, and if so how in the world had he eaten the blasted thing??

From there I moved on to a dish of whole miniature eggplant, fresh pea puree, radishes, charred panko breadcrumb ‘dirt’, pea tendrils with flowers, and sunchoke chips. Individually, the pea puree, the panko dirt, and the fried sunchoke skins were interesting, but as a dish, the components did not marry with one another, the eggplant were again soaked in an overwhelming sweet vinegar, and pieces were once more so large and unmanageable that it was nearly impossible to have bites of two separate ingredients at the same time.

The dish LOOKED so beautiful, and there were certainly some promising elements, but it seemed that taste had been sacrificed to appearance, and that the dish had been put together with no thought for balance of flavor. The entire plate seemed so tragic, as a small amount of chili, shiso, thai basil, or for crying out loud, even black pepper would have brightened the dish, pulled back the inescapable and nearly painful sweet acid, and forced the different elements of the dish to interact a little more.

Finally, I finished with the pork belly served with rhubarb 4 ways and roasted alliums. Again, portions of the dish had little flavor but sweet acid, though the savory pork belly did a much better job of holding its own against acidic flavors. But then pork belly is somewhat difficult to ruin especially with the combination of fat and acid.

Alliums again seemed to have been boiled or steamed far past their prime, then thrown on the grill, and while marginally better than the leeks, it made me sad to see vegetables so texturally abused and mushy on the inside, then paired with giant stems of unknown raw leaves and long, rambling beet chips that once again looked lovely but added little to the flavors.

In short, I found the experience extremely disappointing, especially after seeing such universally positive reviews on chow. I rarely write completely negative reviews anywhere online, but I found the food to be so far off that I would be embarrassed to serve those dishes in my own home, and thought it was important to post a counterpoint to all the raves.

I hope for the restaurant’s sake that someone can vouch that my experience is an anomaly, and that others will have better dinners than my own.

With regrets,
Bekah

Hi all,

Just got back from the trip. For the most part dinners were set directly next to the conference center just because of time constraints. The group hit up sushi and Indian on the strip, which were passable but not really much of note. We did go to the Afghan Grill which was a fairly pleasant surprise. Really nice roasted squash, spinach, and eggplant dishes, plus the wine was better than I normally would expect for that type of restaurant.

On the nicer end of things Open City diner was a great choice for breakfast (but not super quick). My friend got chai waffles and I had a standard but lovely American breakfast of poached eggs, grits, sausage, and hashbrowns. Being Southern I was happy to see grits again.

District kitchen was great food- nice sweetbreads, a really rich but dairy-free mushroom soup, assorted pickles made in house, roasted duck. The real win though was the cocktails. My sister had a "Yoda Soda" (lime, fruit, vanilla) and I had "Till the bitter end" (dark rum, mole bitters). I took my Boss there the next day and he was raving about their version of a Manhattan. They also had a dry rose, which I generally like on a warm afternoon. As a place for cocktails and snacks I'd recommend it if you happen to be anywhere in the area.

We also made it up to Bryan Voltaggio's Range. I'd been to his brother's restaurant Ink in LA (very different, more asian flavors and molecular gastronomy) so I wanted to try it out. The food was by all accounts amazing. The menu is extensive and has so much variation. Duck galantine, beef heart in chimichurri, sweet pea ravioli with edible flowers, smoked grits, spiced oven roasted potatoes, pan roasted white fish, potted foie. The amount of offal and other unusual dishes was pretty impressive. Overall I'd say the food was pretty mellow with a soul food feel, but with really nicely nuanced flavors.

The restaurant is also massive, and parts of the kitchen are open with bar seats right next to the chef-- likely a good spot for solo dining in the evenings and for date night (there's a movie theater across the street). I absolutely recommend it.

In any case, thanks for all your nice recs, and I'll keep the rest of them on file for my next trip to DC, which hopefully will have more leisure time for dinners!

Hi gang,

Thanks so much for the recs. They really helped. Conference was chaotic so I didn't get to try as many as I'd like (colleagues like dives) but there were several that I hit up.

Went to The Black Tomato, Social, Play, and Brothers. Black tomato I had duck in plum sauce, and a Canadian dry Riesling that was fairly nice. Social had a beautiful little seared albacore in a bright citrus sauce with cabbage and microgreens that was absolutely lovely.

But the real win was Play. They had a perfectly done carrot salad with cucumbers, ricotta, fenel seeds, mint, and soft lemon. The carrots had been cooked just enough so that the texture matched the cukes and there was a nice honey that I would guess had been mixed with vanilla, but the flavor was fairly subtle so I'm not sure. They also had a seared fish, perfectly cooked so that the center was just barely set with Oyster mushrooms and Asian flavors. Highly recommend that one, and thanks for the suggestion.

Photos on twitter under foodieBekah if anyone is interested, though camera ate half my food photos. Thanks to everyone for the advice, and happy chow-ing.

Pizzeria Ortica's apps might work well. I usually stick with a couple of starter plates for my meal when I go. They have a wonderful prosciutto with burratta, a fabulous octopus dish (it has potatoes, but you might be able to ask them to do it without them), and a new conserva di pollo.

http://www.pizzeriaortica.com/

The Crow Bar also had a really nice shrimp salad a couple of weeks back, if you deal ok with veggies.

http://www.crowbarcdm.com/

A very filling dinner with a drink or two usually runs me ~$50 at each of those.

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Pizzeria Ortica
650 Anton Boulevard, Costa Mesa, CA 92626