Tucked into a hidden crag along a scenic stretch of Orange County’s coastline, The Beachcomber Cafe occupies a repurposed beach cottage in Crystal Cove State Park. You’d never see it from Pacific Coast Highway, which ferries harried drivers on the bluffs above this restaurant. If you happened to know about the sketchy staircase leading down from behind the Shake Shack, you might make your way down to the sand, and this ridiculously crowded beachfront restaurant. How the hell did all these people find out about this place, anyway?

This view from the patio is the payoff. That, and the chance to maintain a good buzz through the afternoon into a rosy sunset. On this day, we started with a disappointing calamari appetizer: flaccidly fried, unseasoned greasy squid bits that the house-made tartar sauce and cilantro aioli couldn’t save. Famished after a 30 minute wait for a table, we devoured them anyway, like makos in a chum slick.

Salad with a view. Many Orange County “ladies who lunch” keep this spot hopping, but that view keeps tables from turning quickly.

Beachcomber Burger. Great bun and a free form, hand-patted, beef burger cooked to a true medium rare. I really liked the Asian influenced apple & nappa cabbage slaw, flecked with black sesame seeds. The paper cup keeps the presentation from getting too uppity.

Shrimp po boy, with a cornmeal battered shrimp. Not remotely close to the quality of the late Uglesich’s in New Orleans, but I liked it all the same. Note the chipotle Tabasco sauce on hand.

The rule for restaurants that tout fantastic vistas is: the better the view, the worse the food. I haven’t had enough of the food at The Beachcomber to gauge the extent of that notion, but our sandwiches were just fine. I need to go back and explore the menu further, especially for the beignets and steel cut oatmeal served at breakfast.

The Ruby’s Diner group owns this restaurant and the historic shake shack on the cliff above it, but takes great pains to distinguish their independence from their corporate, faux`50’s diner cousins. I like that the chefs prepare most of the sauces in house, and innovate with some interesting flavor combinations on the menu. Will untraditional items like the apple-nappa slaw cross over to the Ruby’s menus eventually? Don’t bet on it. It wouldn’t mesh with Ruby’s retro burger joint positioning.

Let’s appreciate The Beachcomber on its own merits: great view, good casual dining menu, and an enviable location that you’ll call your friends from. “Hey, guess where I’m sitting right now… ?”

The Beachcomber at Crystal Cove
15 Crystal Cove
Newport Coast, CA 92657
949-376-6900 tel

No reservations are taken. Call the restaurant for directions & parking instructions, as vehicles must be left in a remote lot on the other side of Pacific Coast Highway.

Happy New Year, everyone. I start this year off with a thank you to Amy Scattergood of the Los Angeles Times, which ran a piece today on our local food blogging community. While her story focuses on two blogs that merge entertainment industry gossip with the L.A. food scene, it also highlights many of our town’s most interesting pure food blogs.

In December 2005, the Times ran a different piece about our local blog community, and I’m glad to see several relative newcomers mentioned this time around, like Chubbypanda, and Rameniac. Prolific long timers like Pat Saperstein’s Eating L.A. and Sarah’s The Delicious Life also made the cut, while others like elmomonster’s Monster Munching inexplicably didn’t. Much love to you nonetheless, elmo.

Unique voices in the blogosphere continue to join our chorus. Welcome to the fray, and congratulations to all those mentioned.

Just today, Orange County’s Filling Station Cafe opened the Thanksgiving order book for their legendary pumpkin and apple pies.

This mom and pop restaurant’s behemoth pies of incomparable flavor sell out fast. You have two weeks or so before they max out capacity.

How much does it cost? In the time it took you to read that, someone else is dialing the phone. I can’t bake pies this perfectly dialed in, nor do I want to practice before the holiday. I got mine. You get yours.

Filling Station Cafe
201 N. Glassell St.
Orange, CA 92866
714-289-9714

Ever take a trip somewhere and get bummed out to come home to your usual humdrum routine? If there’s a word for that in some other language, it’s probably a German, twenty syllable, consonant-rich monstrosity. In my younger, wanderlustful days, I travelled constantly for work and usually missed that interesting some-other-place to return home to New York, as if the New York City suburbs were a sucky place to live. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Now that I’m older and shittier, I’m rather comfortable with my suburban Orange County life and better appreciate the joys of living here. In the first days after our vacation, I ate tacos at my favorite hole in the wall taqueria, Costa Mesa’s El Toro Bravo, and hit the weekend dim sum at Irvine’s China Garden. I felt like a junkie fresh out of rehab.

Our hunting expeditition to the Western slope of Colorado was terrific except no elks graced us with a viable target. I enjoyed the lakeside view from our rustic cabin on a snowy mountain at 10,000 feet of elevation. The little sprites went fishing, and we pan fried just-caught cold water rainbow trout with a parmesan and instant potato flakes crust, sauced with a lemon beurre noisette. The 4 wheel drive went out on the truck as the sun was setting, stranding us in the mud during a snow squall, when the windshield wipers decided to quit too (thanks alot, GMC).

Despite all that fun, there’s no place like home, and sleeping in my own bed with a warm cat dozing at my feet.

A week outside the usual routine gave me perspective on the foodways both at home and in Colorado. Stay tuned for a story on butchers that process wild game, and a small town where artisans turn renowned local fruit and corn into wines, vodkas, and brandies.