Best new restaurant? Chef of the year? Cherry-picking the best of the best of Orange County’s food scene and settling on a solitary chef of the year, one overall restaurant of the year, one preeminent pastry chef, the single most impressive newcomer, plus one legendary icon, and a beverage program that stood out among all the others is a daunting task. Agonizing choices had to be made. The possibilities were numerous, but the awards are few.
After a year’s worth of dining – nearly 400 meals and counting – it all comes down to this, my first end-of-year restaurant awards for the Orange County Register. And the winners are…
CHEF OF THE YEAR
Noah Blom: Arc, Shuck Oyster Bar
Noah Blom’s rise to the top might seem swift, but this Orange County native hasn’t taken any shortcuts. He simply got a head start by securing his first kitchen job at the age of 14 at The Ritz in Newport Beach. He eventually took his knives to New York and worked in the trenches with some of America’s best chefs like Daniel Boulud and Laurent Tourondel. He helped the latter open 14 restaurants across the U.S.
When he opened Shuck Oyster Bar in Costa Mesa last year at age 33, he gave Orange County residents exactly what we were missing before we even realized it: a no-nonsense, oyster bar with a profound appreciation for quality and simplicity. From a business perspective, it was a risky niche, a daring but ultimately brilliant move. And when he followed that with Arc, he took an even bigger risk and gave us what the entire country was craving: a groundbreaking, back-to-basics reprieve from modernist cuisine. By eschewing the avant-garde, he became the avant-garde. Everything at Arc is cooked over the wood-burning grill or in the wood-fueled oven. Even the simplest of tasks that other chefs take for granted, like boiling a pot of water, must be done using a live wood fire.
Of course, it’s never enough to simply be a rebel. This guy can cook. Using that wood-burning grill and an assortment of cast-iron pans, he transforms a half-dozen different mushrooms and a free-range egg into an epiphany. Employing the fiery hearth and a big spoonful of duck fat, he turns potatoes into a luxury good. The steaks, the tacos, the burger … it all might sound familiar, but rest assured, nobody else is cooking food like this.
And here’s something more to look forward to: Blom has ordered a new, even larger wood-fired grill for Arc, one with a smoker built in. As soon as it arrives, which should be any day now, he’ll be moving the existing grill to Shuck, where he plans to expand the menu to include wood-fired seafood and more.
Arc, 3321 Hyland Ave., Costa Mesa. 949-500-5561
Shuck, 3313 Hyland Ave., Costa Mesa. 949-420-0478
RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR
Marché Moderne
One of greatest bragging rights about living in Orange County is the fact that we’ve got the best French bistro in the state. At Marché Moderne, chef/owners Florent and Amelia Marneau perfectly blend the joie de vivre of Paris with the casual, laid-back lifestyle of Southern California.
There are plenty of reasons Marché Moderne is consistently one of the busiest restaurants in the county. The service is both charming and professional. The globally influenced French cuisine is always meticulously crafted and beautifully presented. The overall experience of dining here always feels special, whether you’re taking a break from shopping to enjoy a slice of ham and a perfect baguette or whether you’ve made this your destination for a multi-course celebration with caviar, Champagne and all the trimmings. At this moment, and for quite awhile now, this is still the restaurant to beat.
South Coast Plaza, 3333 Bristol St, 3rd floor, Costa Mesa. 714-434-7900
BEST NEW RESTAURANT
Little Sparrow
Every neighborhood needs a restaurant like Little Sparrow, which is perhaps more chameleon than bird. It’s a youthful American cafe with an old European soul. The restaurant splits the difference between comforting and thrilling, easily transitioning from one mood to the next. One minute, it’s a casual, somewhat boisterous lunchroom. Hours later it’s an elegant dinner destination with white tablecloths and romantic lighting. And if you take the adjoining bar into account, it’s also one of the hottest places in the county, where a person can take part in the artisanal cocktail movement while enjoying smartly curated music.
It didn’t take long for Little Sparrow to become the best restaurant in a neighborhood already known for great dining and drinking. Rising star chef Eric Samaniego cooks with sophistication and finesse, easily shifting from lunchtime’s big, fat, buttery, house-cured pastrami sandwiches to dinnertime’s supple, elegant oxtail ravioli dressed in the style of Rome’s famous cacio e pepe or those beautiful little lamb meatballs that are as light and fluffy as clouds. And if you follow the restaurant on Facebook and see a post about freshly made donuts, run as fast as you possibly can before they sell out.
300 N. Main St., Santa Ana. 714-265-7640
PASTRY CHEF OF THE YEAR
Jeff Lehuede: Andrea
Jeff Lehuede is a Frenchman trapped in an Italian restaurant, and while that might seem like a nightmare to most French chefs, it is actually a match made in heaven. Like most people in France who choose cooking as a career, Lehuede wasted no time answering his calling. He received his master certificate in pastry while still a teenager. He came of age in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris, and then set off on a romantic, sugar-fueled journey through Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong before eventually landing in Orange County. Before joining Andrea, he was the pastry chef at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel.
Lehuede now channels all of that strict French discipline and globally aware mindset into desserts that are distinctly, unmistakably Italian. And although each one is a work of art, his desserts come across as pretty rather than precious.
He has taken tiramisu and fashioned it into something far more regal than a mere trifle. Tiramisu, in his eyes, is clearly a concept rather than a recipe. Similarly, a poached pear is never just a poached pear. It’s a winter-berry-glazed pear nesting in a cloud of red-wine zabaglione – or sabayon, if you prefer the French spelling, as he does – juxtaposed with a warm pear pistachio cake. The chef makes gelato in the surprising flavor of olive oil and pairs it with a gently quivering custard similar to a panna cotta, stuffed with an amarena cherry. But he’s never content to leave you with just that.
After you’ve finished dessert and are relishing everything that’s just happened on your tongue, out comes one final flourish, a silver candelabra-like device loaded with bite-sized candies and cakes. Willpower be damned. You will be seduced.
The Resort at Pelican Hill, 22701 Pelican Hill Road, Newport Beach. 855-315-8214
BEST WINE AND SPIRITS
Broadway by Amar Santana
Broadway by Amar Santana isn’t just a great place to eat. It’s also a great place to drink. General manager Ahmed Labbate and sommelier Michael McConnell oversee one of the most compelling wine lists in California. It’s not exactly the biggest or the deepest cellar around, but it is one of the most unique.
On any given day there might be as many as 30 wines being poured by the glass, and Broadway seems hellbent on a solo quest to bring half-bottles back into vogue, because, you know, some days you might want a mere taste of a fine sancerre or chardonnay before moving on to couple bottles of pinot noir. And pinot noir is where this list truly distinguishes itself. The menu offers at least 60 labels of the grape, including eight or nine variations of the highly coveted Kosta Browne, plus the likes of Pflender, Sea Smoke, Kanzler, Walt, Domaine Boillot, Soliste … with a range of prices to suit just about any wallet, but if you’ve got a hundred dollars or so to spend on a bottle, you will drink some of the best wine of your life here.
But it’s not just the wine. It’s the cocktails, too. Bar manager Gabriele Dion is one of the top mixologists of Orange County. Rarely does the term “chef” appropriately apply to what a bartender does, but the drinks she comes up with are as culinarily significant as Santana’s modern American cuisine. Dion’s apothecary-like vernacular includes exotic ingredients such as orange oil, rosemary water, smoked sea salt, grilled pineapple syrup, Swedish punsch and vanilla-infused cynar. And she clearly takes as much pleasure in naming her drinks – Blindfolded Bowman, Cobra Clutch, Veruca Salt or Aduld Snow Cone – as she does making them.
This is not a destination for teetotalers.
328 Glenneyre Street, Laguna Beach. 949-715-8234
O.C. ICON AWARD
Napa Rose
The O.C. Icon Award honors an institution open for 10 years or more that continues to set the standards and raise the bar for the entire restaurant community. No restaurant fits that description better than Napa Rose.
With chef Andrew Sutton at the helm from the beginning, the kitchen at Disney’s premier dining room continues to set itself apart from the crowd with innovative dishes like a buffalo carpaccio that’s topped with toasted birdseed or a fricassee of rabbit with caramelized chanterelle mushrooms and pillowy chive dumplings or a strikingly beautiful filet of Pacific ono paired with grilled octopus.
Hanging on the back trophy wall of Napa Rose, there’s a picture of a magazine article from 2002 showing pan-roasted sea scallops in a colorful ink-splat nage of citrus and vanilla. That very dish still graces the menu today, and it feels as fresh and modern and as intriguing as ever.
Being in the heart of Disney, it will always be hard to achieve the perfect state of grace for which most restaurants of this caliber strive, but even at the height of the holiday rush, when everyone wants to dine here with their kids if for no other reason than to partake in the restaurant’s famous hot chocolate, the dining room somehow remains an oasis of adult charm in the midst of so much childlike glee.
Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, 1600 S Disneyland Drive. 714-781-3463
Contact the writer: bajohnson@ocregister.com