Definitely order from the menu addendum, where four entrees-including two steaks, the pork chop and the seabass-are listed in a separate scrap of paper. The seabass might just be the best seafood dish on a street that also includes the beloved Walt's Wharf. The first bite has the... More >>

4th Street Market is a food court in Santa Ana. The stalls here are mostly single-dish specialists focused on making one thing, with nothing but a pay counter out front and the exposed guts of the kitchens behind them. Lined end-to-end, back-to-back, barely a buffer zone between one stall and... More >>

Afters Ice Cream is an ice cream store in Fountain Valley. Here, a group of Vietnamese kids transformed a once-tired Fountain Valley shopping plaza into the stage for OC's must-eat treat of the season with something downright novel: ice cream stuffed inside of a donut, with your choice of... More >>

The bakery makes only two dishes: pita sandwiches and sphiha. Within this simplicity, though, lies culinary greatness. More than half of the sphihas are strictly veggie affairs, but not the expected roughage-heavy dishes. Instead, the main ingredients are spices-and not the spicy kind.... More >>

At the second Anepalco’s dinner is served. And it’s then that Danny Godinez starts to really crack his knuckles and show you that Mexi-French cuisine isn’t monopolized by Richard Sandoval’s Raya at The Ritz. Baguettes are served with guajillo chile butter and dessert is from a roster of crepes... More >>

Noah Blom worked for Daniel Boulud in New York, opened restaurants for Laurent Tourendel’s empire, and did a pair of concepts in San Francisco. But ARC seems to be a stripped-down-to-the-essentials reboot of his career. It is an eatery that, despite the meaningless “oven-to-table” blurbs on its... More >>

The Attic is the kind of back-to-basics eatery that any American is hard-wired to love. The fare is Southern with dashes of Cajun and Creole, but it doesn’t take more than the mere mention of the ribs, the meatloaf and the fried chicken with gravy to make a place that already looks grandma’s... More >>

Located in a Big Lots parking lot, all you can hear are the clangs of a wok and the smells of good home cooking coming from this respected Thai restaurant. More >>

You're tolerating brusque customer service here for the 10 choices of bánh mì, the foot-long sandwich that is one of the most delicious robberies in the gustatory world at $2.25 per stickup. Barbecue pork is charred to a ruddy crispness, yet it's moist. Meatballs are densely herbed and juicy,... More >>

The Bamboo Lounge is a bar in Santa Ana. It hides separated from the rest of the classic Benjies in SanTana, a kitschy tiki-style bar with bamboo-lined walls and vintage tropical tablecloths--along with Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Money Pit at the Disneyland Hotel, Don the Beachcomber and 320... More >>

The Big Catch Seafood in Long Beach is the kind of place where long communal butcher-block tables are covered in paper and forks and knives are supplied but hardly used. Yes, it's another in the new breed of seafood restaurant that eschews high prices for value and accessibility. But it's even... More >>

Bosscat Kitchen & Libations is a southern restaurant in Newport Beach. Its chef, Peter Petro, is fluent in okra and cornbread in a menu that’s as Southern-accented as Polly Holliday’s Flo. There are collard greens and hush puppies. Actually, the collards greens are in the hush puppies, stuffed... More >>

The best way to eat at Broadway by Amar Santana in Laguna Beach is to stick with the small plates. It's here where Santana cuts loose and reveals his knowledge what works and what doesn't. His Kobe beef sliders don't seem as juicy as when he made them at Charlie Palmer's, but the dish of fried... More >>

As expected of a restaurant that calls itself Bru, there is a stash of wines on sale in a room dedicated to the bottles and a carefully curated list of beers whose only fault is that some varieties run out too quickly. It is for these reasons, not just for inherent humor of the beer-can chicken... More >>

Bruxie makes a waffle similar, if not identical, to the one cooked on the cobblestone streets of Brussels. The airy tic-tac-toe-patterned honeycomb, delicate as spun sugar and cut into quarter wedges from a bigger circle, is just as crisp, just as ethereal as an authentic Belgian waffle, even... More >>

Bulgogi House is an all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurant in La Palma. Bulgogi House is also unlike other Korean barbecues in that it’s not in Irvine or Garden Grove or Buena Park, where most Koreans and Korean barbecues are typically found. Instead, it’s in La Palma, in a standalone... More >>

C4 Deli is a deli in Santa Ana. It’s housed in a doozy of a room, with a soaring ceiling, Gatsby-esque Art Deco design motifs, exposed brick walls, and a window that stares directly at the equally beautiful Santora building across Broadway. Get the Reuben. The pastrami is sliced so thin you... More >>

A warm, inviting bistro in a forgettable mini-mall in Cypress, Café Hiro is an oasis of Japanese cooking in a desert of chain restaurants. The menu features European foods cooked to the Japanese taste, such as spaghetti with tobiko or uni and Japanese curries. Start with perfectly roasted pork... More >>

Capital Noodle Bar is a Chinese restaurant in Irvine. It offers a Hainan chicken noodle, for which take chicken is lain atop a noodle of your choice, and then drowned in hot broth that will promptly seize up and become rubbery. Avoid this dish. If you want Hainan chicken, order as it should be... More >>

Chianina is a steakhouse in Long Beach. Its owned by the same group that owns Michael’s On Naples a few doors down, and it's raising--and eventually cooking--its own cattle. At this very moment, as you chew on your salad, there are cows in the Midwest earmarked for your future nearly-$200... More >>

It started in the South Bay, but Chicken Maison's newest branch at a barren mini-mall in Santa Ana cooks its rotisserie bird like the original. But it's not content with just the brown, gossamer-skinned birds; Chicken Maison's menu strives to be more ambitious. There's the stuff you expect,... More >>

The destination for hungry Vietnamese folks in search of com tam, a dish of steamed "broken" rice with various toppings. If you go, don't miss the cha (an egg and pork quiche) and the dau hu ky (shrimp paste stuffed inside a tofu skin). More >>

CUCINA Enoteca is an Italian restaurant in Irvine. Try the polenta board. The rustic presentation of the cornmeal mush--creamy and faintly sweet but bland if you eat it without the shredded meat gravy--is kind of a revelation, an idea so rudimentarily perfect in what it communicates you'll wish... More >>

Din Tai Fung is a Taiwanese restaurant in Costa Mesa. When South Coast Plaza’s management enticed Din Tai Fung to open at the mall, they knew it would attract its huge fan-base, some of whom belong to a growing class of affluent Chinese spenders. In the new Riviera, the rich don’t eat caviar;... More >>

Like Dee Nguyen's Break of Dawn, Early Bird reclaims what Norms, Denny's and IHOP have subjugated in recent decades. Breakfast shouldn't be held to the confines of sunny-side-ups, bacon, pancakes and waffles, though you can certainly order all of that here. The waffle, for instance, can be had... More >>